The more we know of someone, the more difficult it becomes to caricature them with a single hostile slogan. Hatred is just a result of standing too far away, not daring to investigate who a person might really be or what they have gone through. There are - in the end - very few monsters; there are mostly only hasty judgements.
— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 22)
@henry I've often told people that "everybody is the hero of their own story". Very rarely do people set out to cause harm for no reason. Notwithstanding physiological problems, nobody is born evil, they're made that way through a lifetime of experiences. Even Hitler, in his own mind, thought that what he was doing was good and necessary. He was wrong, and his actions were horrendous, but he was the hero of his own story. What I'd like to understand better is how people get to that point.
