“Let us face squarely the paradox that the world which goes to war is a world, usually, genuinely desiring peace. War is the outcome, not mainly of evil intentions, but on the whole, of good intentions which miscarry or are frustrated. It is made, not usually by evil men knowing themselves to be wrong, but is the outcome of policies pursued by good men usually passionately convinced that they are right.”
Peace and the Public Mind (1935)
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Norman Angell 44
British politician 1872–1967Related quotes
“Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.”
“It is the usual though inequitable method of the world, to pronounce an action to be either right or wrong, as it is attended with good or ill success.”
Est omnino iniquum, sed usu receptum, quod honesta consilia vel turpia, prout male aut prospere cedunt, ita vel probantur vel reprehenduntur.
Letter 9, 7.
Letters, Book V
“Of war men ask the outcome, not the cause.”
quaeritur belli exitus, non causa.
Hercules Furens (The Madness of Hercules), line 407; (Lycus).
Tragedies
Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)
Peace and the Public Mind (1935)
Context: The force which makes for war does not derive its strength from the interested motives of evil men; it derives its strength from the disinterested motives of good men. Pacifists have sometimes evaded that truth as making too great a concession to Mars, as seeming to imply (which it does not in fact) that in order to abolish war, men must cease to be noble.
Base motives are, of course, among those which make up the forces that produce war. Base motives are among those which get great cathedrals built and hospitals constructed-contractors' profit-seeking, the vested interests of doctors and clergy. But Europe has not been covered by cathedrals because contractors wanted to make money, or priests wanted jobs.
The Plague (1947)
Context: The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.
Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 149
Case of John Lambert and others (1793), 22 How. St. Tr. 1018.
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.11