Stephen Jay Gould's "Great Asymmetry"

First elucidated in an article in Science in 1998,...

As an example of the misuse of science and technology for destructive and immoral ends (usually quite contrary to the inventor's genuine intent as well), the guillotine hardly merits a glance compared with such efficient agents of wartime destruction as gunpowder, napalm, or atomic weaponry—not to mention the truly unintended and purely consequential impacts of technology on global environments, human social problems, and biodiversity...

The essence of human tragedy... lies in the power of politics, reaction, and irrationality to overwhelm the still, small voice of science, and even to use its tools of intended benevolence for perverse ends...

Homo sapiens is not an evil or destructive species. But the architecture of structural complexity—the great asymmetry of my title—permits moments to undo what only centuries can build. The essential human tragedy, and the true source of science's potential misuse for destruction, lies in the ineluctable nature of this great asymmetry, not in the character of knowledge itself. We perform 10,000 acts of small and unrecorded kindness for each surpassingly rare, but sadly balancing, moment of cruelty...

... Gould reaffirmed his view in a NYT opinion piece in 2001:

Good and kind people outnumber all others by thousands to one. The tragedy of human history lies in the enormous potential for destruction in rare acts of evil, not in the high frequency of evil people. Complex systems can only be built step by step, whereas destruction requires but an instant. Thus, in what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoted and invisible as the ''ordinary'' efforts of a vast majority.