Kitab al-Akhlaq wa’l Siyar p: 17
“Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.”
Golden Sayings of Epictetus
Context: I apply to you to come and hear that you are in evil case; that what deserves your attention most is the last thing to gain it; that you know not good from evil, and are in short a hapless wretch; a fine way to apply! though unless the words of the Philosopher affect you thus, speaker and speech are alike dead. (120).
Rome, or Reason? A Reply to Cardinal Manning. Part I. The North American Review (1888)
Context: Among the “some two hundred and fifty-eight” Vicars of Christ there were probably some good men. This would have happened even if the intention had been to get all bad men, for the reason that man reaches perfection neither in good nor in evil; but if they were selected by Christ himself, if they were selected by a church with a divine origin and under divine guidance, then there is no way to account for the selection of a bad one. If one hypocrite was duly elected pope—one murderer, one strangler, one starver—this demonstrates that all the popes were selected by men, and by men only, and that the claim of divine guidance is born of zeal and uttered without knowledge.
“Do not seek evil gains; evil gains are the equivalent of disaster.”
Gain not base gains; base gains are the same as losses.
Source: Works and Days (c. 700 BC), line 352; compare: "the gains of the wicked bring trouble", Book of Proverbs 15:6.
XII. The origin of evil things; and that there is no positive evil.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Source: 1930 - 1941, from 'Arshile Gorky, – Goats on the roof' (2009), p. 170: Gorky's quote in a letter to his future wife Agnes Magruder (Mougouch), 31 Mai 1941
