A short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick -- a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart.
Neil GaimanRead
And weren't, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren't. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and and playing guitar at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Human beings aren't inherently evil; rather, they are often swayed by new ideas and social movements.
Neil Gaiman's quote suggests that people are not born evil, but can become misguided by new ideologies and the social environments that encourage them. He highlights how individuals can adopt extreme behaviors under the influence of new beliefs, often taking on different identities represented by costumes or ideologies, which can lead to harmful actions against others.
Themes
Human NatureIdeologyMob MentalitySocial InfluenceMorality
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about social movements, one might quote Gaiman to emphasize how people can lose themselves in zeal.
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As a teenager I wrote to R.A. Lafferty. And he responded, too, with letters that were like R.A. Lafferty short stories, filled with elliptical answers to straight questions and simple answers to complicated ones.
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The important thing to understand about American history, wrote Mr. Ibis, in his leather-bound journal, is that it is fictional, a charcoal-sketched simplicity for the children, or the easily bored.
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Nothing’s changed. You’ll go home. You’ll be bored. You’ll be ignored. No one will listen to you, really listen to you. You’re too clever and too quiet for them to understand. They don’t even get your name right.
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I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend...I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend.
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