Topical Guide 489
Mark Dorset
Evil
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 4:
“The full text is: ‘What makes Arab terrorists supply drugs to word processors in the State House? Nobody deliberately chooses to do an evil thing.’”
Diderot, in a letter to Landois published in Grimm’s La Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique, July 1, 1756:
Do not forget that a bad action never goes unpunished. I say never, because the first bad deed we commit disposes us toward a second, and that second towards a third and thus we advance towards the scorn of our fellow-humans, which is the greatest of all evils and pains. . . . The crease is taken. The cloth will keep it forever.
Diderot, Encyclopedia, (prospectus or defense, translated by Jacques Barzun and Ralph H. Bowen):
I have no wish to see evil deeds preserved; it would be better if they had never taken place. Men have no need of bad examples, nor has human nature any need of being further cried down. It should not be necessary to make any mention of discreditable actions except when these have been followed—not by the loss of the evildoer’s life and worldly goods, which is all too often the sad consequence of virtuous behavior—but by a more fitting punishment of the wicked man: I want him to be wretched and despised as he contemplates the splendid rewards he has gained by his crimes.
See also:
Good Works, Noble Efforts TG 445
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