"Active Evil is better than Passive Good"
About this Quote
Blake’s line is a provocation dressed as moral advice, and it lands because it flips the polite hierarchy of virtue. “Passive Good” isn’t goodness in Blake’s world; it’s compliance mistaken for purity. It’s the kind of righteousness that stays clean by staying still, letting harm pass through the room unchallenged. Against that, “Active Evil” reads less like a praise of cruelty than a grudging respect for energy, desire, and refusal - the human impulse to act, to disrupt, to make something happen, even messily.
The intent sits squarely in Blake’s larger war on sanctimony. Writing in an age of industrial exploitation and institutional religion, he watched “virtue” become an alibi: a church-approved posture that kept the poor poor and the powerful untroubled. Passive goodness is socially useful because it’s nonthreatening; it doesn’t demand redistribution, confrontation, or risk. It’s a halo that costs nothing.
The subtext is that moral categories can be cover stories for temperament. “Good” can mask fear, laziness, or an investment in the status quo; “evil” can name the raw, creative force that polite society calls sinful when it won’t sit down and behave. Blake isn’t asking us to choose villainy. He’s warning that a world run by well-behaved bystanders is more dangerous than one punctured by people willing to act - because injustice thrives on restraint that flatters itself as virtue.
The intent sits squarely in Blake’s larger war on sanctimony. Writing in an age of industrial exploitation and institutional religion, he watched “virtue” become an alibi: a church-approved posture that kept the poor poor and the powerful untroubled. Passive goodness is socially useful because it’s nonthreatening; it doesn’t demand redistribution, confrontation, or risk. It’s a halo that costs nothing.
The subtext is that moral categories can be cover stories for temperament. “Good” can mask fear, laziness, or an investment in the status quo; “evil” can name the raw, creative force that polite society calls sinful when it won’t sit down and behave. Blake isn’t asking us to choose villainy. He’s warning that a world run by well-behaved bystanders is more dangerous than one punctured by people willing to act - because injustice thrives on restraint that flatters itself as virtue.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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