The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.
It's better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a terrific cost.
In my view, the most damaging evils that are perpetrated upon us are through some abstract notion about good, where we're willing to sacrifice individuals in the present for some great vision of an improved or perfect future.
Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.
Evil, by definition, is that which endangers the good, and the good is what we perceive as a value.
Much that we call evil is really good in disguises; and we should not quarrel rashly with adversities not yet understood, nor overlook the mercies often bound up in them.
We are coming out of a century that was taught that one way of looking at the world, that one form of behavior, is as valid as another. The idea of true evil has been blown away.
There surely is in human nature an inherent propensity to extract all the good out of all the evil.
Good and evil do not exist for me any more. The fear of evil is merely a mass projection here and on Earth.
To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.