W. H. Auden on good and evil

Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.

Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible, it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.

By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.

Edmund Burke1729–1797

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

Blaise Pascal1623–1662

• Anti-Religion

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.

Albert Einstein1879–1955