“Mortals might have been contemptible, true, but not evil entirely.”
Source: In the Garden of Iden (1997), Chapter 5 (p. 45)
Context: No nation, creed, or race was any better or worse than another; all were flawed, all were equally doomed to suffering, mostly because they couldn’t see that they were all alike. Mortals might have been contemptible, true, but not evil entirely. They did enjoy killing one another and frequently came up with ingenious excuses for doing so on a large scale—religions, economic theories, ethnic pride—but we couldn’t condemn them for it, as it was in their moral natures and they were too stupid to know any better.
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Kage Baker 79
American writer 1952–2010Related quotes

“The good suffer, the evil flourish, and all that is mortal passes away.”
Source: Against the Day (2006), p. 622

Speech in the House of Representatives (20 June 1848)
1840s
Context: The true rule, in determining to embrace, or reject any thing, is not whether it have any evil in it; but whether it have more of evil, than of good. There are few things wholly evil, or wholly good. Almost every thing, especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.

“The happiest mortals on earth are ladies who have been bereaved by the loss of their husbands.”
Source: A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard (1911), p. 10.

“Oh me, I have been struck a mortal blow right inside.”
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, line 1343