For John le Carre, it was always who's betraying who: the hall-of-mirrors kind of thing. When you go back to the '30s, it's a case of good vs. evil, and no kidding. When I have a hero who believes France and Britain are on the right side, a reader is not going to question that.
I will begin with this confession: whatever I have done in the course of my life, whether it be good or evil, has been done freely; I am a free agent.
Religious ideas about good and evil tend to focus on how to achieve well-being in the next life, and this makes them terrible guides to securing it in this one. Of course, there are a few gems to be found in every religious tradition, but insofar as these precepts are wise and useful they are not, in principle, religious.
Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.
It will never do to plead sin as an excuse for sin, or to attempt to justify sinful acts by pleading that we have an evil heart. This instead of being a valid apology, is the very ground of our condemnation.
My evil genius Procrastination has whispered me to tarry 'til a more convenient season.
I think that money is the root of all evil. I've seen it happen.
You and I are, by birth, by nature, and by choice, inwardly depraved, which is to say that we are entirely corrupt. That's not to say that we have no good in us; we do. However, anything good in us has been tainted with evil. It touches everything. Without the redeeming power of Christ we cannot halt our own moral slide.
Scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.
As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends.
In revolt against this new and very evil thing came the republicanism of the eighteenth century, inspired and directed in large measure by members of the fast perishing aristocracy of race, character and tradition.
The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good.
I've often said in the past that I thought MTV was sort of evil incarnate and signified the beginning of the end. And I don't know if I'm entirely wrong about that, but they did sign my paychecks a year ago, so I guess I'm part of the problem.
I read a lot on the subject and had many conversations, and I have come to the conclusion that the Catholic Church is a force for evil.
Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.
Once to every person and nation come the moment to decide. In the conflict of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.
How far the existence of the Academy has influenced French literature, either for good or for evil, is an extremely dubious question.
This part of Brazil offered the curious spectacle of a great evil, which has been long suffered to exist and is now advancing, gradually yet surely, to that state which must entail inevitable destruction on the existing Government of the country.
Evil is whatever distracts.
I am not a pessimist; to perceive evil where it exists is, in my opinion, a form of optimism.
I lift my voice of warning against praising or flattering your ministers. I have seen the evil, the dreadful evil, of praising ministers. Never, never speak a word in the praise of ministers to their faces. Exalt God.
The humblest individual exerts some influence, either for good or evil, upon others.
The world is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil.
The great and important duty which is incumbent on Christians, is to guard against all appearance of evil; to watch against the first risings in the heart to evil; and to have a guard upon our actions, that they may not be sinful, or so much as seem to be so.
Being the ideal of a strong woman means utilizing all the things that God gives you. People are always saying to me, 'You're a strong female, so why are you wearing a bikini on the cover of that magazine?' Being a strong woman is misconstrued to be something evil and ugly.
It's better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a terrific cost.
'Evil men have no songs.' How is it that the Russians have songs?
No one who is in this world will deny that evils exist. What, then, do we say? That evil is not a living and animated substance, but a condition of the soul which is opposed to virtue and which springs up In the slothful because of their falling away from good.
In every man sleeps a prophet, and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world.
The real evil of the Russian communist state is not communism. It is the secret police and the concentration camp.
All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.
The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing.
We've seen violent responses to 'Satanic Verses.' We've seen violent responses to the cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in an evil way.
The modern view of criminal justice, broadly, is that public concern with morality or expediency decrees expiation for the violation of a norm; this concern finds expression in the infliction of punishment on the evil doer by agents of the state, the evil doer, however, enjoying the protection of a regular procedure.
Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.
Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.
