“ Hence, also, we are all innocent to begin with, and this merely means that neither we nor others know the evil of our own nature; it only appears with the motives, and only in time do the motives appear in knowledge. ”
 Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (1819). copy citation

edit

“Especially what is bad in the character will always come out more strongly with time, yet sometimes it occurs that passions which a man gave way to in his youth are afterwards voluntarily restrained, simply because the motives opposed to them have only then come into knowledge. Hence, also, we are all innocent to begin with, and this merely means that neither we nor others know the evil of our own nature; it only appears with the motives, and only in time do the motives appear in knowledge. [pg 382] Finally we come to know ourselves as quite different from what a priori we supposed ourselves to be, and then we are often terrified at ourselves.
Repentance never proceeds from a change of the will (which is impossible), but from a change of knowledge.” source

write a note