Joseph Brodsky on good and evil

Life⁠—the way it really is⁠—is a battle not between bad and good but between bad and worse.

It is better to be a total failure in democracy than a martyr or the crème de la crème in tyranny.

It is the army that finally makes a citizen of you; without it you still have a chance, however slim, to remain a human being.

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