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Copyright 2000, 2001, 2002 by Cliff Pickover
If you liked this page, visit Cliff Pickover's main home page for more lists.
"The Scales of Good and Evil" is a trademarked term.
Below is a list of the "Top Ten" evil people of all time followed by a list of the "Top Ten" good people of all time -- sorted in order of evilness and goodness. Please add your votes. Who would you like to see added to the list? What alterations would you make to the list or the ordering? Do the scales of good and evil balance? If I may have permission to quote you in a manuscript, please give permission in your note to me.
These lists and this page were create more than 20 years ago. I do not actually agree with these rankings, which were created for the purpose of encouraging discussion on the topic. Do not take these good & evil lists too seriously. They are meant only to encourage discussion, and surely they did encourage a vast amount of debate all around the world. For this reason, the lists were useful at the time. Obviously, there are no right or wrong answers, and obviously one person's evil person is another person's good person, and vice versa.
Why is it easier to think of evil examples than good ones? Is it much easier to do something big and bad than it is to do something big and good?
Developing this list was not an easy task due to the complexity of human personalities and the fact that goodness and evilness depend on the perspective of the time. (For example, perhaps many Americans consider dropping the bomb on Hiroshima "good" whereas many Japanese consider it "evil.") On the evilness scale, I gave additional weight to those people who actually enjoyed and personally participated in the utter horror they produced. When compiling the good list, I also considered the number of people killed by the followers of the "good" person during the person's life time.
For both the good and evil list, I also asked myself the question, "With whom would I least like to be in a room, and with whom would I most like to be in a room?"
If you are not happy with this list, drop me a line, because the list changes in response to suggestions from my readers. If you had scales and put Stalin's massacres on the left side, what could you put on the right-hand side to balance it? Extreme kindness and attempts to alleviate suffering? Curing cancer? Ending world hunger? Charity? Elevating the thinking of humankind with respect to human rights? Perhaps the very best people don't seek publicity for their good deeds; these are the unknown heroes who work tirelessly with the poor and the sick. When considering religions leaders, do we need to consider possible negative results that evolved, such as fundamentalist groups that suppress women, or wars or violence motivated by religion or relgious beliefs? If the Inquisition arose out of Christianity, need we consider this in assessments we make?
Repeat: These lists and this page were create more than 20 years ago. I do not actually agree with these rankings, which were created for the purpose of encouraging discussion on the topic. Do not take these good & evil lists too seriously. They are meant only to encourage discussion, and surely they did encourage a vast amount of debate all around the world. For this reason, the lists were useful at the time. Obviously, there are no right or wrong answers, and obviously one person's evil person is another person's good person, and vice versa.
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1. Tomas de Torquemada (pictured here) - Born in Spain in 1420, his name is synonymous with the Christian Inquisition's horror, religious bigotry, and cruel fanaticism. He was a fan of various forms of torture including foot roasting, use of the garrucha, and suffocation. He was made Grand Inquisitor by Pope Sixtus IV. Popes and kings alike praised his tireless efforts. The number of burnings at the stake during Torquemada's tenure has been estimated at about 2,000. Torquemada's hatred of Jews influenced Ferdinand and Isabella to expel all Jews who had not embraced Christianity. |
Note: Every Romanian who contacted me said I should remove Vlad from the list. They said he was not evil and seemed to like him. In an effort to understand how our views of evil can be so different, I reproduce an exchange I had with Marius who was born in Romania. Perhaps this will help us understand more generally how the perception of evil can differ from person to person. Other discussions on this same web page focus on Bill Clinton and those people who truly believe Clinton was more evil than Adolf Hitler who exterminated millions. (Repeat: Do not take these good & evil lists too seriously. They are meant only to encourage discussion. Obviously, there are no right or wrong answers, and obviously one person's evil person is another person's good person, and vice versa. These lists and this page were create more than 20 years ago. I do not actually agree with these rankings, which were created for the purpose of encouraging discussion on the topic. )
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8. Idi Amin - Idi Amin Dada Oumee (born in 1924 in Uganda) was the military officer and president (1971-79) of Uganda. Amin also took tribalism, a long- standing problem in Uganda, to its extreme by allegedly ordering the persecution of Acholi, Lango, and other tribes. Reports indicate torture and murder of 100,000 to 300,000 Ugandans during Amin's presidency. In 1972, he began to expel Asians from Uganda. God, he said, had directed him to do this. (Acutally, he had been angered by the refusal of one of the country's most prominent Asian families, the Madhvanis, to hand over their prettiest daughter as his fifth wife.) Over the years, Ugandans would disappear in the thousands, their mutilated bodies washing up on the shores of Lake Victoria. Amin would boast of being a "reluctant" cannibal - human flesh, he said, was too salty. He once ordered that the decapitation of political prisoners be broadcast on TV, specifying that the victims "must wear white to make it easy to see the blood". One of Amin's guards, Abraham Sule, said: "[Amin] put his bayonet in the pot containing human blood and licked the stuff as it ran down the bayonet. Amin told us: 'When you lick the blood of your victim, you will not see nightmares.' He then did it." |
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9. Joseph Stalin - Born in 1879. During the quarter of a century preceding his death in 1953, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin probably exercised greater political power than any other figure in history. In the 1930s, by his orders, millions of peasants were either killed or permitted to starve to death. Stalin brought about the deaths of more than 20 million of his own people while holding the Soviet Union in an iron grip for 29 years. Stalin succeeded his hero Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in 1924. From then on, he induced widespread famines to enforce farm collectives, and eliminated perceived enemies through massive purges. |
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10. Genghis Khan - The Mongol Temjin, known to history as Genghis Khan (born 1162) was a warrior and ruler who, starting from obscure and insignificant beginnings, brought all the nomadic tribes of Mongolia under the rule of himself and his family in a rigidly disciplined military state. Massacres of defeated populations, with the resultant terror, were weapons he regularly used. His Mongol hordes killed off countless people in Asia and Europe in the early 1200s. He was "known for killing boys and men of captured cities; and kidnapping the woman and girls..." Steven R. Ward (Georgetown University Press) wrote, "Overall, the Mongol violence and depredations killed up to three-fourths of the population of the Iranian Plateau, possibly 10 to 15 million people." Genghis told his comrades: "Man's greatest good fortune is to chase and defeat his enemy, seize his total possessions, leave his married women weeping and wailing, ride his gelding, use his women as a nightshirt and support, gazing upon and kissing their rosy breasts, sucking their lips which are as sweet as the berries of their breasts." (Quote source: "101 People You Won't Meet in Heaven" by Michael Powell and "The Lucifer Principle" by Howard K. Bloom.) "During three years, the Mongols destroyed and annihilated all of the major cities of Eastern Europe with the exceptions of Novgorod and Pskov." |
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11. H. H. Holmes - built a hundred-room mansion complete with gas chambers, trap doors, acid vats, lime pits, fake walls and secret entrances. During the 1893 World's Fair he rented rooms to visitors. He then killed most of his lodgers and continued his insurance fraud scheme. He also lured women to his "torture castle" with the promise of marriage. Instead, he would force them to sign over their savings, then throw them down an elevator shaft and gas them to death. In the basement of the castle he dismembered and skinned his prey and experimented with their corpses. He killed over 200 people. |
Basil the Bulgar Slayer blinded 14,000 prisoners. Heinrich Himmler was the architect of the "Final Solution." Tallat Pasha decreed there must be no Armenians on the Earth. 1.5 Million Armenians were beaten, raped, robbed, and killed.
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9. Mohandas Gandhi -- Indian nationalist leader, who established his country's freedom through a nonviolent revolution. (Repeat: Do not take these good & evil lists too seriously. They are meant only to encourage discussion. Obviously, there are no right or wrong answers, and obviously one person's good person is another person's evil person, and vice versa.) |
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Note that "zygotic personhood" (the idea that a fertilized egg is a person) is a recent concept. For example, before 1869, the Catholic church believed that the embryo was not a person until it was 40 days old. (Aristotle agreed with this 40-day threshold.) Thus, the church did not believe a human had a soul until day 40. Pope Innocent III in 1211 determined that the time of ensoulment was anywhere from 12 to 16 weeks. This means that the Catholic church, for centuries, did not equate abortion with murder. (Pictured at left is a two day old human embryo at four cell stage of development, magnified 260 times.) |
Responses from ReadersFor me, when it comes to the most important Good figures throughout history, one has to measure not just their Goodness but, IMO, the degree to which their Goodness inspired or changed others around them. Would this planet be distinctly different had they never impacted either those around them or those coming after them to the same significant degree?
By that yardstick, I'm not quite sure that Baha'u'llah, much as I admire him, would qualify among the top ten, what with the dozens of candidates who have demonstrably done Good for their fellow creatures throughout history. He is certainly among the top twenty, yes, but I don't feel that his influence, salutary as it has been and hardly insignificant, quite rises to the level -- yet -- of a Gandhi, a Moses, a Jesus, or a Buddha. Ultimately, of course, one is dealing with a snapshot of the planet at a given moment only. That picture could always change. But right now, the planet as a whole, while impacted to a degree by Baha'u'llah, does not display his impact to the same degree that it does that of certain others (would that it did!).
Similarly, when it comes to the degree to which certain benefactors may be contingent upon the cultural context in which they arose, I'm more prone to single out figures who more clearly, IMO, established a more or less unprecedented pattern of altruism in their benevolent concerns than in those who may have taken singular advantage of a role already afforded them. Thus, IMO, I might suggest that, for instance, the Dalai Lama could not have existed without Buddha himself, nor Mother Teresa without the example of Jesus himself, nor Abraham Lincoln without the challenge of those cultural pathbreakers in the 17th and 18th-century who first made the political soil rich enough for the American Experiment to spring up in the first place.
Given these parameters, while they might disqualify candidates like Baha'u'llah, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, or Abraham Lincoln, they distinctly reaffirm the centrality of Buddha, Jesus Christ, and Moses. Gandhi and King we'll put aside for a moment.
We have here three definite Titans (with seven slots still to fill):
Moses was one who significantly amplified the moral obligations intrinsic to law itself in a code that still resonates in many respects today, although generally assumed to have been established way back around 1200 B.C.E.! Many maintain that law itself as a concept would look altogether different today were it not for this man's example.
The first well-documented figure to live out an apparently blameless life and to do so in tandem with an espoused ethical doctrine that urged harm to no one -- thus a figure who acted and said precisely the same in all weathers within a context of caring always for the other -- was probably Siddhartha Gautama, known better as Buddha, 6th-5th centuries B.C.E.
And Jesus was unique in an outlook that encompassed the moral obligations of each individual human being toward each and every other human being without exception. Thus, on an individual level, he seems more willing to give every person, no matter her/his past, a second chance to an extent that is arguably greater than any other comparable figure. Jesus is at as selfless a level as anyone in this lineup. Only a tiny, tiny number in this group are within hailing distance, IMHO.
What of the remaining seven slots? Well, the first legislator who formulated the principle that those who cannot help themselves ought to be protected from -- at least -- _avoidable_ harm, if possible, through the protection of the law -- a law in which the weak would be given some protections against the strong -- was Urukagina, a Sumerian lawgiver from ca. 2300 B.C.E. I'd say Urukagina would be the earliest figure who ought to be viewed as being "unique" in his own way.
A figure as apparently as upright as Buddha who both walked and talked his doctrine faithfully within a context of public life, not just of the individual, was Confucius, a contemporary of Buddha's.
And, for many, the great pioneer in formulating a systematized approach to ethics itself would be the Athenian philosopher Socrates, of the late 5th century, B.C.E. He too appears to have "walked the talk" of an upright life and doctrine before his summary execution.
Around the middle of the first millennium A.D., Mohammed's life traces a remarkable transformation, from increasingly impatient warrior, to a life centered on violent raids and general aggression, to an unexpected return to Mecca, where he refuses to carry a weapon of any kind or to allow his followers one and ends up, at great danger to himself, changing the region where he lived from one convulsed by endless feuds to one where people could live in relative harmony.
Roughly a thousand years later, John Locke appears to have been the first in the second millennium C.E. to urge an empirical approach to experience. Implicitly rejecting an obligation to accept knee-jerk assumptions of any majority, Locke urged study and contemplation for oneself. He also urged the importance of certain freedoms we view as fundamental today. Democracy today could not exist as we know it without the contribution this man made to the human comedy. So I would view Locke as a more central figure than Lincoln ultimately.
In the nineteenth century, wars grew more and more apocalyptic as technology grew more and more fiendish in its pursuit. Deeply alarmed, a new way was urged by a Russian genius who was both an inspired author and an upright human being: Leo Tolstoy. A pioneer in the philosophy of non-violence, Tolstoy established a pattern of peaceful co-existence that flourished in the example of a few others in the twentieth century, including Gandhi and King.
We now have 9 figures in all. They are, in chronological order:
UrukaginaI confess I am almost stumped by whom to choose as the tenth figure. Benefactors who occur to me are the earliest figure whose law code survives practically in its entirety (and BTW, a law code partly based on the mostly lost Urukagina statutes apparently): Hammurabi, ca. 1800 B.C.E. Again, this accomplishment stands as something worthy and pattern-setting -- to a degree.
Moses
Buddha
Confucius
Socrates
Jesus
Mohammed
Locke
Tolstoy
For some, the most profound utterance on the human condition is the Hindu text, the Bhagavad-Gita. The date when this was written is in dispute (6th/5th century B.C.?), but some ascribe this to a certain (apparent) genius at synthesizing many different concepts and ideas, Vyasa.
Perhaps the first figure to articulate political freedom in a way and a context one can relate to today was Solon, the Athenian lawgiver, who also lived around the same time, I believe(?).
In the C.E. era, we have perhaps the first figure to maintain outright that all are equal, in so many words: the Roman jurist Ulpian. "So far as the Civil Law is concerned, slaves are not considered persons, but this is not the case according to natural law, because natural law regards all men as equal." This may be the first known formulation of the concept of natural law, which has come to function (sometimes) as a counterpoise to tyranny. He also enunciated the principle: "The precepts of the law are the following: to live honorably, to injure no one, to give to every one his due." For its time, it was something new to place these as paramount concerns rather than merely guiding ones.
And now for Gandhi and King: In the first half of the twentieth century, a simple man in India, Mahatma Gandhi, brought one of the great empires in world history to heel through non-violent means. His example, partly influenced by Hindu philosophy in texts like the Bhagavad-Gita and partly by the example of Leo Tolstoy, inspired a whole nation to throw off an imperialist yoke and live free.
Finally, a whole people who -- to the country's shame -- did not live free, though dwelling in an assumed democracy, were finally afforded greater rights than their forebears (although still not made entirely equal to their compatriots) through the tireless efforts and eventual martyrdom of an apparent follower of Gandhi, of Jesus, and of Locke: Martin Luther King, Jr.
To choose just one amongst these towering six altruists may be impossible. One could perhaps argue that, with Hammurabi being an arguably transitional figure between Urukagina and Moses, Hammurabi is probably to be relegated to the next ten along with Mother Teresa and so on.
However, Vyasa is certainly a strong candidate, being a profound synthesizer of one of the chief global religions and a philosophical forebear of Gandhi.
Solon is in many ways the Ur-democrat (small "d"), making him arguably as essential as Locke.
Democracy could not exist without the concept of equality, so Ulpian is pivotal here, too, although one could argue that Ulpian could not even have been possible without the prior example of Athenian democracy -- hence, Solon.
Gandhi is the first one who had to carry out the Tolstoy philosophy on a practical globally transformative level, so one could claim him as central to the human condition today, even though Tolstoy was partly conditionally foundational for Gandhi in turn.
King, arguably, has three distinct forebears already: Jesus, Tolstoy and Gandhi.
That leaves us, IMO, with at least two figures whom I find it impossible to ignore: Vyasa and Solon. This is why I am pretty much stumped in my choice of either one as the tenth. If I were choosing a dozen instead of ten, both Vyasa and Solon would be easy, but then the 12th would become a difficult choice between Ulpian and Gandhi -- possibly Gandhi, but.........
Sorry to be so inconclusive
As for choosing the Evil figures, they frankly bore me
Cheers (and feel free to put this up on your discussion page re the most significant Good and Evil figures, if you wish),
Geoffrey Riggs
Wow, Cliff, you've really ventured into a mine-field here, haven't you? I think that it will be very difficult to devise such a list, mainly because no one is entirely good or entirely evil. And, often, even those with evil means are attempting to carry out good agendas (although perhaps in the wrong manner).
For example, I think most people would say that Adolph Hitler was the personification of evil. However, at least, in the beginning, his intentions were good. He was attempting to rebuild Germany after the collapse caused by the loss of the first World War, and by the war reparations demanded by the victors which resulted in the financial collapse of the German economy. While the means he used to accomplish this were rather draconian, he did achieve his goal of the reunification of Germany, restoration of civil order (as opposed to the anarchy which was in effect), and an improved economy. It was only later that he started his campaign of military assaults, and his crusade against various ethnic groups (which, in my personal opinion, is the ultimate evil). Additionally, in his younger years, he was an aspiring artist, and some of his paintings were rather interesting. Thus, even in the most evil person imaginable, it's possible to find good characteristics.
Consider the case of Ivan the Terrible, and the situation in Russia in the 16th century. Would the fear from such stories be useful in controlling an unruly and partially barbaric population? Even Tomas de Torquemada was inspired by religion.
Also, don't forget that we tend to judge people by our own standards. Thus, good and evil are relative to our environment, our thought process, our heritage. Consider how someone like Hitler might have been thought of if Germany had won the war. Would we have thought that Franklin Roosevelt was a war monger who needlessly sacrificed soldiers, and caused needless suffering while wrongly attempting to influence the proper world order? Would the United States have been thought of as a barbaric country filled with soft-headed idiots? Could Germany's persecution of the ethnic groups be compared to the slaughter of the Native Americans by the early Americans?
Personally, I think my own beliefs tend to run close to your own. But, I think that these issues need to be considered before attempting to classify people into either the evil or the good category.
Ok, now for some of my own recommendations. Where on the list would Idi Amin fit (Dictator of Uganda)? Didn't he publicly profess to cannibalism? Does this automatically qualify someone as evil? Or, isn't this really a cultural bias? What about Abraham Lincoln? Here was a man who had an impossible job, the reunification of a country at civil war, which eventually led to the loss of his life. What about the various winners of the Congressional Medal of Honor? While these were typically not leaders, quite a few of them voluntarily sacrificed their own life to save those of their friends (and, what higher good can there ever be?). What about Jesus? Isn't he the personification of goodness? Of course, now we're factoring in various religious thoughts, so I'm sure this could be considered very controversial. What about the prophet Mohammed? Going back to the second World War, what about Schindler (Have you ever seen the movie "Schindler's List"?). What about Timmothy McVey? He's almost certain to take a place on the list of the top twenty evil for his part in the Oklahoma City bombing. What about John Kennedy? While generally regarded as being responsible for putting a man on the moon, which has partially led to the technology explosion which exists today, he also came extremely close to provoking worldwide nuclear war. Where on the list does he belong?
I'm sure that there are literally millions of candidates for each list. However, in nominating these candidates, we're all evaluating them according to our own particular beliefs, so everyone's list will be vastly different, and, some entries might even swap portions, depending upon the person doing the evaluation. And, of course, the scariest part of this whole process might be that people have to publicly examine their own thoughts and their own morals, and, this can be extremely frightening at times!
Cliff, thanks for your note. I was slightly familiar with your work as I am a
sci-fi buff. Terry Bisson is a friend of mine.
Like Vlad Tepes, he was completely merciless. But Timur was a travelling conquerer, sweeping through western Persia, India, and even Eastern Europe in an attempt to restore Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire. It is estimated that he killed over 17 million people in his imperialistic reign, razing cities of defeated peoples and massacring the inhabitants. There are some stories of his brutality including but not limited to creating towers of skulls from civilian corpses, molding live men together from a defeated city as psychological torture, and promising no bloodshed, and then burying thousands of people alive outside one city.
He is the highest standard of cruelty of the Medieval Period.
One of my favorite examples - how would JFK have been viewed if the same moral standards we are applying to President Clinton were applied, and if the press pried into his personal life as deeply as the press does now (I am grossed out that this is an issue at all for the President). I believe he would have one plot in a ranking based upon his lifetime, and quite another if the standards of the time were applied.
Then, what do we apply "good" and "evil" to? The person's day job? Their life as a whole? Their motivations? President Carter may not rank high as a "good" president, yet I believe of all the recent presidents that he is truly committed to helping others - is this "good", does it count?
Then there is Mother Teresa - I'm not saying she shouldn't be considered "good" - but what about the other nuns that worked with her that aren't recognized as individuals. Is the same work without world recognition even more "good"?
Is saving people "good"? If you feed a starving person, are you good? If that person lives to have children and the same basic problems of lack of resources still exists, haven't you made things worse, merely deferred a current problem and made it worse in the long term? Is that good or evil? Is the leadership of China good or evil - clearly their Draconian state enables a rapid reduction in their birth rate. Isn't that evil? Yet, if they didn't control their birth rate, millions would die - isn't that evil?
You had a good idea, but your lists do not look great. Here are my comments.
For evil, take Torquemada off your list. The Spanish Inquisition was not as bad as it was made out to be and was in fact no worse than any of the other Inquisitions throughout Europe at the time. Genghis Khan also should not be on your list as while he was very brutal when conquering, he was actually a pretty good ruler who cared about his own people. If you include Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot then you must also include all those who followed them and helped their mass murders. Yes, Hitler, Stalin and the others told them to do it, but they all had their own minds. Yes, the ones on your list are evil, but they have shared blame. On my list I try to include people who did what they do themselves, without getting others to do it for them, because for me that shows not just a desire for death but an enjoyment of their despicaple deeds. Here is my own list. These honestly aren't the top 10, but they're the first ten I thought of:
As for your good list, Buddha, Bahaù`llah, Jesus, and Moses, can all be immediately dismissed on the grounds that they don`t exist or that we have no idea who they were. Even if we assume religion is correct, only Buddha might belong. Moses advocated animal and human scarifices as atonement for sins, and calimed death penalty for members of other religions among other things. Jesus Christ told slaves to be content with their lot in life and refused to heal a woman before a man. Bahaù`llah simply isnt influential enough to be on the list. As for the rest, Mother Theresa definitely does not belong. Yes, she gave people comfort in dying. But they were still dying. A truly good person would have tried to keep them from dying in the first place. She was only interested in converting them, not actually helping them. It`s sickening that people call her good. Abraham Lincoln also should be nowhere near your list. While he was anti-slavery, it was not his chief concern. His prime concern was the secession of the Confederacy, then the loss of industries in the South, then slavery. Lincoln also suspended Habeas corpus and kept political prisoners. Gandhi should not be on your list either. He slept naked with attractive young girls to prove his ability to resist such worldly temptations. I don`t see why he would need to prove that unless he was in it for the press. Also, I think it would have been proven better by just not sleeping with them in the first place.
Hi, Your list looks really strange. I have another:
Mao was not an evil man. I just want to clear that up. He only executed about 2 million people, which might seem like alot, but was necessary in the long run to secure China's prosperity. The rest of the deaths in his reign were from unintentional famine. Mao built up the chinese economy, almost doubled the population, dramatically increased the standard of living and literacy rate, and improved the rights of women and the poor.
Just wanted to clear that up.
Top five good
Hey Cliff, Great site! Really enjoyed (not sure enjoyed is the right word) learning about Vlad and thought the exchange between you and the Romanian was fascinating. It is indeed disturbing how we can justify any evil. I do think he was correct in his denouncement of the evil done in the name of God and good in the bible. Most Westerners tend to see even the genocide commanded by Yahweh as good and the Hell threatened by Jesus as just because we have been brought up in a Christian culture. I would suggest Jesus was largely if not completely a mythical creation. Whether historical or not , the Jesus character was the most divisive in history and his promise of eternal torture the most wicked thought to ever lodge in the mind of man. Needless to say, though I was a Christian for over 3 decades, Jesus would no longer find his way onto my list of good people. I would suggest rethinking Moses as well. He too is likely a mythical character based on the Legend of Sargon but the commands to murder helpless women and children attributed to him along with his many other atrocities should have him on Santa’s naughty list.
Mother Teresa is another fallen hero of mine. Once at the top of my good list I have since learned she was only interested in comforting the suffering to a degree and not interested in trying to eradicate it. She said,““I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot...I think the world is much helped by the suffering of the poor people.” I believe Christopher Hitchens has written about this dark side of her. I believe she meant well but much of the Christian message poisoned her thinking.
Cliff, Some of your top ten worst of medieval Europe do not compare to modern tyrants:
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.TAB1.2.GIF
I would also consider T Roosevelt. The Phillipine-American War was: 1. totally unnecessary, 2. had a high civilian death count, 3. Roosevelt's responsibility.
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP13.HTM
I would also remove Lincoln from the top ten list. Your contention that Lincoln "freed the slaves" is factually incorrect. Slaves in Brazil were freed by acts in 1871 and 1885. Then there is Jamaican slavery, Antigua, Martinique... Lincoln freed the slaves in the Southern States that had left the Union. Lincoln did not free the slaves in the border states that were directly under his control. Why should he have left the slaves of Kentucky in bondage? Furthermore, South and Central American nations feed their slaves without fighting wars.
Lincoln knew of examples where slaves had been bought out or granted freedom by legislation. Slaves of the US South could have been freed without that war. A great President WOULD HAVE freed slaves in the US South without a war. In fact, the monetary cost of the Civil War would have been enough to buy out all the slaves of the American South. The 600,000 deaths in the Civil War should count against Lincoln.
Lincoln also suspended Habeas Corpus, imprisoned war protesters and political opponents, suppressed freedom of the press... Lincoln is a highly questionable candidate for your ten best list.
Dr. Pickover,
First of all, let me say that I greatly enjoyed reading your list of the "Top 10 Most Good and Evil People in history," and I was especially intrigued by the wide array of responses that you got to it. I think the list is a great thought exercise, and I would like to briefly throw in some of my own insights and responses to the site.
As I said, I feel that what you have done is an OUTSTANDING thought exercise -- it certainly got me to think -- and a great way to spark debate and intellectual discussion, as the many responses to your site have proven. One of the questions you ask is "Why do our perceptions of good and evil differ so much?" For example, you seemed confused as to how someone can possibly think Vlad the Impaler was a good man, or that Bill Clinton was more evil than Adolf Hitler. I agree with your confusion: when I first read that someone actually was trying to argue that Clinton was more evil than Hitler, I burst out laughing, thinking that surely the person must be some right-wing fanatic who thinks every Democrat is Satan's offspring. However, as I thought about it more and read the discussions you had with these people, I started thinking deeper about this, and I thought I'd share my insights with you.
I believe that, as good of a thought exercise as it is, any attempt to make a list of "evil" or "good" people is ultimately futile. No one, I repeat, NO ONE, is born either purely good or purely evil (for the purposes of this response I'm going to assume an agnostic point of view . . . obviously, Christians would believe that Jesus was born without sin or evil in him, but adding in that assumption would make this response more complex than it has to be right now). As humans, we are all born with the potential to perform acts of both great goodness or great evil. At birth, we are all "blank slates," and our lives and experiences end up drawing on this slate, molding us into the people we will ultimately become. People who have warm, loving parents who teach them openness and love will naturally become more open, loving people. People who are brought up to hate -- for example, children of Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptists -- will naturally become angry, hateful people. People generally take action based on their view of the world, and this is different for everyone. For example, it is easy for us to condemn a man like Adolf Hitler, who committed some of the most atrocious crimes in history, as "evil" -- however, had Hitler faced a different set of experiences growing up, he may have adopted a different worldview and become the founder of an international charity for orphans, rather than becoming a megalomaniacal mass-murderer. It is important to note that Hitler did what he did because he felt that the rest of the world had been cruel and unjust to Germany, and that the Jews were at least partly responsible for the country's problems; he felt that creating a "master race" made up of who he felt had been formerly oppressed and exterminating the "problem" of the Jews was the right thing to do. In his mind, he was doing what was right, just, and GOOD! Therefore, calling him "evil" may be an inappropriate label . . . however, few can doubt that the ACTIONS he performed, including the Holocaust, were some of the most thoroughly evil actions in history.
My point is, it is futile to try to put a label of "good" or "evil" on any individual, as everyone is capable of acts of both good and evil, and nearly everyone tries to do the right thing based on their own worldview, which is different from person to person. Instead, we should judge the ACTS that these people commit as good or evil, since those are (somewhat) easier to put a label on. Hitler is obviously an extreme example, and truthfully I think there are very few who would even attempt to justify his heinous actions . . . but what about, say, Che Guevara? He committed many acts in his lifetime that most would say are "evil"; however, to many people, particularly the poor of Latin America, he is practically a SAINT, because he devoted his life to trying to help these people who truly do deserve help! So is he "good" or "evil"? My answer is, he is NEITHER; his individual actions can be labeled, but HE cannot be, because he, like everyone else, is too complex and multifaceted for that. He did what he thought was good and right; let us judge and debate on the morality of what he did, but not who he was as a person, for there is no real answer to that. This, perhaps, explains why so many Romanians jump to defend Vlad the Impaler; clearly, he committed many evil actions, and those who defend him even agree with this, but they refuse to label him as "evil" because these actions were motivated by his past experiences, the hatred for the Turks he had been brought up to feel, and other things essentially beyond his control, as well as the fact that he did many good things in his time too; he truly was doing what he thought was right. This also explains, perhaps, why some consider Bill Clinton to be evil; after all, although he did many good things during his presidency, no one can deny that some of his actions, like those of any other world leader faced with astronomically difficult decisions, could be considered evil by some (and of course, his affair with Monica was an evil action as well).
Finally, it is important to remember that people who "enjoy" their acts of violence and murder are probably suffering from some sort of mental illness or instability; therefore, the labels of "good" and "evil" cannot apply to them because they are not fully in control of themselves.
Judge the action, not the person. That is my basic argument. Once again, thank you for providing such an excellent resource for thoughtful people to express their opinions on such a complex topic, and I would love to hear your thoughts on what I have said when I get around to it.
-Rick
I can't think of him as more evil than, say, John Gacy or Jeffrey Dahmer.
There are probably lots of exceedingly "good" people (measured from the view of *not* being evil in any way) that have had no impact on the world whatsoever, except perhaps as role models to those who have known them. Those who have "*done* good", like some of the examples Dave mentions, tend to be less perfect -- it's hard to be effective without stepping on a few toes here and there. How interesting that it's easier to come up with evil examples than good ones.
Dave's comments are interesting, but I wonder whether there's not a tendency to confuse the inherent nature of a person with the results of acts. For instance, McVeigh may have killed a lot more people, but
There is a web site called the "Serial Killer Hit List" that might be useful, at https://www.mayhem.net/Crime/serial1.html . Fairly strong stuff, but if we're talkin' 'bout EEEEvil . . .
I think Dave had a point, this is something of a can o' worms, because as we all know, there are no moral absolutes in the cold, existential universe we live in...or something like that, I dunno, it sure sounded good when I typed it. But seriously, for example, one of my top contenders would be Mao Tse-tung, leader of the Gang of Four, who killed off somewhere between 20 and 67 million (estimates vary) of his countrymen. But my parents recently returned from a trip there, and his picture is still hanging all over the place.
Similarly with Mohammed, the Prophet of the Islamic faith. An amazing number of people alive today would put him at the top of any list of "Good" people, but if "Name the top 10 Good People of all time" were to be asked on _Family Feud_, he wouldn't even be on the list.
Is Jack Kevorkian Good or Evil?
For personal selections, I'd probably add Mao (above), Stalin (who killed off ~10 million misc farmers while "collectivizing" their farms)(and there were at least a couple of other "purges" in the USSR in the first half of this century that killed off similar numbers of people), good ol' Pol Pot, Adolph Eichmann and the rest of Hitler's buddies, Genghis Khan (his Mongol hordes killed off an amazing number of people in Asia and Europe in the early 1200's (like 35 million Chinese, I forget the figures for Europe, I know he hit Poland hard).
All of which leads me to wonder, what's worse? Mass, impersonal murder of millions, or attention to detail? There was some nut- case in California who got caught some years back, his deal was driving around, picking up hitchhiking young men, then he'd knock 'em out, wire them up to a 4x8 sheet of plywood and torture them to death. Similarly, I've heard stories of some of the so-called "scientific research" conducted in the WWII concentration camps. Are the doctors involved more or less evil than Eichmann?
I'll write more on "Good" when I get a chance...sad fact is, as Jim observes, it's easier to come up with ideas for the "evil" list than the "good" list...but I wonder if this is a survival trait, as it's more important to be aware of evil (which can kill you or hurt you) than it is to be aware of good (which can help you, but in general you're doing okay on your own if you can avoid evil).
BTW, a couple of excellent sources for this kind of discussion would be a copy of the _Guinness Book of World Records_ and one or more of them there _Book of Lists_...I seem to recall that at least one of them had a list of "evil" people.
There is another aspect, and that is while we tend to single out an "individual" as being good or evil, not infrequently as in everything else it is the collective environment that results in the fame or infamy of a particular person.
In post WWI Germany, if Hitler did not rise to power, someone else would have. Perhaps the someone else would have beaten the U.S. to the atom bomb... or managed to throw off the shackles of the punitive Versailles "treaty" and institute a democracy (not likely in that era, but possible). Europe was not known for peace and tranquillity back then, it is a recent phenomena for that area.
While comment is made of Stalin, does anyone realize that the British and French applied considerable pressure in the Dumas (but mostly with Czar Nicholas) to continue Russian participation in WWI? The continuing debacle led to the rise of the Bolsheviks and thence Stalin-- heir to millions of deaths. Is Stalin the sole holder of opprobrium here or does some get spread around to the others that caused the environment that lead to his ascendency? In other circumstances Stalin would be just the guy next door... or you or I could be a Stalin... how do we know?
Okay, I've been trying to come up with a nice, big, juicy list of Good People, and I'm finding it's harder than I thought it would be. And I think I found a simple reason why: it's a lot easier to do something big and bad than it is to do something big and good.
Like, if you had scales and put Stalin's massacres on the left side, what could you put on the right-hand side to balance it? Curing cancer? Ending world hunger? I don't know. I guess you could put people like Jonas Salk (and others who have saved countless lives by developing vaccines) in the Good category. But with the occasional exception (Dr. Martin Luther King), there really aren't many individuals who you can really say have done good things that have affected millions of people. And someone mentioned Jimmy Carter, a man who I agree is probably the only "good" man to hold the office in the past few decades. But how much good did he really do while he was president? One could argue that he's done the country more good working with Habitat For Humanity than he did while he was in office (not to slag the man, but it seems that Nice Guys Make Lousy Presidents).
I guess charity is one way that people (rich people, at least) can do Big Works Of Good. Perhaps Carnagie belongs on the list, for all of those libraries he funded? (I know that the library in my hometown of Edwardsville was a Carnegie library). But to do so means that Ted Turner is Really, Really Good for giving all that money away.
And also, there is something like the Heisenberg principle at work here: the very best people don't seek publicity for their good deeds. The unknown heroes who work tirelessly with the poor and the sick, firemen who risk and lose their lives saving people...these are some of the best of the race, but few people know who they are. Even rich people fall into this category: in the last three months I've seen at least a couple of news- paper accounts of wealthy people who've been very quietly donating tens of millions of dollars anonymously for years.
That said, still the question remains: what Good Deed balances the slaughter of millions?
These are all pretty obvious... Have you ever read Dostoyevski's (sp) ``Notes from Underground''? Fiction, but describes a kind of violence we all participate in to some extent. Some of those you listed are simply mass murderers. How about a mass of murderers -- like the 3 million + KKKers who were active in the 1910's - 1930's? Or those who for the sake of political advancement, promote the death penalty even when it is applied to mentally retarded people who were juveniles at the time they committed their crimes? (Bill Clinton, then governor of Arkansas, went back to his home state to sign a death warrant for a mentally retarded kid while campaigning for the presidency.) Or the rest of the Americans who voted for this kind of thing? Or how about when nobody's life is at stake, but rather what about individual belief? Consider the Scope's trial... On one side are people who believe people's immortal souls will be lost if they do not hear and accept a picture of Christianity that is built on ancient Babylonian mythology and cosmogeny... and the others who feel that they will do their children a grave disservice in dealing with a modern world if they do not learn the principles of science and critical analysis. Or more, that people feel they have no need to offer charity, that it is not a part of their moral conscience? That it is better to lock somebody up and permanently disfranchise them, than to try to promote their participation in legitimate society?
My own sense is that evil people have done far less than evil ideas.
I object to Lincoln's being on the good list for freeing the slaves
because it was a necessary political move and not from the goodness of
his heart. if not freeing the slaves gave him more support during the
war, he may have very well not done that.
Aand i think that stalin and hitler were more evil than genghis khan, but
that's probably just cultural conditioning, I don't know the inner
motives of any of them too well.
Hey, do you know that story about when genghis khan wanted to take this
city that was behind a wall and he couldn't get into, so he surrounded
it and told the people that he'd leave if they gave him 10000 swallows
and 1000 cats? Wwhen they did, he set them on fire and let them go and
they went back into the city and set it on fire and burned it down so he
could take over it. That just has style.
"When choosing between two evils I always like to take the one I've never tried before." -- Mae West
I would definitely add Saddam Hussein to the Bad list. Not only did he invade Kuwait for no good reason, and torch the oil wells on his way out, etc., and also force his people to fight for his foolish cause, but he has gassed and tortured his own people, killed hundreds and thousands, drained the lands of the Reed people in southern Iraq, causing genocide there, and destroying thicker culture. He is an ego maniac, etc., his photos all over the place. etc.
I am not so big on history so as to know history's worst characters. I am wonder if Torqemada should be so high, since, in theory, he thought he was pursuing the good of the church, etc. Shouldn't, really, the Pope that appointed him as Grand Inquisitor be on this list then.
I don't know a thing about Vlad Tepes. But shouldn't he be much lower on the list?
I would rate Hitler higher, perhaps at the top. And, I wonder, does Eichman belong, given that he is really in Hitler's shadow. He would not have existed but for Hitler. Stalin, also, should be much higher. He killed some 20 million peasants, recall, and was ruthless etc. in every other way. Anyway, in today's NEW YORK TIMES, on page B8, is a superb book review on a book about Hitler. The book is "The Hitler of History" by John Lukacs, and it addresses many of the issues you are concerned with. Check it out and you'll see.
Interesting that so many are in the 20th century. Weapons of mass destruction, mass propaganda, etc., have given evil minded sorts even greater power, when they get to power. You might want to comment on that.
H.H. Holmes certainly sounds interesting. Never heard of him, either, so his inclusion would definitely make the book interesting.
I think you need to do a bit of discussion about what makes evil, what is evil and good. I don't think you can define it solely in terms of a body count. But rather it must have something to do with purity of motive, of ego, etc. Someone who is not merely crazy, but knows what good is and turns away, out of selfish interest. Doesn't that define it. Evils is really putting your own selfish interests above everyone one else's, in a manner that uses coercion and violence to achieve it. In this respect, Hitler might actually drop on the list, inasmuch as, from what we know, he sincerely believe in his Cause. Whereas someone who knows better, supposedly, would rate higher. But, still, coming from a supposedly "Christian Culture" Hitler should have known better.
And shouldn't we hold people to a higher standard in the 20th century, when ideas about good and human rights and all are in wider circulation? For example, this is why I think Saddam Hussain is so bad. He knows what the world thinks of him, he has lived through the genocide of Nazism, and should know better.
Now, about good people. I like that you have Baha'u'llah -- and would put him at the top of the list in some respect. On the other hand, theologically speaking, it would be unfair to put Baha'u'llah -- or Buddha or Christ or Moses or Muhammad, etc., on the list at all, since I believe they are not really ordinary men, but rather all are incarnations of pure God, of the pure God-head, or as, we say, manifestations of God. So there can be no evil in them at all.
If I were to draw up such a list, I would make a point about this, talking about these figures in this way, and then excluding them from the list. But, I know, from your point of view, this does not make sense. So, looking at it from your perspective, I would have to include these people, since they are so manifestly good.
If we look at goodness in terms of deeds, rather than teachings, and if we define good as the opposite of my definition of evil, that is to say, people who have sacrificed their self interests in favor of serving others and helping others, then, still, Baha'u'llah would come out very high, in that he walked away from a very comfortable life as a Prince to go endure a life of torture and exile to promote his concept of Good.
But if we exclude the Manifestations of God, I would suggest the following possible additions:
Abdu'l-Baha -- Baha'u'llah's son was an ordinary man. Yet his
life was one long sacrifice and tenure of service. He had, for example,
only two coats. And he was always giving one of them away to the poor.
Giving the shirt off his back, so to speak. Lots of more stories of
self-sacrifice, etc.
Gandhi -- a similar life of self sacrifice and working for other people's go od.
Martin Luther King -- likewise, courage in the face of fire, promoting a good cause.
Going back in history, you might want to consider some of the Saints. Assisi perhaps? Augustine? I don't know much about them, but there must be something to what they have all done.
And what about great scientists who have shown courage in the face of repression. Gallelio was imprisoned for his views. Or the contributions of Louis Pasteur.
Then there would be the deeds of statements. Thomas Jefferson, perhaps. Ben Franklin. You listed Abraham Lincoln. Are there others?
And what about people who have risen above and beyond the call of duty. Done things at risk to themselves when they didn't have to. Isn't that a high form of Good? I am thinking of people like Schindler, etc. Although I suppose what counts is doing this consistently, over a long period of time, over a life time. So, in that regard, Mother Teresa is probably a good candidate for the list (although, frankly, I think she has received rather too much publicity.)
And what about someone like a Franklin D. Roosevelt, who, in some ways, was responsible for ridding the world of Hitler. And who sacrificed his health and life in some ways in the battle? He was a politician, it is true, and so many does not qualify. But he must be counted as one of this century's greatest and most influential men. He was also involved in founding the UN. His speech, the Four Freedoms. etc.
And who else has won the Nobel Peace Prize?
And while we're at it, where are people like Albert Schweitzer? Or Mohandas Gandhi? Or Florence Nightingale? Or that guy whose name I've forgotten who hid and saved so many Jews in his factory during the Naxi occupation in WW2? Or various winners of the Nobel Peace Prize? And don't be saying that Lincoln "freed the slaves": I think historians will argue that point with you, although it *is* convenient shorthand. And did the Number 2 spot go to Baha'ullah because you know a lot about the Baha'i faith, or really because people nominated him for that spot?
I certainly agree with your placement of these people into their respective "good" and "evil" categories. I would, of course like to see Jesus at the top of the good list, as would those of other faiths like to see, for example, Mohammed, at the top of the list. difficult, since we have no good historical record to go by, and Millions have needlessly died in their names due to our animal behavior. Man's inhumanity towards his fellow Man knows no bounds...nevertheless, the basic message is to treat others decently,which is what we are always trying to "get around"....you would think the ten commandments say it all...ok, I can't "rip-off" my neighbor, nor his ass, etc.; but how much can I steal from him before it is considered "ripping-off"?...always pushing the limits...like a child. which is why from ancient times we have had multitudes of laws and regulations, and lawyer-types...
Today I perused your list of good and evil people, which I guess is a matter for conjecture. My own list would include Churchill (more people died through the bombing of Dresden than in Hiroshima and Nagasakiya combined) and that when the war was virtually over.
The west stood by when Ida Amin killed his countryman, they went to Bocassas wedding as well. The UN condemned the Israelis for rescuing the hostages in Antebe.
So if there is a spare spot on the evil list please include "Those who let it happen".
Hello, Cliff.
Here are my nominations for the list of evil people:
I agree with you that torture is the sign of true evil. You are right to put Vlad the Impaler at number 2. All those people e-mailing you about his greatness have been indoctrinated. The man was pure evil.
I'm surprised Saddam Hussein's not on the list. He was certainly keen on torture. Also, during the Iran-Iraq War, a minister suggested that he should step down for a while, so Saddam asked him to step outside the room, and shot him there and then. He was a very nasty man. Ante Pavelic was also keen on torture. Apparently he used to keep bowels of eyes extracted from his Serb victims.
Keep running the website. I enjoy reading it.
Regards,
Ed
First of all, Vlad, more formally Vladislav, impaled 10,000 men and women when the world population was just peaking over three million. He deserves the spot for number one most Evil man. Secondly, Octavian of Rome is entirely missing from the list. He burned down the Great Library at Alexandria. Had this event not taken place the Dark Ages would have never come about, nor would slavery have existed in the New World. Humanity would have been far more prepared for diversity. The Spanish Inquisition would probably never have happened either. I have successfully argued that Octavian was the most Evil man in all history, on the grounds that had he not done what he did, most evil acts after would never have come about. Besides, Rome needs a representative on that list.
Perhaps Lincoln does not belong on any such list. He freed the slaves yes, but Socrates once said: Always examine the motives of those in power. What were Lincoln's motives? He, at various points in his life, owned slaves. Was his motive to free the slaves, or to hold power of the nation united. I would venture toward the latter. He was no saint, nor should he be seen as one. After all, all he did was unite the nation, the slaves were not truly freed until well after the 1960's. Political and Social freedom are very different things, neither of which African-Americans had for a very long time after Lincoln was dead. The south did experience a short lived political/social backlash, in which African-Americans had extended rights, but that was, as I said, shortly lived. Newton is a far more fitting candidate for the Good list, he created much of the modern world. Sometimes Good is complimented by evil. Had Lincoln truly been a man of goodness he would have rescued the slaves, burned the southern crops, and expelled every state south of the Ohio river from the Union. Instead place Newton on this list, he contributed much more to humanity, and was one of the most influential persons in history. Early founders of Taoism and Hinduism may also make fitting additions to this list.
The Dalai Lama is the same immortal being reincarnated time and time again, each time, at the moment of death, revealing his next identity. When we Westerners make a reference to any one of his physical forms we tend to forget that they are all the same guy, according to His theology. The other night I heard a news report on the new Lama, in this report it was stated that he would have to strive to meet the standards of the previous Lama. The report neglected to mention that they were the same man. If we chose to look at any one religion as basically accurate in theology, must we not look at all religions in the same fashion? Although I do like the way in which your page gives no factual credit to the theology behind any of the religions, perhaps that is the better way to go--to be agnostic rather than generally faithful.
First of all, I'd like to say that I love your site...it's one of the best things I've ever seen on the great, vacuous monster we call the Internet. You asked for comments about the list of good and evil people, so here goes. I do not believe in concepts such as good and evil - the world is infinitely complex, and thus reducing the immense scale of gray to simple black and white is a dangerous thing. This said, I feel compelled to argue with a few of your choices, just because I can.
Mother Teresa, although she accomplished many "good" things, would be nowhere on my list of good people. She vehemently preached against homosexuality and abortion. She was known to baptize children against their will - given the choice of saving a sick child's life or baptizing it, she would choose the latter. Not being a Catholic myself, I cannot accept this.
Back on the religious theme, Jesus wasn't so wonderful either. At one point, a rich woman was criticized for anointing him with expensive perfume, rather than using her money for something more important - say, feeding the poor. Jesus replied (and I'm paraphrasing, of course) "Do not criticize her, for the poor will always be with you, and I am here for a short time only." Also, what about all the atrocities that have been committed in his name - not that he would approve, but I think that should be considered.
How about Vlad Tepez's contribution to literature? If he hadn't been such a monster, Dracula might never have been written. Just a thought. Keep up the good work!
Like others I was surprised at the omission of a few people in your list of the 'Good'. 1. Mahatma Gandhi : I am an Indian and owe a lot to him. But so do a whole lot of other people and countries. Showed us the strength in truth. righteousness and nonviolence. 2. Martin Luther King. 3. Nelson Mandela. Both of them more than once acknowledged their own debt to the Mahatma. Incidentally Mahatma means 'Great Soul'. What better name for a man like him ?
Your lists have certainly generated the controversy and stimulated thinking as I'm sure you desired. Reading your reasons for putting people on the list was as interesting as who was on it. By the way, I'm responding through e-mail because there was no other indicated way to post a response. I would have to say the motivations are the mark of good and evil, and even those are suspect when put in terms of religion and politics. Were the Iriquois who tortured their captives evil because they believed they would gain spiritual strength if their victim screamed out his essence, or were they simply practicing a common belief among the five nation confederacy? Was Genghis Kahn evil when he used total destruction of those who opposed him to spare the lives of his own soldiers by preventing future battles. Don't forget that once he conquered a territory he wanted it productive. When he killed it was purposeful, and the threat he posed led to numerous peaceful surrenders. Under the Kahn's rule, Genghis' and Kublai's at least, a "pax mongol" existed in their empire which encouraged trade and bettered the lives of more people than were killed in the conquests. If you use the threat of mass destruction as a qualifier for evil in those terms then every president of the United States,and most of the rest of the government and American people are just as evil. Didn't we bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki to prevent more killing of our own warriors? And didn't we, successfully, hold the threat of the same destruction over our main rival to prevent further mass warfare? How different is that from Genghis making an example of some cities which resisted him to get peaceful acquisition of others? (One could argue he had no right to want the other cities in the first place, but that opens up another can of worms in the virtues vs. problems of imperialism and colonialism.) Besides before condemning the Kahns and Torquemada, look at what other divinely inspired slaughters have occurred. Read Joshua 6:21, where under God's order the Israelite tribe "utterly destroyed the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep and asses, with the edge of the sword". The only people spared were two harlots and their families. Because they'd sheltered the Israelite spies. This is in the same bible where just a few books earlier God had condemned harlots and other adulterers to death by stoning! Apparently even God has a hard time figuring out relative good and evil.
Then we could get into the Machiavalian aspect. He is often regarded as evil, his writings in "The Prince" are usually summed up with the phrase "the ends justify the means". We tend to regard that as an unsavory way of thinking, but to Machiavelli, it made more sense to have an opponent assassinated than to go to war against him. We have laws in the United States against assassinating our ideological foes, but what makes more sense? Risk a few agents to assassinate Hussein, or send 100,000 and more Coalition troops into full scale battle against an Iraqi army that had no idea what a modern air attack could do to it? I don't feel like looking up the casualty figures from the U. S. invasion of Panama, but on the good/evil scale, were any casualties more than one on either side worth more than the "dishonorable" act of taking out Noriega the individual?
Good and evil are sticky subjects. The followers of Moses who killed their wives and children then committed suicide at Massdada are revered, yet the followers of Jim Jones and David Koresh are considered weird cultists because they did exactly the same thing under an outside threat to their beliefs.
I'm quitting this commentary now. It's going to take me a while to put together lists of good and evil people with a minimum of cultural bias
Hi Cliff, Thanks for the interesting site. I spent quite a bit of time on it. I was looking at the good and evil people and I noticed that one remarkable humanitarian is missing: Raoul Wallenberg. He is credited with saving the lives of 100,000 people. How many individuals in history can you say that about? In fact there was a direct encounter between him and Eichmann on the platform of the Budapest train station as he intervened even in the eleventh hour to get Jews headed for Auschwitz off the train. Thanks again and I would like to be on the mailing list for the new books that come out,
Dear Cliff, Your lists, and many of your visitors' comments, tend to assess degrees of evil on the basis of numbers affected -- but those who commit mass murder in the name of some perverted ideal are driven by ideas which surely qualify them as insane. While insanity is not an excuse, it does serve to explain the otherwise unfathomable...and, I think, it may dilute the Evil quotient.
But what about the thug who guns down a convenience store clerk for a six-pack? Imagine the thought process (if such people think at all): "I want a beer. Let's kill that guy."
Do those thugs have the same mental defect that (I believe) Torquemada had? I don't think so -- there are just too many of them. They can't ALL be born that way.
No, I think most of them KNOW what they're doing is wrong -- they just don't care. Yes, they are often the products of an impoverished and violent upbringing; yes, American television offers far more evil role models than good ones; yes, drugs and liquor drive otherwise good people to acts of desperation. But I contend that if you have the slightest shred of human decency in you, there is NOTHING, nothing in the WORLD, that could induce you to kill so lightly.
So when I turn on the local news and watch the endless parade of sullen, cold-eyed young men on trial for acts of appalling cruelty, I see in each one of them a darkness at least as profound as that in the heart of Hitler.
On good and evil. Don't write a book on it. Books written on good and evil are usually either trite or pedantic. Either way the issue is so fraught with pitfalls you will be open to critics from one point of view or another. Consider the "Golden Rule" of the western tradition "do unto others what you would have done unto you. Would you want your local masochist obeying this? Or the "Silver Rule" associated with eastern religions "Do not do unto others what you would not do unto yourself" Why shouldn't someone be standing on the bank of the river as you go swirling by and think "Soon he's going to die and be with God. I wish I was drowning".
The problem with good and evil is you can't get past the dichotomies. Even Yaweh, giving the law to the Hebrews in Sinai says "Thou shalt not kill" (Ex.20.13) then spends the next several chapters laying out the law and denoting which ones the perperpertators should be executed for. Not to mention the numerous massacres (e.g. Jericho, Josh.6.21.) divinely ordered. My advice is stick to the beauty and, so far as we know, objective truth of math and physics. Morality is even more imprecise than chemistry, as I'm sure Dr. Asimov would say.
Dear Dr. Pickover: Marvellous Home Page! Shall be returning to it again and again and again... A couple of strong disagreements: Apropos of your list of good people there is one person whose leaving out of the list you should justify: M.K. Gandhi Apropos of your list of favourite books: please do read 'Story of San Michele' by Axel Munthe - and tell me if you do not find it to be unquestionably one of the greatest books of this (or any other) century. More later, when I revisit your utterly fascinating page.
It was not the people that were chosen that I found most interesting I believe it was the illustration that defining humanity in such linear terms of good and evil has a tendency to be inadequate and frustrating.
I also believe that there is a recurring theme between your attempts to define good and evil and your mathematical questions. As a programmer, attempting model real world objects the greatest challenge in defining them is the definition falls into what we call a "gray" area. How do we define concepts that have no bounds of expression? How do make binary computers truly understand "close" or "kind of" or "like". It is as fruitless, or challenging, as defining beauty on a linear scale.
I believe with the advent of chaos theory we have the beginnings of tools necessary to approach definition of these abstract concepts. Who knows maybe we will have a "Satan Set" that persons of evil, or in the neighbourhood of evil, will be bounded by.
Q: (Forgive the generalization) Aren't you a bit of a "wild duck" for IBM?
Hw the heaven can you rank Jesus Christ 3rd? He is the most spiritual person that ever did.
Hi Cliff, I have a comment to make about your Top Ten good people list, and one which someone with your web page and your book preferences is sure to understand:
One measure of goodness depends on what extent a person does something for self-glorification. In particular, I think action for which public recognition is the aim significantly diminishes the value of an action. This belief arises out of my personal biases for judging goodness, which are (1) that goodness depends entirely on the intention of the actor, proverbs about paved roads to hell notwithstanding, (2) that acting for reasons of gaining recognition are ultimately wholly ego-gratifying, and (3) that ego-gratification is at the root of all human evil. [Incidentally, (1) makes sense because judging a person by the consequences he or she had on the world is always ultimately a futile exercise, since no one will ever know.] This reasoning immediately makes suspect many famous people who are widely held to be good. Frankly, I doubt, for example, that Mother Theresa did it for the fame -- she had been doing what she did long before the world took notice. But, for example, Gandhi, whom some of your respondents listed as a perfect candidate is suspect. Did he really do it for India? Or did he do it to secure his place in history? He is said to have slept with beautiful naked women to prove his ability to resist such worldly temptations -- but who would need to demonstrate such an ability except one who wishes to be known by them? I, personally, would change places with Gandhi (even in his grave) if it meant I would have similar world-wide recognition for having done good, and that suggests that what he did overall would be "easy" for me.
What would be difficult (and hence, good?) would be to be the nameless worker in the soup kitchen or the anonymous Oscar Schindler-type who performs good consistently for the sake of good, with little or no recognition for it. Would I trade my life for that? Right now, probably not. Yet I would recognize those people as people with good intentions were I to meet them. That suggests that those people are doing the most difficult kind of good -- that without the incidental reward of recognition. So, I don't know if it was intentional, but I think it's good that your top ten list is short of ten -- the rest should be saved for the anonymous figures who did good but never took the credit.
Finally, one last comment -- surely a graphics person can do better than that composite of you and Piers. ;-) I hope we have a chance to meet some time -- where do you spend most of your time? Yorktown Heights? Wisconsin? Regards, Kentaro Toyama Microsoft Research
I was just looking at your WEB site once again, and I've been thinking about one question for a while, namely the one about Good People or what Good Deed balances the slaughter of millions. The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but the road to heaven must be paved with results, and I would suggest these individuals as Good:
Alexander Flemming for his discovery of penicillin
Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, for their work in ending the Cold War.
Louis Pasteur, in his effort to make French beer better than German beer, developed his pasteurization process for milk that saved uncounted millions of children from from death or serious illness.
Jonas Salk, for the polio vaccine.
Newton and Tesla to whom we owe much of our material comfort.
John Harrison for invention of the marine chronometer, motivated in part by the loss of some 2,000 men in a storm off the coast of the Scilly Isles.
The guy who devised the 401(k) plan for common people; I can't remember his name, but he was featured in an article in Fortune Magazine last year. He didn't make a lot of money himself, but he was developing 401(k)'s for rich people, and his religious convictions led him to do something for ordinary people. Must have been some interesting mathematics here. I'd like to see this guy considered for a Nobel prize in economics.
Some names I thought were missing from the list:
Evil - Caligula
Good - Gandhi, St. Francis of Asissi (sp?), Benjamin Franklin, Mozart, Tesla
Also - I often do book reviews for various publications on a freelance basis and would be interested in receiving review copies.
Hi Cliff,
The Top Ten Good: You ask for suggestions or alternate ranking. I have no interest in debating relative evils, so I'll stick to the good. Unfortunately, history is not one of my strengths so I can't make more than a few simple statements: my main suggestion is to put Muhammad before Baha'u'llah. All the rest seems okay, although there may be some good lost somewhere in the cracks!
1.Buddha - Buddhism, far more than Christianity or Islam, has a very strong pacifist element. The orientation toward nonviolence has played a significant role in the political history of Buddhist countries.
I would put either Buddha or the Prophet Muhammad as #1.
Given the reasons you state for Baha'u'llah of the Baha'is, I would suggest putting Muhammad before Baha'u'llah, since he taught the same thing, 1300 years earlier, to far more people. Without Islam, the Baha'i faith would have never developed. The teachings of Muhammad had a profound and immediate beneficial effect on society and the advent of mathematics, astronomy, and science in general, whereas Baha'u'llah has not had such an effect on our society. At the height of Islam, religious tolerance was present in abundance and societal ills were low. Islam is also meant to be a universal faith. Muslims also believe in the oneness of humanity, and also devote themselves to the abolition of racial prejudice, class prejudice, and other injustices of all kinds. Islam, in its true form, has no priesthood: the muslim can communicate directly with God at any time and in any way. No priestly intercession is ever necessary. Muslim men and women are equal in the sight of God and Islamic society - although you might realize this by looking at the culturally distorted representations of Islam in our world today. The presence of a muslim clergy is mainly for advice-giving capability due to the massive amount of Islamic literature that can be studied. Muslim clergy are also recognized for their familiarity with Islamic jurisprudence, or the Shariah. Although ritual forms of prayer are observed, Islam also aims to guide society spiritually, socially, politically, and economically. Unfortunately, in today's world, muslims are often not true to the spirit of Islam. But that does not reflect upon the message taught by the Prophet Muhammad, nor his inherent goodness. Islam also maintains that all the great world religions point to the one god, Allah, but that the messages were often muddled, confused, or lost over time - hence the apparent differences in faiths. Furthermore, jihad does not actually mean holy war, but instead means 'struggle in the path of Allah.' War is not encouraged by Islam - in fact, the word Islam is derived from the Arabic root SLM, pronounced Salm, which literally means peace, submission, and obedience.
2.Baha'u'llah - Baha'is believe that all the founders of the world's great religions have been manifestations of God and agents of a progressive divine plan for the education of the human race. Despite their apparent differences, the world's great religions, according to the Baha'is, teach an identical truth. Baha'is believe that Baha'ullah (d. 1892) was a manifestation of God, who in His essence is unknowable. Baha'ullah's special function was to overcome the disunity of religions and establish a universal faith. Baha'is believe in the oneness of humanity and devote themselves to the abolition of racial, class, and religious prejudices. The great bulk of Baha'i teachings is concerned with social ethics; the faith has no priesthood and does not observe ritual forms in its worship. Putting the Dalai Lama after Muhammad and Baha'u'llah is also fine with me!
3.Dalai Lama - head of the dominant Dge-lugs-pa order of Tibetan Buddhists and, until 1959, both spiritual and temporal ruler of Tibet. In 1989 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition of his nonviolent campaign to end Chinese domination of Tibet.
Also fine:
4.Jesus Christ - for the preaching of love.
5.Moses - just the idea of "resting on the seventh day" improved the life of countless people.
I'm not so sure Mother Theresa had such a profound good effect on humanity in general as did the other people mentioned in this list. I would put some beneficial scientist in her place. Perhaps Louis Pasteur?
6.Mother Theresa - Once Mother Theresa was asked how she could continue day after day after day, visiting the terminally ill: feeding them, wiping their brows, giving them comfort as they lay dying. And she said, "It's not hard because in each one, I see the face of Christ in one of His more distressing disguises."
7.Abraham Lincoln - for freeing the slaves.
Okay, but what about Martin Luther King? Or Gandhi?
Hallo Clifford
While looking at some fractal resources over the weekend, I changed upon your pages. After exhausting the fractal and chaos section, I had a look at the more "esoteric" pieces on display. It was with great interest that I read the piece: The Scales of Good and Evil.
While busy with this, in the background the death on Diana was again force-fed through the commercial grinder. Some people would argue that Diana should be on your list of good people. Taken from a historical perspective, the question immediately arises wether or not any mention would be made about Mother Theresa, who died in the same period. Those same people would, if presented with a list and without any outside influences, most probably select both of them as very good people.
If the above sounds like illogical rambling(1), let me try and completely rephrase: How much hype surrounding people are just propaganda with hidden motives?
In the case of Diana, commercial interest keeps the machine oiled. How many people would buy a coffee-cup with and image of Mother Theresa on the side? Of Diana? Who was better? Or were they equal?
The same can be said for most of the other people on the your list, both good and bad.
A piece that kind of sums it all up:
And in the end In all that we say And all that we do All that we leave behind Is a trail of memories Will you remember Those that are enclosed Within the border of your mind?
Rephrase the third last line:
And in the end In all that we say And all that we do All that we leave behind Is a trail of memories How will you remember Those that are enclosed Within the border of your mind?
You are welcome to use the above if you want to as long as acknowledgment is given. I do retain the copyright.
Greeting from Afrika Marius
Hello Cliff,
Loved the discussion of good and evil characters - great choices for the evil ones. A couple of quick thoughts - I'd also question Abe Lincoln's inclusion on the 'good' list, for the reasons of political expediency behind freeing the slaves that some others have mentioned. I'd also like to nominate L. Ron Hubbard for a spot on the 'evil' list, for enslaving many minds and making a lot of money doing it. Dave Anderson
Your lists displayed an obvious pro-religious politically pro-western bias. Abraham Lincoln?!?? "For freeing the slaves?!!?" Moses because resting every seventh day is desirable?? As if working six days a week is acceptable? Thanks for nothing!! And never mind Moses' 300 or whatever other mostly bloodthirsty patriarchal and authoritarian commandments! For the evil list, how about Columbus, Cortez, or JP Morgan?? Plenty of people did more harm than some guy who gassed people at his bed and breakfast, but you refuse to see it because of your biases. Andrew Jackson killed more people coldbloodedly when he sent them on the Trail of Tears, even if they weren't rich white old ladies. And lots of people "preached love", but few screwed the world up as badly as the followers of jesus did.
Perhaps you should rename it the most Charismatic or Powerful Leaders. Most of the people you named did not accomplish these deeds alone, their ability to lead, and feed of off general trends and hysteria of the masses, is what made all of these atrocities/good deeds happen. No one personally murdered millions, or fed millions, it was their ability to inspire others that created the effects described. Any World leader/Dictator or Religious Icon does nothing more than fan the flames of general emotion. Having the ability to discern general trends in the population and utilise them does not in essence make someone evil, Hitler is no more evil than the thousands of people who carried out his orders, he was one man.. In fact we are all one person, so unless you work alone (as in serial murderes/pedeophiles/abusers etc) I do not believe you can be held accountable for the "whole" . That then leaves all who participated in any way, or who did not participate but stayed silent accountable. Of course this is just my opinion. We all have the capacity for good/evil if you get us at the right time, especially if we get caught up in mob hysteria. Thus accordingly I would imagine that you would have to take all Leaders of off your list and concentrate on individuals. Just my thoughts. Peace
I've enjoyed your personal pick of the 12 vilest and the 10 best......as someone mentioned- yin/yang. But most of those mentioned had a definite lean towards one side! Vlad Tepes surprised me. I had thought he killed a few people (well that is bad enough), but THAT many? HH Holmes is a big surprise as I have never heard of him. I heard that Timur-i-Leng (or Tamurlane) left a pyramid of 70,000 skulls after the conquest of Isfahan, Persia. I be- leive he was the last of the Mongol leaders. Josip Stalin goes to the top of my list. It is becoming more likely that he is responsible for 30 million deaths of his country- men. Fortunately my grandparents left that country seven years before he came to power- as "native Germans" or Volgadeutsch they would likely have had such a fate.
Well, it was a big topic, but you seem to be off to a good start.
I would like to suggest one more person for your good list - Ghandi. Read a biography - absolutely amazing. The things he was able to accomplish through non-violence is an incredibly inspiring story - he managed to free his country from the grip of the British. Without war.
Of course, the list of things he did not manage to accomplish is sad as well. He opposed the creation of Pakistan as a separate Moslem country. Even his harshest critics admit that he had a good point there. If they did, the fact that these two countries are the newest members of the "Nuclear Club" should persuade them.
Not bad, seeing as how was an actual person. Not like another one of your choices.
I refer, of course, to Jesus. If mythological figures are to be included, The Tick, a mighty force opposing evil (at least on Saturday morning cartoons), should be considered.
As far as your contention that Jesus preached love; he may have indeed done so, but don't forget some other memorable verses attributed to the "Lamb of God:"
Luke 14:26 "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." This from your preacher of love, a commandment to hate.
Also, Matthew 13:41-42 "The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." I don't feel that preaching an everlasting hell is appopriate for someone on your list of all-time good guys.
But my favorite one, in Jesus' own words: Matthew 10:34 "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." And that promise has surely been kept. Think also of the great wrongs inflicted by followers of Jesus - the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Salem Witch Trials, the sufferings inflicted upon the natives by the (largely) Christian settlers form Europe, the support of slavery by the Southern Baptists before, during, and after the American Civil War.
Ghandi did not do, or inspire, any of these things. Of course, he hasn't had as long to inspire them either...
As far as Mother Theresa goes, I suggest reading "The Missionary Position." She was an outspoken critic of birth control, even though she lived in the midst of an overcrowded land. She considered suffering to be a blessing, because her lord Jesus had suffered on the cross. She certainly did more in the face of poverty and suffering than I could ever hope to, but she could have done more by advocating birth control.
Dear Mr. Pickover, I read the list you have on your website of the most evil and most benevolent people that have ever lived, and there are two things that I would change. If I made such a list, I would rank Adolf Eichmann first. Eichmann was not simply sitting silently by in Hitler's "shadow," as one of your respondents said. Eichmann was the sole orchestrator of the Nazi extermination of the Jews. He was truly Hitler's right hand man. And at the end of the war, he did not even have the bit of conscience to turn himself in to the war crimes tribunal. He escaped Germany through a secret Nazi organization called Odessa, which gave him a fake identity. He was finally tracked down in Argentina over a decade later. After hearing his death sentence at his trial, he said, and I quote, " I don't mind going into the grave, because I have placed six million Jews in the grave before me." One thing that you also have to remember about men like Eichmann, "Hitler's Henchmen", as they are called, is that they were truly messed up in the head. Heinrich Himmler, who was second only to Eichmann in the Nazi's death squad, and head of the Nazi Gestapo, had an actual mental disease that caused him to laugh and giggle uncontrollably at the sight of anything in pain or suffering. I forget the name of the condition, but Nazi officers said that Himmler would sit at his desk, trying to kill a chicken by twisting its head off, giggling wildly as it screamed and squalled in pain.
Another thing I would do would be to take Abraham Lincoln off the list altogether. Yes, Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclomation freeing the slaves, and yes he tried to keep the United States together, but there is something that you are forgetting. Although Lincoln obviously had other things on his mind, during his Presidency the drive to push Native Americans off their land continued unabated. No President, whose was in command during the Indian Wars for the continent, Lincoln included, ever came out in condemnation of the attacks by the U.S. Army against sometimes innocent tribes of Native Americans, or made a move to negotiate lasting peace with them. Consider this: In 1863, Kit Carson, a commander in the U.S. Army, marched 400 men to the Canyon de Chelly to surround a Navajo stronghold. His troops killed their livestock and destroyed their crops, in an effort to keep skirmishes between the Navajo and settlers under control, even though there had never been a specific offensive move by the Navajo against the army. A year later, his troops once again entered the canyon and captured the remaining Navajo, who were taken to Fort Sumner and imprisoned there until 1868. And also in 1864, there was an event that came to be known as the Sand Creek Massacre, in which a large army force in Colorado ambushed a village of peaceful Arapaho and Cheyenne, killing men, women and children. All who were Commanders In Chief during the Indian Wars and made no attempt to stop it are just as responsible as the army leaders who were in the field, there by making Lincoln responsible to. It is a sad feature of the people of this country, who, ignorant of their history, are apt to forget and ignore the fact that they reside on land that was literally swept out from under the feet of those who originally inhabited it, the instruments of this take over being disease, broken treaties and half-hearted attempts at peace.
Hello Cliff, I looked through your good & evil lists, and figured you had set yourself up for some controversy, but I thought it would be based on minor quibbling over who might have been added or deleted from the lists. I was astounded by the ignorance about Abraham Lincoln expressed by some of the writers. I suppose it is because of the well-noted failure of students to learn history in school, but this is pretty fundamental. Here are the facts:
Lincoln did not own slaves. The writer is probably thinking of Thomas Jefferson. The emancipation was not something done to meet some unexpected political event. He did not do it to deal with the war. The war was the result of the emancipation order. He was the most outspoken opponent of slavery of his time. The famous Lincoln-Douglas debates were primarily about slavery. Douglas had created a bill which repealed the ban on slavery in the territories. Lincoln said "No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent. I say this is the leading principle--the sheet anchor of American republicanism."
He was the first republican president. The party was founded as a single issue party, and the issue was slavery. Freeing the slaves was pretty much the whole platform. Long before becoming a presidential candidate, Lincoln said "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master - This expresses my idea of democracy - Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy - "
It is true that the plight of blacks in the south did not improve much after the war, but that was largely because Lincoln was assassinated at that critical time. His successor was a democrat who tried to complete Lincoln's program, but was unable to because he lacked the mandate that Lincoln had. The war was fought over whether the individual states could opt out of the nation to avoid federal orders. The absurd idea of burning their crops and expelling those states would have put Lincoln on your evil list, rather than qualifying for the good list.
PS: Since we are talking about a U.S. president, how about George Washington? He was one of the most noble men who ever lived. After defeating a much larger & better British army, there were many who expected him to become "King." That was the tradition of the time, and those who suggested it to him were probably quite surprised by his response. He basically told them that they were insane, and how could you have gone through this long fight for freedom and then talk of giving it up to a new king? He told them to never speak of it again unless they would like to be charged with treason. Think how different our country would have been if he had not been such a champion of freedom.
I disagree with having Lincoln on the "good" list. His actions were politically motivated. You also don't take into account his policy concerning the Natives. His methods didn't involve negotiation or peacemaking attempts. But merely forceful conquest.
One respondee said it was a minefield. He is a master of understatement.
Let me open by pointing out that good and evil are religious concepts so first you have to determine the religious orientation of the respondant. Try to find a Jew putting anyone but folks like Hitler and Torquemada at the top of the evil list.
But in the land of ritual sacrifice he who refuses to offer his child is evil. And those who would try moral superiority to decide, explain first why it is our moral obligation to kill Serbs to save Albanians who have been openly engaged revolution and who pattern of terrorizing Serbs over the last 20 years caused the invention of the term ethnic cleansing.
And that leads up to separating the person from the person's reputation. Modern research of the Spanish Inquisition, right from the official records reveals there are barely 100 executed in both the old and new worlds in its first century of existance. It seems the Lutherans had the printing press and vilitifed him as part of Catholicism. And to look to those same Lutherans, the racked up a score of a million or three witches for their first two centuries.
But the destruction of witches was a religious good, correct? The Devil was real. Just look how he attacked church steeples with lightning.
And then you get into politics. There are so many people who supported, defended and so many who still do, that his 20-25 million murders before Hitler took power fall into the Orwellian memory hole. Down that same hole went the murders of those who surrendered to the Nazis and of everyone who supported the Nazis and of everyone accused of supporting the Nazis.
And then shall we judge absolute or percentage? Way back when there was a significantly lower population, we can't downgrade people for lack of effort, just lack of targets. Pol Pot only had a small country to work with but got 1/3 of them or so. And it depends how you group the targets. The US got 100% of more than half of the Indian tribes.
And then times change. Folks like Washington or Jefferson can be condemned for owning slaves but never Julius Ceasar. Ceasar not only owned slavs but destroyed Roman democracy and set himself up as dictator -- Hitleresque to say the least -- and ask the Gauls about him.
Speaking of which, after the Napoleanic Wars, saying anything good about "that satanic Corsican" was risking a jail sentence.
And then there are problems even currently as to what people actually said and did. Nearly all the damning things Nazis are quoted as saying can only be found in Allied propaganda without factual basis or so greatly distorted as to reverse the meaning. Eichmann's "5 million on my conscience" is similarly propaganda.
Good is not nearly as interesting to talk about but citing Bhudda for his pacifist influence on bhuddist countries such as China and Japan shows, shall we say, an interesting avoidance of certain aspects of their hisories. While the US Civil War was going on, China had their own with maybe 60 million dead. I prefer war-mongering to pacifist, thank you.
As to others, you appear to be awarding credit based upon theory rather than positive results. That is the only thing that appears to save Marx and his ism save that his views on Jews and Slavs as he published made Hitler look like Mother Theresa in comparison.
Lincoln ATTEMPT AT freeing the slaves was purely political. He did not and could not as he had no power to do so. His attempt was limited to the states in rebellion so was clearly a war or political move at best.
And Moses for resting one day in seven. If there ever was a Moses (or Jesus or Bhudda for that matter) prior to and long after his "time" folks had more that 14% of the year as some form of holiday or other. The most he can be creditted with is regularizing it and that sort of sucked for farmers. Instead of getting their holidays in when the farm work was minimal this screwed up the work year.
And all those native Hawaiians we have sort of a soft spot for. Dig up their original temples and find the bones of slaves under the foundation posts. Which of course was a good thing in their society.
Vlad Tepes is attributed with a lot but he did most all of it to the pagan muslim invaders in defense of his country. His political problem was that he appears to have continued it to maintain local political power and eventually lost.
I just discovered your website (certainly above average interesting compared to the rest of the www). I read the article "The Scales of Good and Evil", and naturally, have an opinion of my own. I don't know if the discussion is still open, or if you ever have the time to read my comments (hey, you must get bucks of mail each day) but here go some random thoughts:
Nitpicking: The guy who ordered the killing of the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki via nuclear bomb should definitely be on the list. Not as high as, say, Josef Stalin, but on it. Reasons: The bombs were dropped after Japan had offered to surrender (though not unconditional surrender, which the US insisted on. Well, according to my limited knowledge of history at least). While that may not be much different in an absolute sense than Genghis Khan slaughtering the inhabitants of an enemy city for strategic reasons, being a 20th century person, he should have known better. 20th century people, americans especially, generally think of themselves as having higher moral standards than other people. Sounds offensive? Well, it just shows how pointless (apart from making you think about the topic) arguing about the details of such a list actually is. The people who have contributed to your list come from a relatively narrow part of cultural space/time. They have a certain set of ethics, by which they judge what is good and what is evil. Other people had/will have other ethics, which may differ drastically. A prominent feature of evil persons on the list seems to be the number of people killed. But could there be a viable set of ethics, meaning a set which functions as the foundation of a thriving society, which doesn't put such a harsh penalty on killing people, if done for the "right reasons" whatever that may mean to "them"? Stuff to think about.
Some more thoughts: The first place of the evil list should be left blank, to be filled by that someone (or the chain-of-command or similiar) that destroys the human race. Something of a scope not easily imagined (!) but certainly possible with creative use of todays technology. I presume that deed, should it ever happen, would shadow everything else put together. Or how about someone who destroys our universe? We might not care whether just we or the whole big everything bites the dust, but should there be some alien intelligence, it might very well see things differently.
As to why listing evil persons is so much more easy than good persons: We are much more aware towards killing than towards almost any other thing people can do. Since killing people, whether directly or indirectly (and the reason for it) is the single criterion for getting on the evil list, this makes listing evil people naturally easier than listing good people, whose actions are more diverse. IMHO good stuff often has to do with people who think long term, while evil stuff often results from people who just think about the immediate future. But long term effects are not easily attributed to single individuals.
Otherwise, good and evil are just memes with not much worth for me. They tend to give the illusion of an easy partitioning of the world, but the world is really much more complicated for that to hold much value. My subjective opinion.
-- abusive fathers with a doting mothers.Clinton could not have been elected in the 30's because of his loathing of the military and cowardice in time of war. Hitler's paramilitary style would defeat him in any election in 1990's USA of 1999. THE SEED OF EVIL IS IN BOTH! It comes from an internal drive for absolute power, coupled with an amoral soul.
-- Bizarre sexual relations. Hitler also had rape charges, cross dressing episodes, etc.
-- willingness to readily sacrifice old friends if political advantage could be had.
-- starting projects without planning and follow through.
-- periods of hyperactivity followed by self-indulgent inactivity.
-- paranoia blaming personal failure on wide spread secret conspiracies.
-- extremely violent tempers that the public rarely saw.
--failed attempts to buck the system through protest or Putsch, then turning to more traditional means of attaining power.
Sure, there are some dissimilarities;
-- Clinton has a strong formal education.
-- Hitler's idea of international relations was never tested outside his Germano-Austrian upbringing. Clinton viewed the world from US, European and Soviet perspectives.
-- Clinton came to office with far more executive experience.
a) bombing of a fully manned aspirin Factory. Knowing, from US Military Intelligence that it did NOT contain contraband Chemical warfare apparatus b) Authorized the use of Delta force at the compound in Waco. Record now show that Clinton over road the Posse Comitatus Act and DID SO IN WRITING. Waco could not, by any definition, be considered an act of National Insurrection like the Seccession of South Carolina in 1861. c) endangered the lives of 250,000,000 American citizens by authorizing the transfer of Strategic Nuclear technology to a potential enemy, not only in exchange for cash campaign contributions, but also in the face of universal oppostion by six (6) cabinet level officers; SecState, SecDef, SecTreas, FBI, CIA and Arms Limitation Committee. Furthermore, Defendant Clinton failed to notify the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee as requiored by Federal Law. -- Corrupted the national morals in that Defendant Clinton did knowingly authorize a) The use of IRS audits against political opponents. There is precedent for this charge in the Nuremberg Trials also! This charge is also supported by a Congressional Finding of Fact. b) Directed Justice Dept. to hinder and obstruct investigations into Influence peddling and Campaign Funding scandals. c) Did commit perjury to the American people involving subject matters of NO significant National Defense. d) sell Judgeships and Commissioner positions while Governor of Arkansas. At least three witnesses have attested to this. -- Committed Capital or class A felonies in that Defendant Clinton did a) rape Juanita Broadderich.I could go on and on but I think you get the drift. He makes Gilles de Rias and H. H. Holmes look like pikers.
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