"He who busies himself with things other than improvement of his own self becomes perplexed in darkness and entangled in ruin. His evil spirits immerse him deep in vices and make his bad actions seem handsome"
About this Quote
A warning wrapped in moral psychology, this line aims less at gentle self-help than at triage: if you spend your attention policing the world, chasing status, or managing other people, you will lose your grip on the only terrain you can actually govern - yourself. Ali ibn Abi Talib speaks in the idiom of late antique piety, but the mechanics are recognizably modern: distraction breeds confusion; confusion invites rationalization; rationalization turns self-sabotage into something you can admire in the mirror.
The phrasing is calibrated to shame the listener out of complacency. “Perplexed in darkness” isn’t just ignorance; it’s the internal fog that comes from living by impulse and gossip instead of discipline. “Entangled in ruin” adds the sense of gradual capture: you don’t fall; you get wrapped up. Then comes the hardest turn, the one that reveals the quote’s real target: moral aestheticization. “Make his bad actions seem handsome” describes how vice survives - not by announcing itself as evil, but by borrowing the language of virtue (justice, loyalty, honesty, courage) to dress up cruelty, vanity, or revenge.
As a cleric and political leader in a community riven by succession disputes and factional warfare, Ali is also issuing a civic critique. When public life becomes a theater of grievance and control, people confuse activism with righteousness, argument with clarity. The “evil spirits” can be read theologically as whispering demons, but they also function as a metaphor for the inner chorus - ego, anger, appetite - that gains power when self-scrutiny is outsourced. The intent is preventative: don’t let your moral life become a performance. Keep it as a practice.
The phrasing is calibrated to shame the listener out of complacency. “Perplexed in darkness” isn’t just ignorance; it’s the internal fog that comes from living by impulse and gossip instead of discipline. “Entangled in ruin” adds the sense of gradual capture: you don’t fall; you get wrapped up. Then comes the hardest turn, the one that reveals the quote’s real target: moral aestheticization. “Make his bad actions seem handsome” describes how vice survives - not by announcing itself as evil, but by borrowing the language of virtue (justice, loyalty, honesty, courage) to dress up cruelty, vanity, or revenge.
As a cleric and political leader in a community riven by succession disputes and factional warfare, Ali is also issuing a civic critique. When public life becomes a theater of grievance and control, people confuse activism with righteousness, argument with clarity. The “evil spirits” can be read theologically as whispering demons, but they also function as a metaphor for the inner chorus - ego, anger, appetite - that gains power when self-scrutiny is outsourced. The intent is preventative: don’t let your moral life become a performance. Keep it as a practice.
Quote Details
| Topic | Self-Improvement |
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