Evil Quotes: Exploring the Dark Depths of Human Nature
Unveiling the Shadows of Evil
Evil, with its dark allure and destructive power, has fascinated and haunted humanity throughout history. It represents the depths of human nature that inflict harm, sow discord, and betray our inherent goodness. In this article, we delve into the complex and unsettling realm of evil, presenting a collection of quotes that shed light on its nature, consequences, and the eternal struggle between light and darkness.
Evil is a force that challenges our beliefs, tests our resilience, and confronts us with the fragility of our morality. It manifests in various forms, from acts of violence and cruelty to the subtle corrosion of empathy and compassion. By exploring the shadows of evil, we gain insight into its complexities and are reminded of the importance of cultivating virtues that counteract its influence.
Whispered Darkness: Quotes that Illuminate the Nature of Evil
From philosophers, writers, and individuals who have confronted the depths of human darkness, we gather words that unveil the shadows of evil and provoke contemplation. These quotes provoke thought, encourage self-reflection, and remind us of the eternal battle between good and evil that unfolds within and around us. Below, we present a collection of evil quotes that delve into the complexities of human nature, challenge our assumptions, and inspire us to confront the darkness with courage and resilience.
As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends.
The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.
I’m a really evil person on TV! It’s way more fun to be the bad guy.
We often represent God to ourselves as being able to draw from non-being a world without sorrows, faults, dangers – a world in which there is no damage, no breakage. This is a conceptual fantasy and makes it impossible to solve the problem of evil.
We are all born marked for evil.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
The real evil of the Russian communist state is not communism. It is the secret police and the concentration camp.
The human mind has infinite capacity to rationalize, and evil characters just push that boundary a bit. Whatever they’re doing, they think it makes sense to do it, and they think they have a good reason to do it. In short, they feel justified.
The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.
Evil. Mistrust those who rejoice at it even more than those who do it.
The Divine wisdom has given us prayer, not as a means whereby to obtain the good things of earth, but as a means whereby we learn to do without them; not as a means whereby we escape evil, but as a means whereby we become strong to meet it.
I’m actually an evil bastard in real life. Fark allows me to vent weirdness. Thank god for that, too.
We’re all caught up in circumstances, and we’re all good and evil. When you’re really hungry, for instance, you’ll do anything to survive. I think the most evil thing – well, maybe that’s too strong – but certainly a very evil thing is judgment, the sin of ignorance.
When one has the feeling of dislike for evil, when one feels tranquil, one finds pleasure in listening to good teachings; when one has these feelings and appreciates them, one is free of fear.
The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.
The omission of good is no less reprehensible than the commission of evil.
He incurs a fearful amount of guilt who in the least promotes the aim of the Evil One by trampling upon a tender conscience in a child.
What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant, marvelous and awful, good and evil.
Never let a man imagine that he can pursue a good end by evil means, without sinning against his own soul. The evil effect on himself is certain.
Evil prospers when good men do nothing.
No evil is honorable: but death is honorable; therefore death is not evil.
I believe the root of all evil is abuse of power.
I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.
Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil.
Keep what you have; the known evil is best.
Some people turn from God because they cannot understand how a good God can permit evil in the world.
Whatever one thinks of President George W. Bush and his unilateralist crew, most of the people laughing at us do not think we are evil. What they think is that we are naive and incompetent.
I wrote ‘Evil Spider’ about wanting someone that’s already taken. I guess it was based on a personal experience, but I went a lil extreme on the theme… me being a spider trying to snare someone. In real life, I was just observing!
Transportation made sublimation literal. It conveyed evil to another world.
It’s better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a terrific cost.
I would prefer as friend a good man ignorant than one more clever who is evil too.
Being a hooker does not mean being evil. The same with a pick-pocket, or even a thief. You do what you do out of necessity.
In that wide struggle which we call Progress, evil is always the aggressor and the vanquished, and it is right that this should be so, for without its onslaughts and depredations humanity might fall to a fat slumber upon its cornsacks and die snoring.
Probably the one Bible passage that is read by Jews and Roman Catholics, Protestants, Islam, more than any other chapter is Psalm 23. And in Psalm 23 there is a verse that says, ‘Surely, yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.’
That free will was demonstrated in the placing of temptation before man with the command not to eat of the fruit of the tree which would give him a knowledge of good and evil, with the disturbing moral conflict to which that awareness would give rise.
Listen – of course money changes everything, but so does sunlight, and so does food: These are powerful but neutral energy sources, neither inherently good nor evil but shaped only by the way we use them.
You’re trying your best to make people laugh; then if you fail, they hate you. But your intent’s the same. It’s not like you’re trying to do evil to them.
What bothers most critics of my work is the goofiness. One reviewer said I need to make up my mind if want to be funny or serious. My response is that I will make up my mind when God does, because life is a commingling of the sacred and the profane, good and evil. To try and separate them is fallacy.
I do think that overall blockchains are likely to be a much more powerful force for good than evil.
Our enemies are our evil deeds and their memories, our pride, our selfishness, our malice, our passions, which by conscience or by habit pursue us with a relentlessness past the power of figure to express.
I know why we can’t have a frank discussion with our policymakers – if you’re in the government or in law enforcement you cannot acknowledge that drugs are anything but inherently evil and morally wrong.
All human beings are commingled out of good and evil.
Both mind and heart when given up to reveries and dreaminess, have a thousand avenues open for the entrance of evil.
Every form, not being the whole, must, of necessity, be imperfect; less than the whole, it cannot be identical with the whole, and being less than the whole and, therefore, imperfect by itself, it shows imperfection as evil, and only the totality of a universe can mirror the image of God.
Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over those who feel it least and allow its evil effects to go on.
We can only write well about our sins because it is too difficult to recall a virtuous act or even whether it was the result of good or evil motives.
American people are not evil. Given information, they will do the right thing. But they’re not given the information.
Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.
Like gods, we have created a new universe called cyberspace that contains great good and ominous evil. We do not know yet if this new dimension will produce more monsters than marvels, but it is too late to go back.
There are dictators a bit worse than me, no? I’m the lesser evil already.
There is no evil in the atom; only in men’s souls.
I think the world is full of evil people. I think in some ways we’re in more danger now than before.
One concept corrupts and confuses the others. I am not speaking of the Evil whose limited sphere is ethics; I am speaking of the infinite.
Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels to be warriors for Good accept the demagogy of the angels. Things are clearly more complicated.
What is their potential for evil; what is their potential for wickedness? That’s the only time that those characters become interesting to watch.
Europe and America must act together in the face of evil. It’s high time for Americans and Europeans to restore that unity and be able to take actions collectively together.
We have seen the evil of the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors in our midst; let us try prohibition and see what this will do for us.
‘God’s plan’ is often a front for men’s plans and a cover for inadequacy, ignorance, and evil.
Nothing in the nature around us is evil. This needs to be repeated since one of the human ways of talking oneself into inhuman acts is to cite the supposed cruelty of nature.
Property is not the sacred right. When a rich man becomes poor it is a misfortune, it is not a moral evil. When a poor man becomes destitute, it is a moral evil, teeming with consequences and injurious to society and morality.
Art is an attempt to integrate evil.
War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.
