“When healers yearn to kill then hope begins to die … Evil cannot be overcome by evil.”
David Gemmell book Stormrider
Source: Rigante series, Stormrider, Ch. 2
“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”
— Terry Pratchett, book I Shall Wear Midnight
Variant: And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things.
Source: I Shall Wear Midnight
Last update Dec. 24, 2025. History
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Terry Pratchett796
English author 1948–2015Related quotes
Hans Fritzsche (1900–1953) German Nazi official
To Leon Goldensohn, April 6, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004
Context: What I would like to emanate from the darkness of this tragedy is one spark of life. I mean, the realization that crime does not begin when you murder people. Crime begins with propaganda, even if such propaganda is for a good cause. The moment propaganda turns against another nation or against any human being, evil starts. Whereas the Germans started propaganda toward the end of this tragedy, you Allies stand at the beginning of the tragedy.
John Kasich (1952) American politician and former television host
Kasich: U.S. Has To Destroy ISIS on The Ground, "The Longer We Wait, The More Costly It Will Be" http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/12/06/kasich_us_has_to_destroy_isis_on_the_ground_the_longer_we_wait_the_more_costly_it_will_be.html, 6 December 2015 Captain Green is the ruler of the universe.
“Charity and treating begin at home.”
John Fletcher Wit Without Money
Scene 2.
Wit Without Money (c. 1614; published 1639)
“The sooner you treat him as a man, the sooner he will begin to be one”
John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education
Sec. 95
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)
Context: A father would do well, as his son grows up, and is capable of it, to talk familiarly with him; nay, ask his advice, and consult with him about those things wherein he has any knowledge or understanding. By this, the father will gain two things, both of great moment. The sooner you treat him as a man, the sooner he will begin to be one; and if you admit him into serious discourses sometimes with you, you will insensibly raise his mind above the usual amusements of youth, and those trifling occupations which it is commonly wasted in. For it is easy to observe, that many young men continue longer in thought and conversation of school-boys than otherwise they would, because their parents keep them at that distance, and in that low rank, by all their carriage to them.
“When you bring consciousness to anything, things begin to shift.”
Eve Ensler (1953) American playwright, performer, feminist, activist and artist
Rusty Schweickart (1935) American astronaut
Source: Quoted in "The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution" by Frank White
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at actually begin to change.”
John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor
Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn
“The journey of change doesn't begin when you intend, it begins when you move.”
Steve Maraboli (1975)
Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 155