In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers . . . we are ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.
Interpretation
Ignoring evil allows it to grow and undermine justice for future generations.
This quote highlights the dangers of remaining silent in the face of evil. When we suppress our awareness of wrongdoing and fail to hold evildoers accountable, we not only permit those actions to persist, but we also lay the groundwork for even greater injustices in the future. The message is a call to recognize and confront immorality and injustice to protect the integrity of society for future generations.
In practice
During a community meeting discussing local crime, this quote could be used to emphasize the importance of addressing wrongdoing openly.
At what point, then, should one resist? When one's belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner? When one crosses the threshold of one's home? An arrest consists of a series of incidental irrelevancies, of a multitude of things that do not matter, and there seems no point in arguing about one of them individually...and yet all these incidental irrelevancies taken together implacably constitute the arrest.
To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good... Ideology - that is what gives devildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.
Today when we say the West we are already referring to the West and to Russia. We could use the word 'modernity' if we exclude Africa, and the Islamic world, and partially China.
To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots.
Like a bicycle, like a wheel that, once rolling, is stable only so long as it keeps moving but falls when its momentum stops, so the game between a man and woman, once begun, can exist only so long as it progresses. If the forward movement today is no more than it was yesterday, the game is over.
It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.
So much of the news was invented for propaganda.
The Old Testament God is a person with body parts and passions. The Church of England God has neither body, parts nor passions, and is therefore not a person.
Nationalism: One of the effective ways in which the modern man escapes life's ethical problems.
If western culture is shown to be rich it is because, even before the Enlightenment, it has tried to "dissolve" harmful simplifications through inquiry and the critical mind.
The future is like heaven-everyone exalts it but no one wants to go there now.
Memory is a strange Bell—Jubilee, and Knell.
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