It’s not bad people I fear so much as good people. When a person is sure that he is good, he is nearly hopeless; he gets cruel- he believes in punishment.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that goodness, when taken to the extreme, can lead to cruelty and a belief in punishment.
Clarence Darrow highlights a paradox in human morality, where individuals who are convinced of their own goodness become rigid in their beliefs and may impose their sense of justice on others. This perspective suggests that moral certainty can blind individuals to their own flaws and lead to harmful actions against those they perceive as 'bad.' It serves as a cautionary statement about the dangers of dogmatism and the potential for cruelty that can arise from a misguided sense of righteousness.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about ethics and morality in a philosophy class.
With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in men, than any other association of men.
Do I need to argue to Your Honor that cruelty only breeds cruelty? That hatred only causes hatred; that if there is any way to soften this human heart which is hard enough at its best, if there is any way to kill evil and hatred and all that goes with it, it is not through evil and hatred and cruelty; it is through charity, and love, and understanding?
Chase after the truth like all hell.
No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed.
Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that can beguile the brain and soul of man. She will have nothing from him who will not give her all. She knows that his pretended love serves but to betray. But when once the fierce heat of her quenchless, lustrous eyes have burned into the victim's heart, he will know no other smile but hers.
The trouble with law is lawyers.
But the child's sob curses deeper in the silence than the strong man in his wrath!
Walter Benjamin knew that the break in tradition and loss of authority which occurred in his lifetime were irreparable, and he concluded that he had to discover new ways of dealing with the past. In this he became a master when he discovered that the transmissibility of the past had been replaced by the citability and that in place of its authority there had arisen a strange power to settle down, piecemeal, in the present and to deprive it of ‘peace of mind,’ the mindless peace of complacency.
At the foot of the cross, there are no racial barriers.
So India’s problem turns out to be the world’s problem. What happened in India has happened in God’s name. The problem’s name is God.
...True prayer is measured by weight, not by length. A single groan before God may have more fullness of prayer in it than a fine oration of great length.
The more people smoke herb, the more Babylon fall.
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