People like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves. When they get blind-drunk, cheat, steal, beat their wives, starve an old woman, when they kill a trapped fox with an axe or riddle the last existing unicorn with arrows, they like to think that the Bane entering cottages at daybreak is more monstrous than they are. They feel better then. They find it easier to live.
Interpretation
People create external 'monsters' to avoid acknowledging their own wrongdoings and shortcomings.
In this quote, Andrzej Sapkowski highlights the human tendency to project evil onto others or external forces rather than confronting our own moral failings. By labeling certain actions or individuals as monstrous, individuals absolve themselves from their own guilt and feel justified in their behavior, allowing for a distorted view of morality where their own actions seem less harmful by comparison.
In practice
This quote could be used to spark a discussion in a philosophy class about ethics and moral relativism.
You've a right to believe that we're governed by Nature and the hidden Force within her. You can think that the gods, including my Melitele, are merely a personification of this power invented for simpletons so they can understand it better, accept its existence. According to you, that power is blind. But for me, Geralt, faith allows you to expect what my goddess personifies from nature: order, law, goodness. And hope.
Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue
It is unacceptable that more than 1 billion people are hungry every day while another billion are obese.
Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend. It can be so, sometimes.
All spiritual practices are illusions created by illusionists to escape illusion.
Laughter is more sacred than prayer, dancing more spiritual than chanting mantras, loving existence more cosmic than going to a church.
The onslaught of new and complex information, the academic and thinktank cults of expertise, not to mention the impossibility of bohemia in the age of high rents, have conspired to assassinate the public intellectual.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.