Sunday, August 24, 2008

Brodsky on Evil

"Evil, especially political evil, is always a bad stylist."

"Evil takes root when one man starts to think that he is better than another."

“The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even - if you will - eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with.”

"Life, the way it really is, is a battle not between Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse."

"Auden's lines: 'Those to whom evil is done/Do evil in return' should be tattooed on every baby’s chest."

Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996)

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