QuoteProject
When good people in any country cease their vigilance and struggle, then evil men prevail.
Pearl S. Buck
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote highlights the importance of active participation in safeguarding moral values and standing against evil.

Pearl S. Buck's quote emphasizes that the passivity of virtuous individuals allows malevolent forces to take control. It serves as a reminder that continuous vigilance and effort are necessary to uphold justice and goodness in society, as complacency can lead to the triumph of evil.

Themes

VigilanceGoodnessEvilStruggleSociety

In practice

Example use cases

During a community meeting discussing the importance of participating in local governance.

More from Pearl S. Buck

Now, five years is nothing in a man's life except when he is very young and very old... - Wang Lung
Pearl S. BuckRead
You are free when you gain back yourself,” Madame Wu said. β€œYou can be as free within these walls as you could be in the whole world. And how could you be free if, however far you wander, you still carry inside yourself the constant thought of him? See where you belong in the stream of life. Let it flow through you, cool and strong. Do not dam it with your two hands, lest he break the dam and so escape you. Let him go free, and you will be free.
Pearl S. BuckRead
We should so provide for old age that it may have no urgent wants of this world to absorb it from meditation on the next. It is awful to see the lean hands of dotage making a coffer of the grave.
Pearl S. BuckRead
To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
Pearl S. BuckRead
The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people - no mere father and mother - as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born.
Pearl S. BuckRead
Let woman out of the home, let man into it, should be the aim of education. The home needs man, and the world outside needs woman.
Pearl S. BuckRead

Similar quotes

Working out is my way of saying to cancer, 'You're trying to invade my body; you're trying to take me away from my daughters, but I'm stronger than you. And I'm going to hit harder than you.'
Stuart ScottRead
A further sign of health is that we don't become undone by fear and trembling, but we take it as a message that it's time to stop struggling and look directly at what's threatening us.
Pema ChodronRead
I will take the Ring", he said, "though I do not know the way.
J. R. R. TolkienRead
If I die a violent death, as some fear and a few are plotting, I know that the violence will be in the thought and the action of the assassins, not in my dying.
Indira GandhiRead
As you move outside of your comfort zone, what was once the unknown and frightening becomes your new normal.
Robin S. SharmaRead
I will go back to my life when women in captivity go back to their lives, when my community has a place, when I see people accountable for their crimes.
Nadia MuradRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.