“The most evil creatures don’t desire the destruction of everything—they only desire to exploit it for themselves.”

—  Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 10.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The most evil creatures don’t desire the destruction of everything—they only desire to exploit it for themselves." by Orson Scott Card?
Orson Scott Card photo
Orson Scott Card586
American science fiction novelist 1951

Related quotes

“Sometimes I believe that evil is everything, and that good is only a beautiful desire for evil.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

A veces creo el mal es todo y que el bien es sólo un bello deseo del mal.
Voces (1943)

Christine O'Donnell photo

“Psychics exploit the human being's natural desire that longs for something higher than themselves.”

Christine O'Donnell (1969) American Tea Party politician and former Republican Party candidate

TV appearances

J. Howard Moore photo

“All conscious beings are struggling, struggling to keep themselves in joint with their environment. Those things and creatures and events that aid them in their struggles are desirable and they call them good, and those things and creatures and events that oppose and defeat the satisfaction of desires are called bad.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Right and wrong exist as conceptions of mind, because there are portions of the universe capable of happiness and misery. Erase sentiency from the universe and you erase the possibility of ethics. Every conscious portion of the universe, therefore, has ethical relations to every other conscious portion (man, woman, worm, Eskimo, oyster, ox), but not to inanimate portions (clod, cabbage, river, rose), because the ones are sentient and the others are not.
Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Problem, pp. 81–82

William Cobbett photo

“Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honoured by the name of “speculation”; but which ought to be called Gambling.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Letter 2.
Advice to Young Men (1829)

Alfred Horsley Hinton photo

“The desire to see for the sake of seeing is with most people the only desire to be gratified; hence the delight in detail.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Methods - The practical application of means to end, p. 27

Michael Ondaatje photo

“Don’t we forgive everything of a lover? We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we are the motive for it.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“It’s hard to feel desire when you don’t feel desirable”

Christine Feehan American writer

Source: Safe Harbor

Anthony Trollope photo

“Things to be done offer themselves, I suppose, because they are in themselves desirable; not because it is desirable to have something to do.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 20

Paul of Tarsus photo

“For the desire of money is the root of all evils; which some coveting have erred from the faith, and have entangled themselves in many sorrows.”

Paul of Tarsus book First Epistle to Timothy

1 Timothy 6:10 (as quoted in Catholic Bible Douay-Rehims http://www.biblebible.com/text-bible/Catholic-Bible/1_timothy_6.asp) <br class="br">First Epistle to Timothy

Related topics