A good villain exudes charisma and power. He has principles, though; that just gives him a level of dimension. It makes him seem to be a bit unpredictable, because he’s usually deemed as some type of evil, ruthless person, and then he shows you his principles, and you don’t know what to think of it.
There’s nothing wrong or evil about having a bad day. There’s everything wrong with making others have to have it… with you.
Every judgement of conscience, be it right or wrong, be it about things evil in themselves or morally indifferent, is obligatory, in such wise that he who acts against his conscience always sins.
I am a Christian; God sent me to fight evil for my people. Jesus was a revolutionist; so am I.
Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit.
Many baseball fans look upon an umpire as a sort of necessary evil to the luxury of baseball, like the odor that follows an automobile.
The world has fundamentally changed. It fundamentally changed when the Berlin Wall came down and the ‘evil empire’ ceased to exist. We are engaged around the world whether we like it or not.
I live in sin, to kill myself I live; no longer my life my own, but sin’s; my good is given to me by heaven, my evil by myself, by my free will, of which I am deprived.
Man must vanquish himself, must do himself violence, in order to perform the slightest action untainted by evil.
We have a mantra: don’t be evil, which is to do the best things we know how for our users, for our customers, for everyone. So I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing.
The fundamental evil of the world arose from the fact that the good Lord has not created money enough.
I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.
We had better dispense with the personification of evil, because it leads, all too easily, to the most dangerous kind of war: religious war.
I truly do believe that history teaches that weakness arouses evil, and whether it be the horrific attack in France, the inspired attacks here in the United States, the instability in Turkey that led to a coup.
May we be saved from evil thoughts and deed of enemies of world peace who find pleasure in creating havoc and perpetrating all forms of carnage.
The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil.
Evil is relative – and what I mean by that is that our villains are as complex, as deep and as compelling as any of our heroes. Every antagonist in the DC Universe has a unique darkness, desire and drive. And the reason for being of ‘Forever Evil’ is to explore that darkness.
I do not believe a good player is capable of having an evil thought during the game.
Evil changes everybody!
As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities.
If somebody plans to carry out a series of murders… then this is obviously an evil and pre-meditated attack and in that case, there could be a deterrent effect.
The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.
Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim.
An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.
I’ve been performing my whole life. My mom signed me up for a theater program when I was five – I was the evil queen in ‘Once Upon a Mattress.’
Scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man’s struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.
Death? Why this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.
A vigorous temper is not altogether an evil. Men who are easy as an old shoe are generally of little worth.
I spent my first three weeks there on a wing with 21 murderers. I met some very evil people there but also some men who’d had no upbringing, no chance in life.
Now that we have a democracy and you can go back and the airport air is not laden with evil any more, you can actually breathe oxygen when you land in Johannesburg.
It is in his knowledge that man has found his greatness and his happiness, the high superiority which he holds over the other animals who inhabit the earth with him, and consequently no ignorance is probably without loss to him, no error without evil.
Savage, despicable evil. That’s what we were fighting in Iraq. That’s why a lot of people, myself included, called the enemy ‘savages.’ There really was no other way to describe what we encountered there.
Above all we should not forget that government is an evil, a usurpation upon the private judgement and individual conscience of mankind.
Here is Mike Wallace, who is visible to the public, and I have been watching him since the early ’50s. Smoking up a storm and insulting his guests and being absolutely wonderfully evil and charming too.
Al Jazeera aired a new tape of Osama bin Laden. It was the usual stuff, he called Bush evil, the Great Satan, called him a war monger. Basically, the same thing you heard at last night’s Democratic debate.
Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil… prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon.
In France, they call the beauty of youth ‘the evil beauty.’ You don’t have it because of you but because you’re born with it. The other kind of beauty is your own work, and it takes forever.
The quality of the Lord’s church on earth, cannot be seen by any man, so long as he lives in the world, still less how the church in process of time has turned aside from good to evil.
Evil is the moment when I lack the strength to be true to the Good that compels me.
If they exert it not for good, they will for evil; if they advance not knowledge, they will perpetuate ignorance.
This is the way of peace: Overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth, and hatred with love.
The true nature of evil is that it is so very casual.
Evil hiding among us is an ancient theme.
Money doesn’t mind if we say it’s evil, it goes from strength to strength. It’s a fiction, an addiction, and a tacit conspiracy.
To me, evil comes when you have a choice between that and good, and you choose the wrong way.
No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.
Evil is the interruption of a truth by the pressure of particular or individual interests.
The bad thing about being a famous comedian is that every now and then someone approaches me to tell an old joke. Don’t tell me jokes – I have that. People also say the weirdest things, sometimes sarcastic things, and even evil things. They like to provoke to get a reaction.
When I was young, I asked my priest how you could get to Heaven and still protect yourself from all the evil in the world. He told me what God said to his children. You are sheep among wolves. Be wise as serpents, yet innocent as doves.
Microsoft isn’t evil, they just make really crappy operating systems.
The principle of evil in Europe is the enervating spirit of Russian absolutism.
I think almost anyone is capable of doing things that are evil or hurtful or harmful.
The idea of evil is always subject to denial as a coping mechanism.
If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.
I’ve often said in the past that I thought MTV was sort of evil incarnate and signified the beginning of the end. And I don’t know if I’m entirely wrong about that, but they did sign my paychecks a year ago, so I guess I’m part of the problem.
Evil has always been there; it’s always a part of us. Evil is no big surprise. But what about the people who gave freely, who stood up for human dignity? Even in the most extreme and terrible situations, these acts of dignity existed. And for me, that is the banality of good.
He knew the lie of silence to be as evil as the lie of speech.
World War II is the greatest drama in human history, the biggest war ever and a true battle of good and evil. I imagine writers will continue to get stories from it, and readers will continue to love them, for many more years.
One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can.
Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.
Cats are evil, and they hate me.
If I were to give advice, I would say to parents that they ought to be very careful whom they allow to mix with their children when young; for much mischief thence ensues, and our natural inclinations are unto evil rather than unto good.
A good man would prefer to be defeated than to defeat injustice by evil means.
An evil life is a kind of death.
There are two different stories in horror: internal and external. In external horror films, the evil comes from the outside, the other tribe, this thing in the darkness that we don’t understand. Internal is the human heart.
I find myself evil. I believe in the devil as much as God. You can use either one to get things done.
Submit to the present evil, lest a greater one befall you.
Be assured those will be thy worst enemies, not to whom thou hast done evil, but who have done evil to thee. And those will be thy best friends, not to whom thou hast done good, but who have done good to thee.
Basting is evil. Basting does nothing for the meat. Why? Skin. Skin is designed to keep stuff out of the bird, so basting just lets heat out of the oven. That means the turkey will take longer to cook… so don’t touch that door!
One should see the world, and see himself as a scale with an equal balance of good and evil. When he does one good deed the scale is tipped to the good – he and the world is saved. When he does one evil deed the scale is tipped to the bad – he and the world is destroyed.
New technology is not good or evil in and of itself. It’s all about how people choose to use it.
Liberal interventions that enable all children to shoot for their potential aren’t just moral, they are pragmatic – any society that wastes talent to poverty or oppression isn’t just evil: it is stupid.
It’s not that Good doesn’t triumph over Evil, it’s that the point spread is too small.
