Question:

Can someone help me with a short quote meaning?

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I'm not sure what this quote means, can someone help me out?

"The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding."

Albert Camus

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  1. I think it means that in order to do good you have to know what you are doing first. You cannot just blindly help people because if you do not know the consequences of your deed it might actually do more harm than good.

    This quote reminds me of another quote actually:

    "The road to h**l is paved with good intentions".

    Hope this helps.


  2. very bluntly, if you dont know what you're doing, you'll just mess it up. Its a quote saying that people who dont understand what they're doing usually cause more harm than good. think this way. Stereotype redneck says "lets go kill all the g*y people" think about all the hurt and wrong that would cause. A retaliation would happen and you have a civil war. All because someone didnt take the time to understand the situation, the people, etc.another example is terrorism, most people are ok with just hating "them" with out understanding who "them" is. A lot of damage is caused this way.

    Ignorance does as much damage, if not more, as intentionally going out of your way to hurt people

  3. i think it means, if you don't know what you're doing, even if you mean well, it could cause as much trouble as if you were doing a bad thing on purpose. =)

  4. Most evil caused in the world is caused by ignorance, and if the person doesn't fully understand the situation and has a good intention can do a 180 on them.

  5. Evil almost always in the cause of ignorance.

    Evil is good intention with lack of understanding.

    Both are the same =p.

    ~Follower of the Way.

  6. personally, i do not agree with the first part - evil Can be deliberate & intended too - one may have vested interests that s/he  may consciously pursue even if it meant harm to others.

    however, Camus was in a different century ;-)

    basically he is saying that if one does not understand or is ignorant of the consequences of one's actions - whether intended & well-meant or not, it leads to evil consequences [harm to self or others]

    one instance that comes to my mind immediately is the depletion of the ozone layer due to human activity. earlier, we were unaware [ignorant] of the effect of freon on the ozone layer & since it was commercially viable & made life easy, freon was used deliberately  [but with good intentions] & extensively.

    hence, early "ignorance" & later "good intention" led to the "evil" of ozone layer being depleted & threat to survival ...

    hope this helps

      

  7. i believe this means that if ur doing something good for someone just to get something good in return, its not going to work. you have to be good and help out others just for the fact of being nice. not because u want something in return.

    for example : say some1 dropped a ton of change in the pouring rain, and you go and help them pick it up just because you want something good for u in return. your basically being ignorant so karma wont happen to you. but if you go help that person just for the sake of helping good things will happen to you.

    hope i helped :]

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