"Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up"
About this Quote
Gandhi isn’t offering comfort here; he’s issuing a moral audit with no loopholes. The opening question punctures a favorite human alibi: that ignorance is the real problem, and knowledge automatically cures behavior. By asking, “Is it not enough…?” he sets a trap for self-satisfied reformers and armchair moralists. We all know the evil. The harder truth is that we often keep it anyway.
The second line is the blade. “We should be sincere enough to admit” shifts the argument from ethics to honesty. Gandhi treats self-deception as its own kind of violence: a distortion of reality that lets cruelty, greed, or spite pass as necessity or “just how things are.” His phrasing—“love evil too well”—is deliberately provocative. He doesn’t say we “choose” evil or “fall into” it; he insists there’s attachment, even pleasure, in what we claim to condemn. That’s a severe diagnosis because it strips away the romance of accidental wrongdoing and replaces it with complicity.
Context matters: Gandhi’s politics hinged on self-discipline (brahmacharya, nonviolence, refusal to cooperate with injustice). He knew that oppressive systems don’t survive only through the villainy of rulers; they endure through the everyday comforts of participants. The quote’s intent is to make moral change less about finding better information and more about confronting desire: what we’re unwilling to relinquish, what benefits us, what we secretly enjoy. It’s leadership rhetoric that demands consequence, not just conviction.
The second line is the blade. “We should be sincere enough to admit” shifts the argument from ethics to honesty. Gandhi treats self-deception as its own kind of violence: a distortion of reality that lets cruelty, greed, or spite pass as necessity or “just how things are.” His phrasing—“love evil too well”—is deliberately provocative. He doesn’t say we “choose” evil or “fall into” it; he insists there’s attachment, even pleasure, in what we claim to condemn. That’s a severe diagnosis because it strips away the romance of accidental wrongdoing and replaces it with complicity.
Context matters: Gandhi’s politics hinged on self-discipline (brahmacharya, nonviolence, refusal to cooperate with injustice). He knew that oppressive systems don’t survive only through the villainy of rulers; they endure through the everyday comforts of participants. The quote’s intent is to make moral change less about finding better information and more about confronting desire: what we’re unwilling to relinquish, what benefits us, what we secretly enjoy. It’s leadership rhetoric that demands consequence, not just conviction.
Quote Details
| Topic | Honesty & Integrity |
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