Moral Ambiguity Quotes

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart – and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains…an unuprooted small corner of evil. Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.

I don't know what a scoundrel is like, but I know what a respectable man is like, and it's enough to make one's flesh creep.

One murder made a villain, Millions a hero. Princes were privileged To kill, and numbers sanctified the crime..

There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.

I'd rather betray the world than let the world betray me.

At times we used questionable means to achieve our noble ends.

It's always the good men who do the most harm in the world.

It is better to destroy 100 innocent people than to let one guilty one escape.

Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends... ...when millions are slaughtered, when torture is practiced, starvation enforced, oppression made a policy, as at present over a large part of the world, and as it has often been in the past, it must be at the behest of very many good people, and even by their direct action, for what they consider a worthy object.

Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

He [William Gladstone] made his conscience not his guide but his accomplice.

Our best performances are so stained with sin, that it is hard to know whether they are good works or bad works.

The Bible is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies. This Bible is built mainly out of fragments of older Bibles that had their day and crumbled to ruin. So it noticeably lacks in originality, necessarily. Its three or four most imposing and impressive events all happened in earlier Bibles; there are only two new things in it: hell, for one, and that singular heaven I have told you about.

I suppose that the sympathetic/unsympathetic debate about characters sometimes feels to me like a misstatement of purpose. I always think of truly complex characters are falling between the cracks in that debate.

The world isn't black and white, Annie, it's shades of grey.

[The devil] al­ways sends er­rors into the world in pairs—pairs of op­posites. And he al­ways en­cour­ages us to spend a lot of time think­ing about which is the worse.... He re­lies on your ex­tra dis­like of the one er­ror to draw you grad­u­ally into the op­po­site one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through be­tween both er­rors. We have no other con­cern than that with ei­ther of them.

The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semihuman, and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, "divine."

I have wrought great use out of evil tools.

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart - and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.

There's how, basically, Son Goku from 'Dragon Ball' doesn't fight for the sake of others but because he wants to fight against strong guys. So once 'Dragon Ball' got animated, at any rate, I've always been dissatisfied with the 'righteous hero'-type portrayal they gave him.

Men are not altogether bad or altogether good.

The diplomat holds all acts honorable which bring him success, all things are righteous which serve his ends. If cheating is necessary, he will cheat; if lying is useful, he will lie; if bribery helps, he will bribe; if murder serves, he will order murder; if burglary, seduction, arson or forgery brings success nearer, all and each of these will be done.

The bad are frequently good enough to let you see how bad they are, but the good as frequently endeavor to get between you and themselves.

I like grey characters; fantasy for too long has been focused on very stereotypical heroes and villains.