
“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.”
A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
Variant: No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.”
A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
Source: Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938), p. 78
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), X : Religion, the Mythology of the Beyond and the Apocatastasis
The Measures of Man (1959)
1950s
“Welt muss mehr denn je diese Botschaft hören,” Giessener Allgemeine Zeitung, Giessen, Germany, April 12, 2005.
Attributed
“He said that there was one only good, namely, knowledge; and one only evil, namely, ignorance.”
Socrates, 14.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 2: Socrates, his predecessors and followers