“We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found.”

— Tzvetan Todorov

Hope and Memory: Reflections on the Twentieth Century (2003)

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Tzvetan Todorov 9

Bulgarian historian, philosopher, structuralist literary cr… 1939–2017

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“A maxim for the twenty-first century might well be to start not by fighting evil in the name of good, but by attacking the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found. We should struggle not against the devil himself but what allows the devil to live — Manichaean thinking itself.”

Tzvetan Todorov (1939–2017) Bulgarian historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist

paraphrased variant:
We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found.
Source: Hope and Memory: Reflections on the Twentieth Century (2003), Ch. 5 : The Past in the Present, p. 195

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