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If you let people follow their feelings, they will be able to do good. This is what is meant by saying that human nature is good.

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Good and Evil

More quotes by Mencius

The way of learning is none other than finding the lost mind.

He who exerts his mind to the utmost knows his nature.

The great man is the one who does not lose his child's heart.

The great man is he who does not lose his child's heart.

Having these Four Beginnings, but saying that they cannot develop them is to destroy themselves.

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False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Socrates

I believe in evil. It is the property of all those who are certain of truth. Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil.

Edward Teller

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis God in the Dock (1970)

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.

Henry David Thoreau Walden (1854)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Mencius (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.