No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

The sentiment is a classic Socratic/Platonic claim: wrongdoing is typically the product of ignorance or misjudgment rather than a deliberate love of “evil.” People pursue what they take to be good for them—pleasure, advantage, security, status—and harm results when those aims are mistaken for genuine happiness or moral good. Read this way, the line shifts moral focus from condemning “bad people” to examining the errors, self-deceptions, and distorted incentives that lead to harmful choices. It also implies that moral education and clearer understanding of the good are central to ethical improvement, since correcting the mistake can redirect desire toward more truly beneficial ends.