“It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities.”

—  Chuck Palahniuk , book Damned

Source: Damned

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities." by Chuck Palahniuk?
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Chuck Palahniuk 555
American novelist, essayist 1962

Related quotes

Michael Moorcock photo

“When he was dead I raised myself to my feet and I looked about me. Everything was still. A loneliness had come upon my soul.
There was darkness everywhere now but in the forest. And even here there were wisps of grey, as if evil crept in.
I lifted my head to the sky and I shook my fist. “Oh, I reject you. I reject your Heaven and I reject your Hell. Do as you wish with me, but know that your desires are petty and your ambitions have no meaning!””

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

I addressed no one. I addressed the universe. I addressed a void.

Chapter 15 (p. 154)
The von Bek family, The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981)

Teal Swan photo

“So many adults are just very large children who were never seen and heard and felt and understood and allowed and enabled to be.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher
Erwin Schrödinger photo

“If we were bees, ants, or Lacedaemonian warriors, to whom personal fear does not exist and cowardice is the most shameful thing in the world, warring would go on forever. But luckily we are only men — and cowards.”

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

Mind and Matter (1958)

Paulo Coelho photo

“If Evil exists, it’s to be found in our fears”

Paulo Coelho book Adultery

Source: Adultery

Henry David Thoreau photo

“When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

H.P. Lovecraft photo

“It is good to be a cynic—it is better to be a contented cat — and it is best not to exist at all. Universal suicide is the most logical thing in the world—we reject it only because of our primitive cowardice and childish fear of the dark. If we were sensible we would seek death—the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

"Nietzscheism and Realism" from The Rainbow, Vol. I, No. 1 (October 1921); reprinted in "To Quebec and the Stars", and also in Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 71
Non-Fiction
Source: Collected Essays 5: Philosophy, Autobiography and Miscellany

Markus Zusak photo

“But then, is there cowardice in the acknowledgment of fear? Is there cowardice in being glad that you lived?”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

John Milton photo

“So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear, Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet
Abraham Lincoln photo

“The true rule, in determining to embrace, or reject any thing, is not whether it have any evil in it; but whether it have more of evil, than of good.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Speech in the House of Representatives (20 June 1848)
1840s
Context: The true rule, in determining to embrace, or reject any thing, is not whether it have any evil in it; but whether it have more of evil, than of good. There are few things wholly evil, or wholly good. Almost every thing, especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.

Marianne von Werefkin photo

“I adore my life: it is filled with so much true poetry, fine feelings, things many have no idea about. I despise my life, which, being rich, allowed itself to be crammed into the confines of conventions. Between these two opinions pulsates my soul always longing for beauty and good.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

1895 - 1905
Source: Lettres à un Inconnu, 1902 (Notebook I, p. 234) - Aux sources de l'expressionnisme. Presentation par Gabrielle Dufour-Kowalska. Klincksieck, 1999. p. 101

Related topics