“Poison cures in certain contingencies, and in those cases poison is not an evil thing.”
Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac (1597–1654) French author, best known for his epistolary essays
Le venin guerit en quelque rencontre, et, ce cas-là, le venin n'est pas mauvais.
Aristippe, ou De la cour (1658), Discours VI.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 139.
Mai Văn Phấn (1955) Vietnamese poet
Vẻ đẹp và quyền năng của thơ ca (tiểu luận) - Mai Văn Phấn http://maivanphan.vn/MaiVanPhan/32/398/785/1135/Tieu-luan-tho/Ve-dep-va-quyen-nang-cua-tho-ca--tieu-luan----Mai-Van-Phan.aspx
John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer
Time and Individuality (1940)
“The prevalence of evil is the darkest and most frightening mystery of the universe.”
Morris West (1916–1999) Australian writer
Cardinal Luca Rossini in Ch. 8
Eminence (1998)
Robert M. Sapolsky (1957) American endocrinologist
Emperor Has No Clothes Award acceptance speech (2003)
Context: The purpose of science in understanding who we are as humans is not to rob us of our sense of mystery, not to cure us of our sense of mystery. The purpose of science is to constantly reinvent and reinvigorate that mystery. To always use it in a context where we are helping people in trying to resist the forces of ideology that we are all familiar with.
“Those who understand evil pardon it.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright
#167
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)
