Well-Intentioned Extremist/Quotes

"It's beautiful here, isn't it? When you stay here long enough, you start to fool yourself into thinking this is how it's always going to be. Then you remember what this place'll look like when it's on fire and.... you realize you'll do whatever it takes to keep from watching it burn again."

- Derek Reese, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

"He was just... well, like a lot of madmen. Somewhat accurate view of the problem, really insane view of the solution."

- Kid Radd

"Nox didn't have a road paved with good intentions as much as he had a slide greased with them."

- Author Unknown

"For more years than I can remember, I have stood, watch, preparing for a day I've long known was inevitable. The alien threat is real, and the world has suffered at the hands of these invaders. The world must be prepared. It was always be vigilant, and I will make sure it is, no matter what the cost."

- Agent Bishop, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

"Why do they still call me a warlord? And mad? All I want to do is to create the perfect genetic soldier. Not for power, not for evil, but for good. Carlos Blanka will be the first of thousands. They will march out of my laboratory and crush every adversary, every creed, every nation! Until the world is in the loving grip of the Pax Bisonica. And peace will reign and all humanity will bow to me in humble gratitude."

- M. Bison, from the Street Fighter film.

""But the evil" answered Momus, "is that they hold for certain that they are in the light.""

- Giordano Bruno, Foucault's Pendulum

"No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks."

- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

"With the best intentions? Some of the worst things imaginable have been done with the best intentions."

- Dr. Grant, Jurassic Park III

"A world at peace. There had to be sacrifice."

-, Watchmen

"Redcloak: You have to understand. It was for the greater good. Right-Eye: Good... never really entered into it..."

- Order of the Stick prequel, "Start of Darkness."

"I say, we kill everything. There cannot be any evil if there is nothing existing."

- Lust, in a livejournal rp.

"Even when you think you're doing the right thing, you may be going about it the wrong way."

- Alfred Cranston, PS238

"The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel."

- Proverbs 12:15

"They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God."

- Jesus, The Bible (New International Version), John 16:2

"Zaibach: Kicking your ass for the greater good."

- Vision of Escaflowne Abridged, Episode 9

"All contestants had benign intent that manifested in malicious behaviour. Only the best for society as a whole was ever considered. But only under the terms each contestant explicitly laid for himself."

- The judge, 10%+

"Acceptable Collateral Damage: 90% of worldwide human population."

- Global Occult Commission, Emergency Procedure Pizzicato

"The best intentions invite the worst kind of trouble."

- Balthier, Final Fantasy XII

"The world is a mess, and I just need to... Rule it!"

- Dr. Horrible, Doctor Horribles Sing Along Blog

"Salvation comes with a cost. Judge us not by our methods, but what we seek to accomplish."

- The Illusive Man, Mass Effect 2

"It's truly regrettable that Devos' noble desire has somehow become so twisted that he's overseen the destruction of entire worlds. In another life, he could have been a hero."

- Captain America (comics), on Devos the Devastator's mission to end war forever

"Roberspierre: If it threatens France, it is my business. Johanna Constantine: Yes, so I have seen. You will save France... if you have to kill every man, woman, and child within it to do so."

- The Sandman, "Thermidor"

"If you could take back a terrible mistake at the cost of a few lives, would you do it?"

- Nox, Wakfu

"I removed the chance for compromise, because there is no compromise!"

-, Dragon Age II

"I was taught it was my responsibility to bring the torch of knowledge to the wastes. I may have taken the torch part more literally than they intended."

- Edward Sallow, AKA Caesar, Fallout: New Vegas

"I would remind you that extremism in defense of liberty is no vice!"

- Barry Goldwater, 1964 Republican National Convention Acceptance Speech.

"Good can't help but do a little evil."

- Tom Waits, "Spacious Thoughts"

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

- CS Lewis, God in the Dock

"And I want to conquer the world Give all the idiots a brand new religion Put an end to poverty, uncleanliness and toil Promote equality in all of my decisions!"

- Bad Religion, Conquer the World

"Admiral Manyara Emm: You raise the spectre of war as an excuse to let these so-called diplomats run free. Do you have any idea what kind of war awaits us if they reveal the secrets they carry? General Apala Bala-Amin: I'm going to hazard a guess and say "civil war". Admiral Emm: Exactly. General Bala-Amin: You've left me wondering whether you and I would be fighting on the same side."

- Schlock Mercenary, April 28, 2014

"I exist only to protect Krypton. That is the sole purpose for which I was born. And every action I take, no matter how violent or cruel, is for the greater good of my people. And now, I have no people. My soul... that is what you have taken from me!"

- General Zod before the final fight with Superman, Man of Steel

"Progressives tend to judge people by their good intentions, and the intentions of the British Empire in invading Afghanistan were absolutely wonderful, but the man who does evil because [he is] insane is a worse problem than the man who does evil because he expects to profit. The rational profit seeking evildoer, you can pay off, or deter. You can surrender on terms that will probably not be too bad. The irrational evildoer just has to be killed. Before 1840, the East India Company was sometimes deterred, frequently paid off, and frequently accepted surrender on reasonable terms. In 1841, just had to be killed. [...] The East India Company did not realize that it was about to be recast, or was recasting itself, from being a for profit company, empowered to make war and engage in acts of piracy and extortion for private profit, to being the British government’s instrument of holy do gooding, benevolently carrying the white man’s burden for the benefit of a bunch of strangely ungrateful foreigners. In place of a ruthless mafia with uniformed soldiers, the East India Company was about to become an NGO with uniformed nursemaids. Yet strangely, the greater the good intentions, the more they were to be resented. The East India Company seems to have been more popular when they were pirates and bandits than when they were pious do gooders. No one seemed to appreciate the East India Company doing good to them at gunpoint."

- When the west started losing wars on Jim's Blog.

"The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful. For example, Mr. Blatchford attacks Christianity because he is mad on one Christian virtue: the merely mystical and almost irrational virtue of charity. He has a strange idea that he will make it easier to forgive sins by saying that there are no sins to forgive. Mr. Blatchford is not only an early Christian, he is the only early Christian who ought really to have been eaten by lions. For in his case the pagan accusation is really true: his mercy would mean mere anarchy. He really is the enemy of the human race — because he is so human. As the other extreme, we may take the acrid realist, who has deliberately killed in himself all human pleasure in happy tales or in the healing of the heart. Torquemada tortured people physically for the sake of moral truth. Zola tortured people morally for the sake of physical truth. But in Torquemada's time there was at least a system that could to some extent make righteousness and peace kiss each other. Now they do not even bow."

- Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton, Ch.III: "The Suicide of Thought"

"People who think themselves benevolent can rarely grasp that others may also think them despotic and are especially bad at recognising that their opponents may have a point."

- Peter Hitchens, The Broken Compass: How Left and Right Lost Their Meaning