The human person, whose definition serves as the touchstone according to which good must be distinguished from evil, is considered as sacred, in what one might call the ritual sense of the word. It has something of that transcendental majesty which the churches of all times have given to their Gods.
People’s character is their behaviour – we’re all capable of good and evil.
Dr. Evil got shortchanged in the first one. The family dynamic between Scott and Dr. Evil – the adventures of being an evil single parent – needed to be explored.
Evil isn’t prejudiced. It doesn’t care what you look like; it just wants a place to rest. It’s up to you whether you give it that place.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
Whoever has witnessed another’s ideal becomes his inexorable judge and as it were his evil conscience.
The line between good and evil is permeable and almost anyone can be induced to cross it when pressured by situational forces.
January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer’s forehead.
I didn’t have evil intentions, but I guess I did have power.
There is in the end no remedy but truth. It is the one course that cannot be evil.
In both the presence of evil and the eventual triumph over evil the sweep is cosmic. It embraces the entire universe, what to man is both seen and unseen. The victory is to be accomplished through Christ.
Magazines and advertising are flogging the idea that you have to keep changing things and get something new. I think that’s balls – evil. But obviously that’s your livelihood.
Riches and the things that are necessary in life are not evil in themselves. And all of us face cares and troubles in this life. The sin comes in the time and energy we spend in pursuing these things, at the expense of neglecting Christ.
The current health crisis, however, is a little more the work of the evil empire. We were told, we were assured, that the more meat and dairy and poultry we ate, the healthier we’d be.
Faith makes all evil good to us, and all good better; unbelief makes all good evil, and all evil worse. Faith laughs at the shaking of the spear; unbelief trembles at the shaking of a leaf.
We are afraid of ourselves and our own unconscious minds. When we are building something that reflects us, it’s the one thing we’re all afraid to face. We’re afraid to face ourselves. Building machines that mirror our consciousness is a very frightening proposition because we have seen how evil people can be.
When men don’t fear God, they give themselves to evil.
However, without considering this connection, there is no doubt but that more good than evil, more delight than sorrow, arises from compassion itself; there being so many things which balance the sorrow of it.
Friendship multiplies the good of life and divides the evil.
Violence isn’t always evil. What’s evil is the infatuation with violence.
I see in Communism the focus of the concentrated evil of our time.
The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest.
The values by which we are to survive are not rules for just and unjust conduct, but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline.
As God is continually being marginalized and dismissed in the culture, you will continue to see evil proliferate.
In the world we make good as evil and evil as good.
Evil is whatever distracts.
There are two great forces, God’s force of good and the devil’s force of evil, and I believe Satan is alive and he is working, and he is working harder than ever, and we have many mysteries that we don’t understand.
Societies need to have one illness which becomes identified with evil, and attaches blame to its victims.
Likewise, education can direct people toward good or evil ends. When education is based on a fundamentally distorted worldview, the results are horrific.
Behold a worthy sight, to which the God, turning his attention to his own work, may direct his gaze. Behold an equal thing, worthy of a God, a brave man matched in conflict with evil fortune.
If I play a villain, I try to find his lightness and his good side. And if I play a hero or a good guy, I’ll try to find his darkness or his flaws. Because I don’t believe in good and evil. I believe in grays.
Whatever contributes to the preservation of life is good; all that destroys life is evil.
The omnipotence of evil has never resulted in anything but fruitless efforts. Our thoughts always escape from whoever tries to smother them.
If your religion doesn’t teach you the difference between good and evil, your religion is worse than useless.
Bigotry or prejudice in any form is more than a problem; it is a deep-seated evil within our society.
Evil has no limits. If you are a good person, everybody expects you to be good. If you are very good then you become Albert Schweitzer or Mother Theresa. Then you’re very good because you are helping people. But evil has no limits.
Old age is the supreme evil, for it deprives man of all pleasures while allowing his appetites to remain, and it brings with it every possible sorrow. Yet men fear death and desire old age.
Science, as illustrated by the printing press, the telegraph, the railway, is a double-edged sword. At the same moment that it puts an enormous power in the hands of the good man, it also offers an equal advantage to the evil disposed.
Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one’s will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them.
Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil. You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people and that something is democracy.
Evil is always possible. Goodness is a difficulty.
You can make yourself feel better about yourself if you project your shadow side, if you project your own potential for evil onto someone else. By annihilating them and, therefore, your shadow, you bring yourself into some state of purity or reformation.
I do think – I’m sure I’m the lone voice in saying this – that Iran deserves to be annihilated. I think they’re lunatics. I think they’re evil.
The Jew is upset because the nations of the world – the United Nations – lash him, brand him as racist and evil, hate him and openly demonstrate their desire to destroy him.
I wouldn’t say jamie is an evil genius. I’m not sure he’s evil and I’m not sure he’s a genius.
Nothing is so contagious as example; and we never do any great good or evil which does not produce its like.
Religious ideas about good and evil tend to focus on how to achieve well-being in the next life, and this makes them terrible guides to securing it in this one. Of course, there are a few gems to be found in every religious tradition, but insofar as these precepts are wise and useful they are not, in principle, religious.
The winged words uttered in this House have gone forth to the world, on their mission of good or of evil.
Apart altogether from our own vital interests, we cannot and must not desert those other nations who have already gone through so much tragedy and suffering to defeat the evil designs of the Axis powers.
Nation should be rest assured Pakistan is a safe atomic power. No one can cast an evil eye on it.
I profess accurately to describe native Africa – Africa in those places where it has not received the slightest impulse, whether for good or evil, from European civilisation.
Augustine does not disagree with this when he teaches that it is a faculty of the reason and the will to choose good with the assistance of grace; evil, when grace is absent.
Fantasy is an area where it is possible to talk about right and wrong, good and evil, with a straight face. In mainstream fiction and even in a good deal of mystery, these things are presented as simply two sides of the same coin. Never really more than a matter of where you happen to be standing.
Let us never forget that terrorism at its heart, at its evil heart, is a psychological war. It endeavors to break the spirit and the resolve of those it attacks by creating a lose-lose situation.
We have to bring out the truth about how dark and dangerous and evil the taxi side is.
What would I have done if I’d been put to the test? Would I have risked my own life for people I hardly knew? Probably, I would have looked the other way at best or become another apologist for evil at worst.
The most unrealistic thing I’ve ever read in comics is when some group of characters calls themselves the Brotherhood of Evil or the Masters of Evil. I don’t believe any character believes their goals to be truly evil.
To begin with myself, then, the utterances of men concerning me will differ widely, since in passing judgment almost every one is influenced not so much by truth as by preference, and good and evil report alike know no bounds.
The greatest evil which fortune can inflict on men is to endow them with small talents and great ambition.
I think shareholders are the great evil of this modern world.
But he is unworthy the name of a minister of the gospel of peace, who is unwilling, not only to have his name cast out as evil, but also to die for the truths of the Lord Jesus.
How can we condemn those who are truly blinded by evil? We can’t. We shouldn’t. How do we bring about conversion of those living in blindness? By love. By truth in charity. By offering forgiveness. By offering mercy. With prayer.
As the culture war is about irreconcilable beliefs about God and man, right and wrong, good and evil, and is at root a religious war, it will be with us so long as men are free to act on their beliefs.
Death is not evil, for it frees man from all ills and takes away his desires along with desire’s rewards.
