Ideology

Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble -- and his conscience devoured him.  Yes, even Iago was a little lamb, too.  The imagination and spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses.  Ideology -- that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.  That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.

-- Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (1918 - 2008), Russian novelist, and 1970 Nobel laureate in Literature, exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974, The Gulag Archipelago (1973)