“The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher
“The soul must accept guilt in order to destroy existing evil, lest it incur the greater guilt of idyllic withdrawal, of seeming to be good by putting up with wrong.”
Aber es steht doch in der Regel so, daß die Seele schuldig werden muß, um das schlecht Bestehende zu vernichten, um nicht durch idyllischen Rückzug, scheingute Duldung des Unrechts noch schuldiger zu werden.
Source: Man on His Own: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion (1959), p. 36
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Ernst Bloch16
German philosopher 1885–1977Related quotes
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
As translated in The Portable Nietzsche (1954) by Walter Kaufmann, p. 96
Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer
XII. The origin of evil things; and that there is no positive evil.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: If evil exists it must exist either in Gods or minds or souls or bodies. It does not exist in any God, for all god is good. If anyone speaks of a "bad mind" he means a mind without mind. If of a bad soul, he will make the soul inferior to body, for no body in itself is evil. If he says that evil is made up of soul and body together, it is absurd that separately they should not be evil, but joined should create evil.
Walter Benjamin book Capitalism as Religion
Der Kapitalismus ist vermutlich der erste Fall eines nicht entsühnenden, sondern verschuldenden Kultus. ... Ein ungeheures Schuldbewußtsein das sich nicht zu entsühnen weiß, greift zum Kultus, um in ihm diese Schuld nicht zu sühnen, sondern universal zu machen, dem Bewußtsein sie einzuhämmern und endlich und vor allem den Gott selbst in diese Schuld einzubegreifen.
Translated by Chad Kautzer in The Frankfurt School on Religion: Key Writings by the Major Thinkers (2005), p. 259
Capitalism as Religion (1921)
Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist
You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)
Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist
You didn’t do it? Then you should have stopped them from doing it. You never heard of it? Ignorant as well as evil, eh? You weren’t born? You’re guilty, I tell you—guilty.
“Freud to Paul: The Stages of Auden’s Ideology”, p. 169
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)
Elin Hilderbrand (1969) American writer
Source: A Summer Affair
“The immortal gods are wont to allow those persons whom they wish to punish for their guilt sometimes a greater prosperity and longer impunity, in order that they may suffer the more severely from a reverse of circumstances.”
Consuesse enim deos immortales, quo gravius homines ex commutatione rerum doleant, quos pro scelere eorum ulcisci velint, his secundiores interdum res et diuturniorem impunitatem concedere.
Julius Caesar book Commentarii de Bello Gallico
Book I, Ch. 14, translated by W. A. McDevitte and W. S. Bohn
De Bello Gallico
Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist
As quoted in Margaret Mead : Some Personal Views (1979) edited by Rhoda Métraux
As quoted in American Quotations (1992) by Gorton Carruth and Eugene H. Ehrlich
1970s
Variant: At times it may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.