We study the injustices of history for the same reason that we study genocide, and for the same reason that psychologists study the minds of murderers and rapists… to understand how those evil things came about.
No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
What happens when good people are put into an evil place? Do they triumph or does the situation dominate their past history and morality?
For those whose wit becomes the mother of villainy, those it educates to be evil in all things.
May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.
To live without evil belongs only to the gods.
Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.
The difference being that in films, unlike in life, good does always win over evil in the end.
George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as ‘evil.’ Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism.
I started realizing how the condition of our hearts affects the way we see. If your heart is full of bitterness, anger, and resentment, you’re going to look at this world as a very evil place.
In morals what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.
Whatever evil a man may think of women, there is no woman but thinks more.
Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.
Politics is a necessary evil, or a necessary annoyance, a necessary conundrum.
Evil report carries further than any applause.
Marriage, if one will face the truth, is an evil, but a necessary evil.
Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.
Religion as a human phenomenon is as riddled through with potential for both good and evil as any other phenomenon.
Every day, do small gestures of generosity! It does not mean go to Cambodia. Do it at home. If you do nothing at home, evil becomes normal.
There is nothing good or evil save in the will.
I don’t need to be made to look evil. I can do that on my own.
There is a soul of truth in error; there is a soul of good in evil.
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.
The young are in great danger. Much evil results from their light and trifling reading. Much time is lost which should be spent in useful employment. Some would even deprive themselves of sleep that they might finish some ridiculous love story.
Here we are in the 70’s when everything really is horrible and it really stinks. The mass media, everything on television everything everywhere is just rotten. You know it’s just really boring and really evil, ugly and worse.
Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is good… Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place.
Evil is always devising more corrosive misery through man’s restless need to exact revenge out of his hate.
Zoroastrians believe in one Great Almighty Spirit of Good who is in combat against evil forces, and Goodness prevails in the end. There is no self-flagellation or staring at the sun or snake-handling.
If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another.
I have been primarily interested in how and why ordinary people do unusual things, things that seem alien to their natures. Why do good people sometimes act evil? Why do smart people sometimes do dumb or irrational things?
Man’s nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.
I fear no man, no beast or evil, brother.
I leave to others the decision as to the good or evil tendencies of my character, but such as it is it shines upon my countenance, and there it can easily be detected by any physiognomist.
Moral evil is the immorality and pain and suffering and tragedy that come because we choose to be selfish, arrogant, uncaring, hateful and abusive.
The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.
The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.
Good courage in a bad affair is half of the evil overcome.
The tree of knowledge is not the tree of life! And yet can we cast out of our spirits all the good or evil poured into them by so many learned generations? Ignorance cannot be learned.
A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.
The lack of money is the root of all evil.
It’s a well-known fact that tall people are evil.
Unfortunately, a human being is able to comprehend only that amount of evil which he is able to commit himself.
It is, alas, chiefly the evil emotions that are able to leave their photographs on surrounding scenes and objects and whoever heard of a place haunted by a noble deed, or of beautiful and lovely ghosts revisiting the glimpses of the moon?
The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.
It is a proof of our natural bias to evil, that gain is slower and harder than loss in all things good; but in all things bad getting is quicker and easier than getting rid of.
Little evil would be done in the world if evil never could be done in the name of good.
I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.
Richard Nixon was an evil man – evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency.
Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.
Snakes are sometimes perceived as evil, but they are also perceived as medicine. If you look at an ambulance, there’s the two snakes on the side of the ambulance. The caduceus, or the staff of Hermes, there’s the two snakes going up it, which means that the venom can also be healing.
To do nothing evil is good; to wish nothing evil is better.
Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
Larger deficits are necessary and proper means to mitigate unemployment as the far greater evil in terms of human welfare.
Evil communication corrupts good manners. I hope to live to hear that good communication corrects bad manners.
Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art.
Oh yes, there’s lots of great food in America. But the fast food is about as destructive and evil as it gets. It celebrates a mentality of sloth, convenience, and a cheerful embrace of food we know is hurting us.
I do not believe evil men are led by God. I believe there are plots of evil. We live in a sinful world, and there are a lot of things that happen as a result of sin.
‘Climb Every Mountain’ is a beautiful statement of philosophy. Critics may think ‘The Sound of Music’ is saccharine, but I think it’s profound. The message, that we can’t accommodate evil, is just as important today.
If the guilt of sin is so great that nothing can satisfy it but the blood of Jesus; and the filth of sin is so great that nothing can fetch out the stain thereof but the blood of Jesus, how great, how heinous, how sinful must the evil of sin be.
Terrorism is an evil that threatens all the countries in Europe. Vigorous cooperation in the European Union and worldwide is crucial in order to meet this evil head on.
We took this challenge before our Lord and our conscience, and it must be done, because this man, Hitler, he is the ultimate evil.
Work and struggle and never accept an evil that you can change.
However great an evil immorality may be, we must not forget that it is not without its beneficial consequences. It is only through extremes that men can arrive at the middle path of wisdom and virtue.
Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.
An institution or reform movement that is not selfish, must originate in the recognition of some evil that is adding to the sum of human suffering, or diminishing the sum of happiness.
Evil looks like you and I. I know what evil looks like, and I know that it comes in all shades and colors.
You cannot of yourself move your arm or alter your position, situation, posture, do to other men good or evil, or effect the least change in the world.
I have this fear of clowns, so I think that if I surround myself with them, it will ward off all evil.
If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.
No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.
I believe that dogma is often evil.
For a man, the soul of a woman is a preserving talisman, guarding him from moral infections; it is a power holding him to the straight path, a guide leading him back from the crooked to the straight. On the other hand, the soul of a woman can be his evil and ruin him forever.
Evil borders upon good, and vices are confounded with virtues; as the report of good qualities is delightful to a well-disposed mind, so the relation of the contrary should not be offensive.
Nobody thinks that they’re evil or bad, they think that they’re doing the right thing.
The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance.
Tolerating evil leads only to more evil. And when good people stand by and do nothing while wickedness reigns, their communities will be consumed.
I’m not saying I do evil things. I’m just saying if a cop stops me when I’m speeding, sometimes – not all the time – I might get out of that ticket. Let’s just say I don’t have any points on my licence in Ireland, and I drive relatively quickly.
It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.
Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.
A man prone to suspect evil is mostly looking in his neighbor for what he sees in himself.
Evil is only good perverted.
This is a struggle of good and evil. And we’re the good.
Neither gods nor men can foresee when an evil deed will bear its fruit.
It is my opinion that human history can make no sense unless evil doings are recognized for what they are, and that they are bearable only if somehow they may be redeemed.
Women are hypocrites. Women are opportunists. Women are liars. They are abusers and bullies and manipulators. They are capable of cruelty, callousness, and evil. Just like men.
Oh, you know, driving around, coming to a stop sign and an entire family, from 8 to 80, will be looking at me with that Dr. Evil look – pinkie on the mouth.
We’re never going to be able to get rid of terrorism, because there is always going to be evil in the world.
This part of Brazil offered the curious spectacle of a great evil, which has been long suffered to exist and is now advancing, gradually yet surely, to that state which must entail inevitable destruction on the existing Government of the country.
Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil.
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
The most momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.
