quotes and sayings on pride, an obstacle to living life fully

There are a thousand hacking at
the branches of evil to one who
is striking at the root.

Henry David Thoreau

I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A person, after they have brushed off the dust and chips of their life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill? John Steinbeck East of Eden

The teaching of the Tao Te Ching is moral in the deepest sense. Unencumbered by any concept of sin, the Master doesn’t see evil as a force to resist, but simply as an opaqueness, a state of self-absorption which is in disharmony with the universal process, so that, as with a dirty window, the light can’t shine through. Stephen Mitchell

The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual - for it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost. M. Scott Peck

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph. Haile Selassie

Evil is unspectacular and always human,
and shares our bed and eats at our own table.

W. H. Auden

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Inside each of us, there is the seed of both good and evil.
It's a constant struggle as to which one will win.
And one cannot exist without the other.

Eric Burdon

The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance,
and good intentions may do as much harm as
malevolence if they lack understanding.

Albert Camus

I define a 'good person' as somebody who is fully conscious
of their own limitations. They know their strengths, but
they also know their 'shadow' - they know their weaknesses.
In other words, they understand that there is no good without
bad. Good and evil are really one, but we have broken them
up in our consciousness. We polarize them.

John Bradshaw

The greatest error of people is to think that they are weak
by nature, evil by nature. Every person is divine and strong
in their real nature. What are weak and evil are their habits,
their desires and thoughts, but not themselves.

Ramana Maharshi

The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who
are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.

Albert Einstein

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people
somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it
were necessary only to separate them from the rest of
us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil
cuts through the heart of every human being. And who
is willing to destroy a piece of their own heart?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

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All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing.

Edmund Burke

Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.

Baltasar Gracian
The Art of Worldly Wisdom

The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.

Ursula K. LeGuin
"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"

Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.

Terry Pratchett
I Shall Wear Midnight

Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.

T.S. Eliot

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

Mahatma Gandhi
The Essential Gandhi

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy,
monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring;
real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.

Simone Weil

It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.

Ursula K. Le Guin
A Wizard of Earthsea

In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no
sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will
rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor
reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old
age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice
from beneath new generations.

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire
to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.

George Eliot
Daniel Deronda

I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply.
I should have learned many things from that experience, but when
I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That
ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried
to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity
demanded, I could become completely self-centred, even cruel. I
was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse,
inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.

Haruki Murakami
South of the Border, West of the Sun

I know there’s evil in the world, and there always has been.
But you don’t need to believe in Satan or demons to explain it.
Human beings are perfectly capable of evil all by themselves.

Tess Gerritsen
The Mephisto Club

What you dislike and cast away as evil is surely liked and picked up
by someone, or something as good. Can one thing be at once two
self-excluding things? Neither is it the one, nor the other, excepting
that your I has made it evil; another I has made it good.

Mikhail Naimy

The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories.

Carl Gustav Jung

The most perplexing form of evil, and especially for all idealists,
is that kind of evil which comes out of our efforts to do good. Perhaps
when we try to do good without love, we create evil.

William Irwin Thompson

Every prudent person tolerates a lesser evil for fear of preventing a greater good.

Thomas Aquinas

People never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when the do it from religious conviction.

Blaise Pascal

The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil
of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse
and turbulent character of the people.

Charles Trevelyan

In times such as these, people should recognize that evil
knows no borders, knows no limits and knows no compassion.
Those around the globe that value freedom must continue
to persevere even in the darkest of times.

Michael C. Burgess

I feel that sin and evil are the negative part of you, and I think
it's like a battery: you've got to have the negative and the
positive in order to be a complete person.

Dolly Parton

The conscience of children is formed by the influences that
surround them; their notions of good and evil are the
result of the moral atmosphere they breathe.

Jean Paul

Tolerating evil leads only to more evil. And when good people
stand by and do nothing while wickedness reigns,
their communities will be consumed.

Bob Riley