“If I now recognize evil in other people, is it not because I have become evil too?”

— Amy Tan , The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If I now recognize evil in other people, is it not because I have become evil too?" by Amy Tan?

Amy Tan 89

American novelist 1952

Related quotes

“I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Will and Mary in Ch. 33 : Marzipan
His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000)
Context: "When you stopped believing in God, did you stop believing in good and evil?"
"No. But I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels."

“Well, some people say I'm pessimistic because I recognize the eternal cycle of evil. All I say is, look at the history of mankind right up to this moment and what do you find?”

Wole Soyinka (1934) Nigerian writer

“With life and all I've been through, I do have a belief in goodness, a good spirit. I think what people have done with religion is personified good and evil, so good's become God with 'o' out, and evil's become Devil with a 'd' added. That's my theory of religion.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

The Beatles Anthology (2000)

“I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

“Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating, and now I have a taste for it.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

2000s, Thus Spake Stallman (2000)
Context: If in my lifetime the problem of non-free software is solved, I could perhaps relax and write software again. But I might instead try to help deal with the world's larger problems. Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating, and now I have a taste for it.

“When Adam and Eve realize they're naked is that same moment they realize the difference between good and evil. What's the relationship between consciousness, knowledge of nakedness, and knowledge of good and evil? When you know that you're vulnerable, and they also developed a knowledge of death so there's deep knowledge of vulnerability, and they get embarrassed about that and they cover themselves up. So that's culture. So it's a very profound shock when they come to recognize that they're naked. It even causes Adam to run and hide from God. Then they develop the knowledge of good and evil. This is about how human beings have this peculiar capacity that no other creatures have. I know how I can be hurt, because I am aware of my own limitations – painfully aware. And now, because I know how I can be hurt, I know how you can be hurt. And I can take advantage of that. And that's how evil enters the world. It gives people another attribute of divinity, knowing the difference between good and evil. The cosmos switches when that self-consciousness manifests itself, and that's when the possibility of evil enters the world.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

“I am justified. For I chose wisdom and the knowledge of good and evil; and now there is no evil; and wisdom and good are one. It is enough.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

The Serpent, in Pt. V
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

“If I must recompense your evil, I must recompense it with good, for I am and have no other.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IV : The Essence of Catholicism
Context: And yet Catholicism does not abandon ethics. No! No modern religion can leave ethics on one side. But our religion — although its doctors may protest against this — is fundamentally and for the most part a compromise between eschatology and ethics; it is eschatology pressed into the service of ethics. What else but this is that atrocity of the eternal pains of hell, which agrees so ill with the Pauline apocatastasis? Let us bear in mind these words which the Theologica Germanica, the manual of mysticism that Luther read, puts into the mouth of God: "If I must recompense your evil, I must recompense it with good, for I am and have no other." And Christ said: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," and there is no man who perhaps knows what he does.

“The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated. …The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.”

Sir Charles Trevelyan, 1st Baronet (1807–1886) colonial administrator and historian

Charles Trevelyan, head of administration for famine relief during the Great Irish famine In: McCourt, John (19 March 2015). "Writing the Frontier: Anthony Trollope between Britain and Ireland". OUP Oxford.

“It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Attributed but thus far unverified

“If I now recognize evil in other people, is it not because I have become evil too?”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Amy Tan 89

Related quotes

Related topics