9/11 was a deliberate, carefully planned evil act of the long-waged war on the West by Koran-inspired soldiers of Allah around the world. They hated us before George W. Bush was in office. They hated us before Israel existed. And the avengers of the religion of perpetual outrage will keep hating us.
Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.
Democracy is not static. It is a living force. Every new idea, every new invention offers opportunity for both good and evil.
The evil of slavery and colonialism was that these oppressions kept their victims out of history, disconnected them from the evolutionary struggle.
I have always regarded global development as a struggle between the forces of good and evil. Not to be simplified as a struggle between Jesus and Satan, since I do not consider that the process is restricted to our own sphere of culture.
Despite my emphasis on technology, I do not view laws as inherently evil. My goals are political ones, even if my techniques are not. The only way to fundamentally succeed is by changing existing laws. If I rejected all help from the political arena I would inevitably fail.
I became fascinated with the concept of speak no, see no, hear no evil. And – and the actual depiction of three wise monkeys. And I began collecting it over the years. And I kind of figured that I might be the – the fourth monkey, the feel no evil monkey.
Americans must outgrow the unbecoming arrogance that leads us to assert that America somehow owns a monopoly on goodness and truth – a belief that leads some to view the world as but a stage on which to play out the great historical drama: the United States of America versus the Powers of Evil.
I’m not evil, but some people are freaked out by a living doll.
Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.
Everyone spends their lives trying to balance their world between good and evil.
How easy it is to judge rightly after one sees what evil comes from judging wrongly!
I’d seen all of John Hughes’s movies. All the Spielberg stuff. A bunch of ’80s horror, like ‘Evil Dead.’
When good people in any country cease their vigilance and struggle, then evil men prevail.
My evil genius Procrastination has whispered me to tarry ’til a more convenient season.
You may be educated abroad, you may be a great scientist, politician, but you always have a sneaking fear that if you don’t go to temples or do the ordinary things that you have been told to do, something evil might happen, so you conform. What happens to the mind that conforms? Investigate it, please.
Apartheid – both petty and grand – is obviously evil. Nothing can justify the arrogant assumption that a clique of foreigners has the right to decide on the lives of a majority.
Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
In this life, we have to make many choices. Some are very important choices. Some are not. Many of our choices are between good and evil. The choices we make, however, determine to a large extent our happiness or our unhappiness, because we have to live with the consequences of our choices.
Certainly it is wrong to be cruel to animals and the destruction of a whole species can be a great evil. The capacity for feelings of pleasure and pain and for the form of life of which animals are capable clearly impose duties of compassion and humanity in their case.
Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. For years we lived anyhow with one another in the naked desert, under the indifferent heaven.
The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.
Our ‘neoconservatives’ are neither new nor conservative, but old as Bablyon and evil as Hell.
Nobody should be forced to face evil with empty hands.
Evil societies always kill their consciences.
There are still people in Japan who think money is something evil.
Cursed is the man who dies, but the evil done by him survives.
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.
In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution is a moral & political evil in any country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages.
I think that money is the root of all evil. I’ve seen it happen.
Taxes are not good things, but if you want services, somebody’s got to pay for them so they’re a necessary evil.
I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.
No intelligent man believes that anybody ever willingly errs or willingly does base and evil deeds; they are well aware that all who do base and evil things do them unwillingly.
In this very real world, good doesn’t drive out evil. Evil doesn’t drive out good. But the energetic displaces the passive.
Nature, more of a stepmother than a mother in several ways, has sown a seed of evil in the hearts of mortals, especially in the more thoughtful men, which makes them dissatisfied with their own lot and envious of another’s.
I lift my voice of warning against praising or flattering your ministers. I have seen the evil, the dreadful evil, of praising ministers. Never, never speak a word in the praise of ministers to their faces. Exalt God.
Every minute you are thinking of evil, you might have been thinking of good instead. Refuse to pander to a morbid interest in your own misdeeds. Pick yourself up, be sorry, shake yourself, and go on again.
Only among people who think no evil can Evil monstrously flourish.
We all say, ‘You don’t have to run around playing all these tournaments and trying to conquer the world like Dr. Evil.’
The ‘Axis of Evil’ was – and is – very real, as the tyrants of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea knew full well.
Evil walks among us, and God help us if we don’t harden our schools and protect our kids.
There is nothing evil save that which perverts the mind and shackles the conscience.
If there was no moral evil upon earth, there would be no physical evil.
In order for a man to be truly evil, he must be a woman.
I always end up being the evil one, and I wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Evil comes in many forms, and whether you are male or female, that doesn’t matter as much as what lurks in your mind.
Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.
I think that technologies are morally neutral until we apply them. It’s only when we use them for good or for evil that they become good or evil.
I am perhaps a late follower of Zoroaster and I believe that the foundation of life is built upon the struggle between the two opposing forces of Good and Evil.
Increasing the sale of liquor may benefit the government in terms of revenue. But liquor is a social evil, and its biggest victims are women and their children.
The living werewolves have genuine needs and desires, which, though they may oppose ours, are valid. Even if they want to eat humans, you can’t really call them evil, any more than mice can call cats evil, or chickens can call humans evil. It’s all just a matter of where you’re standing.
If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.
The people who whine about Fox News are hypocrites – they say they’re totally tolerant, but when they run into someone who doesn’t share their assumptions, they say, ‘Fox News is evil, and it must be stopped.’
I don’t buy into any of that hogwash. They put that out to sell tickets. It’s just a classic horror movie, with the Greek drama formula of good versus evil, and lots of fear.
Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.
Young people are threatened… by the evil use of advertising techniques that stimulate the natural inclination to avoid hard work by promising the immediate satisfaction of every desire.
There are evil people, and I don’t even want to hear those guys speak.
Abortion and racism are evil twins, born of the same lie. Where racism now hides its face in public, abortion is accomplishing the goals of which racism only once dreamed. Together, abortionists are destroying humanity at large and the black community in particular.
No tyrant, however evil, has yet lacked ready hands to execute his most abominable will. To read how eagerly men have rushed to serve the despot is the bitterest, the saddest matter of history; it is the saddest sight in our own day.
When evil acts in the world it always manages to find instruments who believe that what they do is not evil but honorable.
No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.
If a man devotes himself to art, much evil is avoided that happens otherwise if one is idle.
If you vote for evil, you are evil yourself.
God made a mistake when he gave to humans, infected as they are with evil, jurisdiction over Earth. He should have given jurisdiction to animals.
The most painful moral struggles are not those between good and evil, but between the good and the lesser good.
The moment you introduce the element of IT, which is an interdimensional evil entity, the presence of the turtle comes with it, as a counterbalance.
Our modern world, though infinitely more complex than that of ancient Greece, is also far more superficial. Where the Greeks offered simple psychological training, we live in an age of style and spin in which perceptions of good and evil slither and shift with the political view of the moment.
The Word of fire burns today On the lips of our prophets in an evil age.
The want of money is the root of all evil.
Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.
You have to go to what the essence of what Pennywise is about – the dark power of adulthood. It’s not coincidence all the grown-ups in town are evil. This is not a story about a monster. It’s a story about the end of childhood.
I believe you can make forces of good and evil work for you, to get what you want.
Evil, by definition, is that which endangers the good, and the good is what we perceive as a value.
There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it.
The way I wanted to write it, is with a hero, or sort of a pure character who was the protagonist. And the antagonists were these demonic evil children, cause when you’re a kid, seven or eight years old, and you’re looking at the world around you – everything seems black or white, good or bad.
Music is a part of someone’s soul. Music is a feeling for me. And if that soul is evil, then I don’t want anything to do with it.
He who speaks evil only differs from his who does evil in that he lacks opportunity.
It is dangerous when you start calling people from one part of the world terrorists or fanatic, and you reduce them to some abstract notion. If evil has a geographical place, and if the evil has a name, that is the beginning of fascism. Real life is not this way. You have fanatics and narrow-minded people everywhere.
I am not moved by what people say or do concerning my relationship with God. I submit myself to His direct will, which is good and perfect with no evil in it.
The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
I think chalking up human behavior to evil lets us all off the hook too easily.
Some creative writing programs seem evil, but my experience at Irvine was totally the opposite, where I feel like they were really good at focusing in on each writers voice and setting. When I felt like I was obligated to write a story that was more typical, no one really liked it.
The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing.
Unfortunately our nation, nay, our world, is run by evil morons.
The extravagant expenditure of public money is an evil not to be measured by the value of that money to the people who are taxed for it.
Don’t speak evil of someone if you don’t know for certain, and if you do know ask yourself, why am I telling it?
I don’t think good and evil are polarized.
Stand and fight for those who are not weak but have yet to discover the strength that the evil of this world has done its best to conceal.
We know that segregation is evil. We know that the sickest children should not go to the worst hospitals.
Evil is a source of moral intelligence in the sense that we need to learn from our shadow, from our dark side, in order to be good.
Anti-capitalism is nothing new in Hollywood. From ‘Wall-E’ to ‘Avatar,’ corporations are routinely depicted as evil. The contradiction of corporate-funded films denouncing corporations is an irony capitalism cannot just absorb, but thrive on. Yet this anti-capitalism is only allowed within limits.
AI is neither good nor evil. It’s a tool. It’s a technology for us to use.
People desire to separate their worlds into polarities of dark and light, ugly and beautiful, good and evil, right and wrong, inside and outside. Polarities serve us in our learning and growth, but as souls we are all.
Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.
It is curious how, from time immemorial, man seems to have associated the idea of evil with beauty, shrunk from it with a sort of ghostly fear, while, at the same time drawn to it by force of its hypnotic attraction.
The usual cause of evil in the world is that at any given time half the people in the world are awake.
If a man suffers ill, let it be without shame; for this is the only profit when we are dead. You will never say a good word about deeds that are evil and disgraceful.
I do like to explore evil characters in my books.
When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil.
Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil.
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
I don’t hate anyone. I just see the evil some pretend doesn’t exist.
I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.
Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.
To me, a ‘brand’ sounds evil.
Most of us grew up with video games in the household, either the original Nintendo in the living room or hoarding quarters for that trip to the arcade. And as time moves on, that line of nostalgia will keep moving forward where ‘Frogger’ gets replaced with ‘Street Fighter 2’ or ‘Resident Evil 4.’
Voting for a candidate solely because of that candidate’s support for abortion or against him or her solely on the basis of his or her race is to promote an intrinsic evil. To do so consciously is indeed sinful. That is behavior incompatible with being a Christian.
The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.
The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed.
It is a beautiful trait in the lover’s character, that they think no evil of the object loved.
If religion cannot restrain evil, it cannot claim effective power for good.
Human nature is evil, and goodness is caused by intentional activity.
Right now, my favorite game is Resident Evil 2.
What you get in the Cold War is ‘the wilderness of mirrors’ where you have to figure out what’s good and what’s evil. That’s good for John le Carre, but not me.
Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honored by the name of ‘speculation’; but which ought to be called Gambling.
Every year of my life I grow more convinced that it is wisest and best to fix our attention on the beautiful and the good, and dwell as little as possible on the evil and the false.
I did not feel ‘evil’ when I wrote advertisements for Puerto Rico. They helped attract industry and tourists to a country which had been living on the edge of starvation for 400 years.
No one who errs unwillingly is evil.
The minute we stop learning, we begin death, the process of dying. We learn from each other with every action we perform. We are teaching goodness or evil every time we step out of the house and into the street.
Envy, my son, wears herself away, and droops like a lamb under the influence of the evil eye.
So certainly, if we can tell evil stories to make people sick, we can also tell good myths that make them well.
Much that we call evil is really good in disguises; and we should not quarrel rashly with adversities not yet understood, nor overlook the mercies often bound up in them.
Some things must be good in themselves, else there could be no measure whereby to lay out good and evil.
Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
My good works, however wretched and imperfect, have been made better and perfected by Him Who is my Lord: He has rendered them meritorious. As to my evil deeds and my sins, He hid them at once. The eyes of those who saw them, He made even blind; and He has blotted them out of their memory.
This is the essential evil of vice, that it debases man.
I’m saying that the WMD reporting was not consciously evil. It was bad journalism, even very bad journalism.
It’s just this little comedy about this group of guys, and their local hangout is a pool hall, and it’s starting to get taken over by this big corporate, evil kind of guy. And it’s just about them trying to save the day and their little pool hall in the process of it all. It’s called ‘Think Tank.’
I can not think of any circumstances in which advertising would not be an evil.
I always loved stage combat at drama school so I can’t wait to get on set and kick some evil monsters into the next dimension!
Money is the fruit of evil, as often as the root of it.
I feel that sin and evil are the negative part of you, and I think it’s like a battery: you’ve got to have the negative and the positive in order to be a complete person.
The only way to defeat evil is by taking advantage of our freedoms.
I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.
In the hip-hop world, Eazy-E was the personification of evil. He paid my hospital bill, about $60,000, but he made me pay him back, which is cool, except that I later found out that he paid the bill out of my share of a publishing deal he made for me.
Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.
Behind the man is the Tree of Life, bearing twelve fruits, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is behind the woman; the serpent is twining round it.
When you locate good in yourself, approve of it with determination. When you locate evil in yourself, despise it as something detestable.
Idleness among children, as among men, is the root of all evil, and leads to no other evil more certain than ill temper.
I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.
Think what evil creeps liberals would be if their plans to enfeeble the individual, exhaust the economy, impede the rule of law, and cripple national defense were guided by a coherent ideology instead of smug ignorance.
If a mosquito has a soul, it is mostly evil. So I don’t have too many qualms about putting a mosquito out of its misery. I’m a little more respectful of ants.
The modern view of criminal justice, broadly, is that public concern with morality or expediency decrees expiation for the violation of a norm; this concern finds expression in the infliction of punishment on the evil doer by agents of the state, the evil doer, however, enjoying the protection of a regular procedure.
Only lies and evil come from letting people off.
Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness.
When evil men destroy, good men must build and bind.
One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.
The Antichrist is often identified with the second beast in the Book of Revelation that arises from the land, the beast that tries to make everyone worship the power of evil.
I love good and pleasure, I hate evil and pain, I want to be happy and I am not mistaken in believing, that people, angels and even demons have those same inclinations.
We must not confuse religion with God, or technology with science. Religion stands in relationship to God as technology does in relation to science. Both the conduct of religion and the pursuit of technology are capable of leading mankind into evil; but both can prompt great good.
Our bodies must always be wherever that struggle and the moment we forget that, the moment we become lazy, the moment we sit back, then then the evil ones do their ordained tasks to us.
In the myopic world of the liberals, guns are responsible for evil instead of the perpetrator of evil. But criminals are not bound by our laws. That’s what makes them criminals.
As covetousness is the root of all evil, so poverty is the worst of all snares.
You often feel that your prayers scarcely reach the ceiling; but, oh, get into this humble spirit by considering how good the Lord is, and how evil you all are, and then prayer will mount on wings of faith to heaven.
The man who promises everything is sure to fulfil nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition.
There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.
Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.
Human beings are capable of great good, but also of the basest evil.
I have always stuck to my guns about what I want from the work and what interests me. I’ve never been seduced down the evil path. The path of taking the money.
The Matrix itself is not some external evil, but rather an outcome of our own error, our karmic payoff of past actions. Not merely illusion, it is an allusion to a founding myth of our culture.
Gossip needn’t be false to be evil – there’s a lot of truth that shouldn’t be passed around.
We are free, but not to be evil, not to be indifferent to human suffering, not to profit from the people, from the work created and sustained through their spirit of political association, while refusing to contribute to the political state that we profit from.
Evil can be a teacher, if you look at the wisdom of its negative power.
Yes, of course it’s fun to play evil, but it’s simply fun to play any different characters.
War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.
You can best fight any existing evil from the inside.
Desire is poverty. Desire is the greatest impurity of the mind. Desire is the motive force for action. Desire in the mind is the real impurity. Even a spark of desire is a very great evil.
Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to choose between the two.
The disease of an evil conscience is beyond the practice of all the physicians of all the countries in the would.
The exclusion of God automatically means the inclusion of evil.
So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds.
One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.
Where destruction is the motive, unity is dangerous. For example, if I have evil intent and I galvanize that evil intent with many others, the capacity to destroy is immense. Where goodness is the motive, unity is phenomenal and actually has some good issues to it.
Although images of perfection in people’s personal lives can cause unhappiness, images of perfect societies – utopian images – can cause monstrous evil. In fact, forcefully changing society to conform to societal images was the greatest cause of evil in the twentieth century.
I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.
Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens.
The unique and supreme voluptuousness of love lies in the certainty of committing evil. And men and women know from birth that in evil is found all sensual delight.
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
It is a great evil, as well as a misfortune, to be unable to utter a prompt and decided ‘no’.
Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.
Christ shared our experience; he suffered as we suffer; he died as we shall die, and for forty days in the desert he underwent the struggle between good and evil.
I’m not this horrible, evil person.
Sometimes the way you respond to horrific, evil deeds is the measure of one’s self as a man, as a nation, as people, as a community.
I do not concern myself with gods and spirits either good or evil nor do I serve any.
Even papists could not see that a moral evil was detained in the soul through its physical connection with the body; and that it required the dissolution of this physical connection before the moral contagion could be removed.
The first idea the child must acquire is that of the difference between good and evil.
No matter how daring or cautious you may choose to be, in the course of your life, you are bound to come into direct physical contact with what’s known as Evil. I mean here not a property of the gothic novel but, to say the least, a palpable social reality that you in no way can control.
If the myth of pure evil is that evil is committed with the intention of causing harm and an absence of moral considerations, then it applies to very few acts of so-called ‘pure evil’ because most evildoers believe what they are doing is forgivable or justifiable.
In the last analysis, even the best man is evil: in the last analysis, even the best woman is bad.
Once a food becomes off-limits, then it takes on this whole other personality. ‘Forbidden’ is more tempting. And it becomes something evil, but food is food. It’s there to nourish your body.
I tend to think of action movies as exuberant morality plays in which good triumphs over evil.
It has been rightly said that nothing is unimportant, nothing powerless in the universe; a single atom can dissolve everything, and save everything! What terror! There lies the eternal distinction between good and evil.
We all agree that we’ve got to bring these terrorists to justice and to make sure that they’re never allowed to perpetrate such an evil act as they did. And so all of us are dealing with that. We know that the President has the authority to go to war under the War Powers Act.
Do I live as carelessly and worldly as unbelievers while professing to be a follower of Jesus? If so, I am exposing Christianity to ridicule and leading people to speak evil of the holy name by which I am called.
The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul still in its grip.
A good End cannot sanctify evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it.
I don’t believe in devils. Indifference and misunderstandings can create evil situations. Most of the time, people who appear to be evil are really victims of evil deeds.
In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights.
Evil wants you to think that its power is absolute, endless. It wants to so make you quake and quiver that all you’ll do is fall down and worship it.
To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.
Cryptocurrencies are not evil and are not for money launderers and scammers. They are for entrepreneurs, technologists, change-the-world dreamers, and anyone who believes they can (and will) enable new business models, new types of organizations, and new ways to service consumers and businesses alike.
Evil gains work their punishment.
The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity.
The words spoken by the leader of the free world can expand the frontiers of freedom or shrink them. When Ronald Reagan called on Gorbachev to ‘tear down this wall’, a surge of confidence rose that would ultimately breach the bounds of the evil empire.
Words can sometimes be used to confuse, but it’s up to the practitioners of the study of language to apply them for good and not for evil. It is just like fire; fire can heat your house or burn it down.
God seldom suspends the laws of nature, just as God does not remove free will to keep evil people from doing evil things.
As is well known, ‘McCarthyism’ was an alleged focus of political evil in the 1950s: Accusations of Communist taint, without factual basis; bogus lists of supposed Communists who never existed; failure in the end to produce even one provable Communist or Soviet agent, despite his myriad charges of subversion.
We have tried to define precisely what it means to be a force for good – always do the right, ethical thing. Ultimately, ‘Don’t be evil’ seems the easiest way to summarize it.
To be painted a villain, you have to do something, I guess, evil or something heinous, and I don’t know if I fit that description.
Scientology is not written with disrespect toward God. It doesn’t worship something that is evil. It is scientific, mathematical, and spiritual. The black community has to check it out and see what’s there. I’m not saying it’s for everyone, but you have to take a look.
It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.
Often an entire city has suffered because of an evil man.
He uses his good powers for evil, and that’s when it gets to the dangerous side of it.
It’s not about ‘NBC is evil.’ It’s about that media structure – CBS, ABC, CNN, even some of the smaller operations are now multinationals, with these extraordinarily diverse holdings.
Just because we’re rid of Saddam and the evil Batthists doesn’t mean the occupation is a good thing. Our salvation from Saddam was only with the grace of God.
The evil influence of Satan would destroy any hope we have in overcoming our mistakes. He would have us feel that we are lost and that there is no hope. In contrast, Jesus reaches down to us to lift us up.
Most people think companies are basically evil. They get a bad rap. And I think that’s somewhat correct.
Krishna children were taught that in the spiritual world there were no parents, only souls and hence this justified their being kept out of view from others, cloistered in separate buildings and sheltered from the evil material world.
Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.
I will begin with this confession: whatever I have done in the course of my life, whether it be good or evil, has been done freely; I am a free agent.
The world needs anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn’t angry enough.
A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.
The great and important duty which is incumbent on Christians, is to guard against all appearance of evil; to watch against the first risings in the heart to evil; and to have a guard upon our actions, that they may not be sinful, or so much as seem to be so.
