If men were basically evil, who would bother to improve the world instead of giving it up as a bad job at the outset?

No one is fit to judge a book until he has rounded Cape Horn in a sailing vessel, until he has bumped into two or three icebergs, until he has been lost in the sands of the desert, until he has spent a few years in the House of the Dead.

The man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man.

The creative impulses of man are always at war with the possessive impulses.

Magnanimous people have no vanity, they have no jealousy, and they feed on the true and the solid wherever they find it. And, what is more, they find it everywhere.

If men were basically evil, who would bother to improve the world instead of giving it up as a bad job at the outset?

The American mind, unlike the English, is not formed by books, but, as Carl Sandburg once said to me... by newspapers and the Bible.

People of small caliber are always carping. They are bent on showing their own superiority, their knowledge or prowess or good breeding.

There is no stopping the world's tendency to throw off imposed restraints, the religious authority that is based on the ignorance of the many, the political authority that is based on the knowledge of the few.

Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright.

Nothing is sadder than having worldly standards without worldly means.

It is not that the French are not profound, but they all express themselves so well that we are led to take their geese for swans.

The Boston people were willing to learn but only if one recognized how much they knew already.

How delightful is the company of generous people who overlook trifles and keep their minds instinctively fixed on whatever is good and positive in the world around them.

Boldness and decision command, often even in evil, the respect and concurrence of mankind.

For those whose wit becomes the mother of villainy, those it educates to be evil in all things.

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

Some things must be good in themselves, else there could be no measure whereby to lay out good and evil.

Destroy the seed of evil, or it will grow up to your ruin.

Once to every person and nation come the moment to decide. In the conflict of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.

Into every soul, however purged and fenced, evil appears to have as much freedom of entrance as God Himself.

What I have learned from my work up to now, is to try to be open, but also protect myself by not letting the good and the evil get too much importance.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

The 20th century taught us how far unbridled evil can and will go when the world fails to confront it. It is time that we heed the lessons of the 20th century and stand up to these murderers. It is time that we end genocide in the 21st century.

Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil.

A great book is like great evil.

May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.

Be assured those will be thy worst enemies, not to whom thou hast done evil, but who have done evil to thee. And those will be thy best friends, not to whom thou hast done good, but who have done good to thee.

Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.

Neither gods nor men can foresee when an evil deed will bear its fruit.

Wisdom is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to choose between the two.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

Every Christian will allow that sin is an evil, and that it is our duty not to commit sin.

But other vampire stories? Well, no, I really haven't read too many, and I can't say I'm crazy about romantic vampires anyway - to me the vampire is simply an evil monster.

We all agree that we've got to bring these terrorists to justice and to make sure that they're never allowed to perpetrate such an evil act as they did. And so all of us are dealing with that. We know that the President has the authority to go to war under the War Powers Act.

A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.

Idleness among children, as among men, is the root of all evil, and leads to no other evil more certain than ill temper.

Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil.

However things may seem, no evil thing is success and no good thing is failure.

Art is an attempt to integrate evil.

No evil is honorable: but death is honorable; therefore death is not evil.

The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity.

The lack of money is the root of all evil.

Nobody thinks that they're evil or bad, they think that they're doing the right thing.

Make movies. Don't make videos. Videos are evil.

Krishna children were taught that in the spiritual world there were no parents, only souls and hence this justified their being kept out of view from others, cloistered in separate buildings and sheltered from the evil material world.

Every minute you are thinking of evil, you might have been thinking of good instead. Refuse to pander to a morbid interest in your own misdeeds. Pick yourself up, be sorry, shake yourself, and go on again.

Young people are threatened... by the evil use of advertising techniques that stimulate the natural inclination to avoid hard work by promising the immediate satisfaction of every desire.