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All badness is spoiled goodness. A bad apple is a good apple that became rotten. Because evil has no capital of its own, it is a parasite that feeds on goodness.
Fulton J. Sheen
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Evil is a corruption of good, relying on the existence of goodness to exist.

This quote by Fulton J. Sheen highlights the idea that all forms of evil or wrongdoing are essentially a distortion of what is inherently good. It suggests that bad actions are not independent entities but rather a transformation of goodness that has become corrupted, indicating that goodness is the original state, and evil exists only as a deviation or parasite that thrives on the decay of that goodness.

Themes

GoodnessEvilCorruptionPhilosophyMorality

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about moral philosophy during a university lecture.

More from Fulton J. Sheen

Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?
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A woman gets angry when a man denies his faults, because she knew them all along. His lying mocks her affection; it is the deceit that angers her more than the faults.
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Many married women who have deliberately spurned the "hour" of childbearing are unhappy and frustrated. They never discovered the joys of marriage because they refused to surrender to the obligation of their state. In saving themselves, they lost themselves!
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No one has ever laughed at a pun who did not see in the one word a twofold meaning. To materialists this world is opaque like a curtain; nothing can be seen through it. A mountain is just a mountain, a sunset just a sunset; but to poets, artists, and saints, the world is transparent like a window pane - it tells of something beyond....a mountain tells of the Power of God, the sunset of His Beauty, and the snowflake of His Purity.
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The big print giveth, and the fine print taketh away.
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Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn.
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