“Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.”

“Money is the source of the greatest vice, & that Nation which is most rich, is most wicked.”

“Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."

[]”

“Almost all people have this potential for evil, which would be unleashed only under certain dangerous social circumstances.”

“Don’t criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.”

“Even under the best of circumstances, there's just something so damn tragic about growing up.”

“It is true that God is even in the tiger, but we must not go and face the animal. So it is true that God dwells even in the most wicked, but it is not meet that we should associate with the wicked.”

“Anxiety prepares the organism badly for an ordeal which even under more favorable circumstances would not be an easy thing to bear.”

“Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.”

“Stifter tells us that people are not free, that they are slaves to the laws of Nature. So you have to commit violent deeds (if you don’t have anyone to do other kinds of deeds with), actions that ordinary people would call crimes but which we define as the norm, though of course it is our norm and no that of the rest.”