I don't believe in devils. Indifference and misunderstandings can create evil situations. Most of the time, people who appear to be evil are really victims of evil deeds.
Interpretation
Evil often arises from indifference and misunderstanding, rather than from a malicious intent.
In this quote, Max Von Sydow suggests that the concept of evil is often misunderstood; rather than being inherent in individuals, it frequently stems from societal indifference and a lack of understanding. People's actions may appear evil, but they can often be victims of unfortunate circumstances themselves, highlighting the importance of empathy and deeper awareness in human interactions.
In practice
During a lecture on ethics, this quote can be used to illustrate the complex nature of human behavior.
Film acting, if you don't play the lead, you come, and you do your scenes in a few days, and you act with a couple of colleagues. All the rest of the actors you never see, and you don't even meet many of them. And you don't know what will happen with what you've done. Maybe it will be in the film, maybe it will not.
What is important, I think, is to reach as many people as you can and do it as well as you can. Reach them and inspire them or amuse them, or maybe in some odd moments help them to discover something they hadn't thought of before.
The more I had to act like a saint, the more I felt like being a sinner.
It's not a matter of learning lines. It's a matter of getting into the ideas and the will of the person. It's a matter of, 'What does he want to do? What does he want to achieve?'
I think that a young state, like a young virgin, should modestly stay at home, and wait the application of suitors for an alliance with her; and not run about offering her amity to all the world; and hazarding their refusal. Our virgin is a jolly one; and tho at present not very rich, will in time be a great fortune, and where she has a favorable predisposition, it seems to me well worth cultivating.
Winning gives birth to hostility Losing, one lies down in pain. The calmed lie down with ease, having set winning and losing aside.
The governments alone are responsible for the spread of the superstitious awe with which the common man looks upon every bit of paper upon which the treasury or agencies which it controls have printed the magical words legal tender.
The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the 'disenchantment of the world.' Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations. It is not accidental that our greatest art is intimate and not monumental.
Would that death were like this. Would that one would sleep and sleep and sleep forever.
Existentialism isn't so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn't exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.