The real unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, without anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present - they are real.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the moral bankruptcy of those who commit harm without passion or emotion, highlighting the dangers of dispassionate decision-making.
Lois McMaster Bujold's quote emphasizes the contrast between the imagined justifications for harm caused in the future and the tangible consequences of wrongful acts committed in the present. It critiques those who, in positions of power, make calculated decisions that lead to widespread suffering without emotional engagement, asserting that the true evil lies in their cold detachment rather than any supposed noble intentions. Through this lens, the quote challenges us to recognize the reality of our actions and the importance of accountability in the present moment.
In practice
This quote can be shared in a discussion about ethical decision-making in politics.
Any communitys arm of force - military, police, security - needs people in it who can do necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it. To do only the necessary and no more. To constantly question the assumptions, to stop the slide into atrocity.
Adulthood isn't an award they'll give you for being a good child. You can waste years, trying to get someone to give that respect to you, as though it were a sort of promotion or raise in pay. If only you do enough, if only you are good enough. No. You have to just take it. Give it to yourself, I suppose. Say, I'm sorry you feel like that and walk away. But that's hard
Never underestimate the human capacity for wishful thinking and willful blindness,' said Miles. Such as a whole society of people who became so wrapped up in avoiding death, they forgot to be alive?
Any man can be kind when he is comfortable. I'd always thought kindness a trivial virtue, therefore. But when we were hungry, thirsty, sick, frightened, with our deaths shouting at us, in the heart of horror, you were still as unfailingly courteous as a gentleman at ease before his own hearth.
It was never what I wanted to buy that held my heart's hope. It was what I wanted to be.
His outflung hands traced over the threads of his rug, passed loop by loop through some patient woman's hands. Or maybe she hadn't been patient. Maybe she'd been tired, or irritated, or distracted, or hungry, or angry. Maybe she had been dying. But her hands had kept moving, all the same.
We're all water from different rivers, That's why it's so easy to meet, We're all water in this vast, vast ocean, Someday we'll evaporate together.
The unrealistic nature of these tales (which narrowminded rationalists object to) is an important device, because it makes obvious that the fairy tales’ concern is not useful information about the external world, but the inner process taking place in an individual.
When men, engaged in unjustifiable pursuits, are aware that obstructions may come from a quarter which bare apprehension of opposition from doing what they would with eagerness rush into if no such external impediments were to be feared.
What is the basic, the essential, the crucial principle that differentiates freedom from slavery? It is the principle of voluntary action versus physical coercion or compulsion.
...it is proper that the duty of helping the poor and unfortunate should especially stir Catholics, since they are members of the Mystical Body of Christ. In this we have come to know the love of God, said John the Apostle, that He laid down His life for us, and we likewise ought to lay down our life for the brethren. He who has the goods of this world and sees his brother in need and closes his heart to him, how does the love of God abide in him? (1Jn 3:16 17)
I know that I have lived because I have felt, and, feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence.
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