“He wasn't evil as much as magnificently innocent of any kind of morality.”
Source: Death Masks
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Jim Butcher383
American author 1971Related quotes
“There is a certain kind of morality which is even more alien to good and evil than amorality is.”
Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist
“The responsibility of writers,” p. 169
On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968)
“Julian said the world was evil and horrible - remember? But then he proved himself that it wasn't”
L.J. Smith (1965) American author
Source: The Kill
“Any action that is dictated by fear or by coercion of any kind ceases to be moral.”
Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India
Ethical Religion, S. Ganesan, Madras (1922) p. 8
1920s
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1950s, Loving Your Enemies (November 1957)
Source: The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Context: Another way is to acquiesce and to give in, to resign yourself to the oppression. Some people do that. They discover the difficulties of the wilderness moving into the promised land, and they would rather go back to the despots of Egypt because it’s difficult to get in the promised land. And so they resign themselves to the fate of oppression; they somehow acquiesce to this thing. But that too isn’t the way because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.
Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster
Source: Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938), p. 78
Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist
1960s, "Oral history interview with Donald Judd," 1965
Context: I think most of the art now is involved with a denial of any kind of absolute morality, or general morality. I think most of us in one way or another are involved in ideas of a fairly loose world, however it's expressed, whether obviously as in Chamberlain or just accidentally, or, oh, like Newman.
Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States
"With respect for Her Agony — but with Love" in LIFE magazine (7 February 1964)
Context: It is always and forever the same struggle: to perceive somehow our own complicity with evil is a horror not to be borne. … much more reassuring to see the world in terms of totally innocent victims and totally evil instigators of the monstrous violence we see all about us. At all costs, never disturb our innocence. But what is the most innocent place in any country? Is it not the insane asylum? These people drift through life truly innocent, unable to see into themselves at all. The perfection of innocence, indeed, is madness.
