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.
Science cannot destroy the consciousness of freedom, without which there is no morality and no art, but it can refute it.
Racism is a disease in society. We're all equal. I don't care what their colour is, or religion. Just as long as they're human beings they're my buddies.
God's law is our pleasure when the God of the law is our God.
Christianity is NOT a religion; it is the proclamation of the end of religion. Religion is a human activity dedicated to the job of reconciling God to humanity and humanity to itself. The Gospel, however - the Good News of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is the astonishing announcement that God has done the whole work of reconciliation without a scrap of human assistance. It is the bizarre proclamation that religion is over - period.
We have become indifferent to content, and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself.
The Soviet system of propaganda and censorship existed not so much for the purpose of spreading a particular message as for the purpose of making learning impossible, replacing facts with mush, and handing the faceless state a monopoly on defining an ever-shifting reality.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.