Tzvetan Todorov: Goodness

Tzvetan Todorov was Bulgarian historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist. Explore interesting quotes on goodness.
Tzvetan Todorov: 18   quotes 0   likes

“People who believe themselves to be the incarnation of good have a distorted view of the world.”

Tzvetan Todorov

Hope and Memory: Reflections on the Twentieth Century (2003)

People , World

“We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found.”

Tzvetan Todorov

Hope and Memory: Reflections on the Twentieth Century (2003)

People , Evil , Fight

“A maxim for the twenty-first century might well be to start not by fighting evil in the name of good, but by attacking the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found. We should struggle not against the devil himself but what allows the devil to live — Manichaean thinking itself.”

Tzvetan Todorov

paraphrased variant:
We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found.
Source: Hope and Memory: Reflections on the Twentieth Century (2003), Ch. 5 : The Past in the Present, p. 195

Fight , Thinking , People , Evil

“Pride is not a wise counselor. People who believe themselves to be the incarnation of good have a distorted view of the world. The absence of any obstacle to the deployment of strength is dangerous for the strong themselves: passion takes precedence over reason. "No power without limit can be legitimate," as Montesquieu wrote long ago. Political wisdom does not consist in seeking only immediate victory, nor does it require systematic preference of "us" over "them."”

Tzvetan Todorov

Preface to the English edition (October 2002), p. xxi
Hope and Memory: Reflections on the Twentieth Century (2003)

Strong , Victory , People , World