Variant: A man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good.
Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 15; translated by W. K. Marriot
“Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.”
—
James Baldwin
,
book
The Fire Next Time
Source: The Fire Next Time
Last update June 3, 2021.
History
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James Baldwin 163
(1924-1987) writer from the United States 1924–1987Related quotes
“It has always been easy to hate and destroy. To build and to cherish is much more difficult.”
Isabel II do Reino Unido
(1926–2022) queen of the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and head of the Commonwealth of Nations
1957 Christmas Broadcast; quoted on royal website http://www.royal.gov.uk/imagesandbroadcasts/thequeenschristmasbroadcasts/christmasbroadcasts/christmasbroadcast1957.aspx (25 December 1957)
Martin Luther King, Jr.
(1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)
Context: Another reason why we must love our enemies is that hate scars the soul and distorts the personality. Mindful that hate is an evil and dangerous force, we too often think of what it does to the person hated. This is understandable, for hate bring irreparable damage to its victims. We have seen its ugly consequences in the ignominious deaths brought to six million Jews by a hate-obsessed madman named Hitler, in the unspeakable violence inflicted upon Negroes by blood-thirsty mobs, in the dark horrors of war, and in the terrible indignities and injustices perpetrated against millions of God's children by unconscionable oppressors.
But there is another side which we must never overlook. Hate is just as injurious to the person who hates. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
“That whom he could not by the sword destroy, he might supplant by the law.”
Sir Henry Hobart, 1st Baronet
(1554–1625) English politician
Lord Hobart's Rep. 335.
Sheffield v. Ratcliffe (1615)
Ethan Allen
(1738–1789) American general
Source: Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784), Ch. IV Section II - Containing a Disquisition of the Law of Nature, as it respects the Moral System, interspersed with Observations on Subsequent Religions.
Ture Nerman
(1886–1969) Swedish socialist
Socialist newspaper Folkets Dagblad - Politiken (24 April 1918)
Sourced quotes
Martin Luther King, Jr.
(1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1950s, Loving Your Enemies (November 1957)
Variant: Hate destroys the very structure of the personality of the hater.
Context: There’s another reason why you should love your enemies, and that is because hate distorts the personality of the hater. We usually think of what hate does for the individual hated or the individuals hated or the groups hated. But it is even more tragic, it is even more ruinous and injurious to the individual who hates. You just begin hating somebody, and you will begin to do irrational things. You can’t see straight when you hate. You can’t walk straight when you hate. You can’t stand upright. Your vision is distorted. There is nothing more tragic than to see an individual whose heart is filled with hate. He comes to the point that he becomes a pathological case. For the person who hates, you can stand up and see a person and that person can be beautiful, and you will call them ugly. For the person who hates, the beautiful becomes ugly and the ugly becomes beautiful. For the person who hates, the good becomes bad and the bad becomes good. For the person who hates, the true becomes false and the false becomes true. That’s what hate does. You can’t see right. The symbol of objectivity is lost. Hate destroys the very structure of the personality of the hater. [... ] when you start hating anybody, it destroys the very center of your creative response to life and the universe; so love everybody. Hate at any point is a cancer that gnaws away at the very vital center of your life and your existence. It is like eroding acid that eats away the best and the objective center of your life. So Jesus says love, because hate destroys the hater as well as the hated.
