What Is Evil?/Quotes

I can do no wrong, for I do not know what it is.

—Satan, The Adventures of Mark Twain

The most dubious thing about moral relativism is that it's never promoted by anyone you'd actually want to be around- it's always the guy eating a baby who claims that good and evil depend on your cultural baggage.

—Pooka, Spacebattles.com

"Son, labels like 'Good' and 'Evil' are just words. Words with many possible capitalizations. They are outdated concepts that do nothing but cause conflict. What I'm trying to do here is move beyond those ideas into a world where no one has any reason to fight one another. But you can't make an omelette without ruthlessly crushing dozens of eggs beneath your steel boot and then publicly disemboweling the chickens that laid them as a warning to others."

—Elan's Father, continuing his speech from the page illustration.

Kouji: My answer? It is still the same. I am not going to take part in your criminal plans.

Baron Ashura: Criminal plans...? But what...? How I can make you understand? Get this through your head! Why distinguish between good and evil? Who decided that? Humans! They established that! Because they are weak! They are not even capable to protect themselves! Those cowards spend the whole time chattering... about peace and justice! But the real world is very different! Since prehistoric times, the weak and unfit has succumbed to the will of the strong, and the strong has survived! What is good or evil about that? The unfit are defeated! It is so simple! Might makes right! If you are not strong, you do not survive! That is the only rule in this planet!

—Mazinger Z, one of the manga chapters penned by Gosaku Ota.

Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining “It’s not fair” before you can say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties don’t matter; but then, next minute, they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty that they want to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter, and there is no such thing as Right and Wrong — in other words, if there is no Law of Nature — what is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that, whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature just like everyone else?
It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table.

—C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity