Cette pensée de Blaise Pascal évoque d'autres citations d'autres auteurs, notamment:
Michel de Montaigne: "I have never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself."
Nicolas Machiavel: "Les hommes ne savent être ni entièrement bon, ni entièrement mauvais."
Jacques Attali: "Le monde ne sera jamais qu'un mélange contradictoire de Bien et de Mal, et il ne ressemblera jamais à quelque société idéale que ce soit."
Blaise Pascal: "There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous."
"Evil to some is always good to others." (Jane Austen)
"Evil and good are God's right hand and left." (Horace Mann)
"Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil." (Anatole France)
"There is some good in the worst of us, and some evil in the best of us." (Martin Luther King)
"For nothing is evil in the beginning." (J. R. R. Tolkien) ...
Autres citations sur le bien et le mal (good and evil, en anglais), en commençant par des auteurs antiques:
"And empty words are evil." (Homer)
"Il n'y a qu'un seul bien, la connaissance, et un seul mal, l'ignorance." / "The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance." (Socrate/s)
"The end excuses any evil." / "Evil counsel travels fast." / "Evil gains work their punishment." (Sophocles)
"For good is simple, evil manifold." / "Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil." / "Evil brings men together." / "Evil draws men together." (Aristotle)
"Evil companions bring more hurt than profit." (Aesop)
"An evil plan does mischief to the planner." (Hesiod)
"Evil is nourished and grows by concealment." (Virgil)
"Only religion can lead to such evil." (Lucretius)
"The greatest evil is physical pain." (Saint Augustine)
"If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it." (Epictetus)
"Il n'y a que deux maux bien réels dans le monde: le remords et la maladie." (Joseph de Maistre)
"All governments are in equal measure good and evil. The best ideal is anarchy." (Leo Tolstoy)
"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness." (Joseph Conrad)
"Evil is, good or truth misplaced." / "I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent." (Mahatma Gandhi)
"Discordance is evil. Harmony is virtue." / "False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil." / "To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less." (Plato)
"Active Evil is better than Passive Good." (William Blake)
"Evil prevails when good men fail to act." / "Evil succeeds when good men do nothing." / "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." (Edmund Burke) / "Evil triumphs when good men do nothing." (Thomas Jefferson)
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." / "Evil is easy, and has infinite forms." (Blaise Pascal)
"Evil is a necessary part of the order of the universe." (W. Somerset Maugham)
"By swallowing evil words unsaid, no one has ever harmed his stomach." (Winston Churchill)
"Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." (Thomas Paine)
"Il y en a mille qui entaillent les branches du mal pour un qui frappe à la racine." / "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." (Henry David Thoreau)
"Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil." / "It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope." (Niccolo Machiavelli)
"An evil discovered is half healed." (Jane Frances de Chantal)
"Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil." (Robert A. Heinlein)
"What is evil?-Whatever springs from weakness." (Friedrich Nietzsche)
"Evil comes up softly like a flower." / "We are all born marked for evil." (Charles Baudelaire)
"To fight evil is to fight ourselves." (Octavio Paz)
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La vie selon les anciens est citée ici:
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/wawa/blog/040521/la-vie-selon-les-anciens
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L'ange et la bête (ou le diable, devil en anglais) sont cités ici:
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/wawa/blog/081021/les-animaux-sont-les-anges-de-cette-terre
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