Great Quotes Regarding the Battle Between Good and Evil

I could go on forever about how there really is no such thing as good and evil, quoting Nietzsche and Shakespeare, and talk about how every moment of every day has the potential to shift the balance toward less suffering and more empathy, and blather on about how heroes might motivate you but will always let you down, but instead I’ll leave you with these, my favorites quotes from people who were interested in making the world a better place, even if they couldn’t make themselves better people.

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
— Stephen Hawking

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.

“Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.”
— Adam Smith

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.”
— Yoda, The Phantom Menace

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid.”
— Bertrand Russell

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”
— Elie Wiesel

“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others.”
— Pema Chödrön

“Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.”
— Louis Pasteur

“For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.”
— Benjamin Franklin

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”
— Richard Feynman

“I’m convinced that only the highest degree of creativity, combined with empathy, can make quick work of fighting back the forces fear, hatred, and ignorance. Anything else requires years of patience and constant vigilance. A complete utopia was never in the cards for human race, even if they could agree on what that would look like.”
— Anonymous

“The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages may be preserved in quotations, but they are no substitute for real thought.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower