Often injustice lies in what you aren’t doing, not only in what you are doing.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9.5
History abounds with evidence that humanity is capable of doing evil, not only actively but passively. In some of our most shameful moments—from slavery to the Holocaust to segregation to the murder of Kitty Genovese—guilt wasn’t limited to perpetrators but to ordinary citizens who, for a multitude of reasons, declined to get involved. It’s that old line: all evil needs to prevail is for good men to do nothing.
It’s not enough to just not do evil. You must also be a force for good in the world, as best you can.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman