The line that separates good from evil
I learned one great lesson from my years in prison camps. I learnt how a person becomes evil and how he becomes good.
When I was young I thought I was infallible, and I was cruel to those under me. I was madly in love with power and, in exercising it. I was a murderer and an oppressor. Yet in my most evil moments I thought I was doing good and I had plenty of arguments with which to justify my deeds.
It was only when things were reversed, when as a prisoner, I lay on rotten straw, that I began to feel within myself the first stirrings of good.
Gradually I came to realize that the line which separates good, from evil passes not between states, or between classes, or between political parties – but right through every human heart.
Even in hearts that are overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And in the best of all hearts there remains an un-uprooted small corner of evil.
(Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, Volume II)
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