I went to America to convert the Indians, but, oh, who shall convert me? Who, what, is he that will deliver me from this evil heart of unbelief?
I will not play just an evil part. In fact, I got offered $7 million several years ago to play the part that Faye Dunaway played in ‘Supergirl.’ I was kind of insulted. I was impressed with the money, but I said, ‘Why are you asking me to play an evil witch? Do I come across as an evil witch to you?’
In revolt against this new and very evil thing came the republicanism of the eighteenth century, inspired and directed in large measure by members of the fast perishing aristocracy of race, character and tradition.
Orthodox Christianity, by playing upon the emotions of man, is able to accomplish wonders toward keeping him in order and relieving his mind. It can frighten or cajole him away from evil more effectively than could reason.
Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.
Moral authority has been laid to rest, world opinion is no more than a game show and the difference between good and evil is about as relevant as changing channels.
When we forgive evil we do not excuse it, we do not tolerate it, we do not smother it. We look the evil full in the face, call it what it is, let its horror shock and stun and enrage us, and only then do we forgive it.
For about 125 years, give or take, the Canadian government has acted extremely badly – even in a way which should be called evil – breaking treaties, breaking agreements.
The conscience of children is formed by the influences that surround them; their notions of good and evil are the result of the moral atmosphere they breathe.
The case of Afghanistan vs. the Soviet Union is the clearest case of good against evil that I’ve seen in my lifetime. I thought it was terrific the way they got their country back.
The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.
Almost all people have this potential for evil, which would be unleashed only under certain dangerous social circumstances.
It is the eve of St. George’s Day. Do you not know that tonight, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway?
Stuffing is evil. Stuffing adds mass, so it slows the cooking. That’s evil because the longer the bird cooks, the drier it will be.
Nature soaks every evil with either fear or shame.
Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.
I think everyone must settle for what is in the parameter of their own rights. No one must have an evil intention toward the territorial benefit or integrity of other nations.
I struggle with insecurities. I struggle with forgiveness. I struggle with letting someone go that did me dirty without vengeance, which is an evil thing.
For me the root of evil today is the policy of President Bush. It is a fascist policy. I cannot understand how is it that the Jewish people, who have been the victims of Nazism, can support such a fascist policy. No other people in the world support those policies but Israel! This situation saddens me.
The state of Michigan going to Trump was an amazing thing. Of course the fake news media was shocked; they never considered that white working class residents of Michigan may not like being called evil racists clinging to guns and Bibles.
Art is built on the deepest themes of human meaning: good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death, love and hate. No other story has incarnated those themes more than the story of Jesus.
If power made one evil, then God would be the Devil.
I went looking for embodiments of pure evil, but found ordinary people.
The humblest individual exerts some influence, either for good or evil, upon others.
I would recommend ‘Lesson Of The Evil’ to be given as a DVD gift on a child’s 15th birthday. In Japan, children under 15 are not allowed to watch it. Plus, ‘Lesson Of The Evil’ is one film where the older you get, the more you will be able to understand and enjoy the film.
The problem was the journalists who also did not understand much of my music, but they wrote about it. I think you fell into the usual trap laid out by parts of the press and other writers: that the poor musician has always to fight the evil companies and managers.
No one is born evil; it’s just the choices that they make.
There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.
In restoring man from evil sovereignty, we must cheat.
An evil person is like a dirty window, they never let the light shine through.
Be good to others, that will protect you against evil.
The problem of evil, that is to say the reconciling of our failures, even the purely physical ones, with creative goodness and creative power, will always remain one of the most disturbing mysteries of the universe for both our hearts and our minds.
Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.
Once to every person and nation come the moment to decide. In the conflict of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.
Let us not paralyze our capacity for good by brooding of man’s capacity for evil.
We can overcome evil with greater good.
All punishment is mischief; all punishment in itself is evil.
To do no evil is good, to intend none better.
When good befalls a man he calls it Providence, when evil fate.
See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil… I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life.
‘Evil men have no songs.’ How is it that the Russians have songs?
Evil is not something superhuman, it’s something less than human.
In Arizona we have passed laws to free our people so that they can defend themselves and their loved ones. You cannot predict where evil will raise its head, but you can be prepared for it.
Although God loves us unconditionally, He does get angry at sin, wickedness and evil. But He is not an angry God. God hates sin, but He loves sinners! He will never approve of sin in your life, but He always loves you and wants to work with you to make progress in living a holy life in Christ.
This persistence as private firms continued because it ensured the maximum of anonymity and secrecy to persons of tremendous public power who dreaded public knowledge of their activities as an evil almost as great as inflation.
Abortion isn’t a lesser evil, it’s a crime. Taking one life to save another, that’s what the Mafia does. It’s a crime. It’s an absolute evil.
In the early 1940s, as a young teenager, I was utterly appalled by the racist and jingoist hysteria of the anti-Japanese propaganda. The Germans were evil, but treated with some respect: They were, after all, blond Aryan types, just like our imaginary self-image. Japanese were mere vermin, to be crushed like ants.
Ambition is not in itself an evil; nor is he to be condemned whose spirit prompts him to seek fame by worthy and honourable ways.
I know I always look like the evil one bossing the band around in ‘Scrubs’ – well, I’m the same in real life too.
That in man which cannot be domesticated is not his evil but his goodness.
Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.
Christ has conquered death, not only by suppressing its evil effects, but by reversing its sting. By virtue of Christ’s rising again, nothing any longer kills inevitably, but everything is capable of becoming the blessed touch of the divine hands, the blessed influence of the will of God upon our lives.
Bullies may be the perpetrators of evil, but it is the evil of passivity of all those who know what is happening and never intervene that perpetuates such abuse.
Passion is the evil in adultery. If a man has no opportunity of living with another man’s wife, but if it is obvious for some reason that he would like to do so, and would do so if he could, he is no less guilty than if he was caught in the act.
Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.
Money is the root of all evil, and yet it is such a useful root that we cannot get on without it any more than we can without potatoes.
It would be lovely if it was all Right vs. Wrong, Good overcomes Evil – I think most Americans, going about their daily lives, fool themselves into thinking that that’s how our little world works, but it just isn’t so.
Two urns on Jove’s high throne have ever stood, the source of evil one, and one of good; from thence the cup of mortal man he fills, blessings to these, to those distributes ills; to most he mingles both.
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
Evil and good are God’s right hand and left.
It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.
When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that.
Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.
Corruption is… the result of a decadent political regime. We are absolutely convinced that this evil is the main cause of social and economic inequality, and also that corruption is to blame for the violence in our country.
A child rightly trained may be a world-wide blessing, with an influence reaching onward to eternal years. But a neglected or misdirected directed child may live to blight and blast mankind, and leave influences of evil which shall roll on in increasing volume till they plunge into the gulf of eternal perdition.
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
Sometimes the right response to evil is an appeal to powerful and effective social organization – an appeal to civilization itself.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
It is fashionable in some quarters to say our ancestors were all evil. I reject that notion. I also reject the elitist worldview that these United States are anything but the greatest nation in the history of mankind.
I feel it’s in people’s nature to want to stop evil and embrace the good.
America has shown its evil intentions, and the proud Iraqi people cannot accept it. They must defend their rights by any means they see fit.
The world is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil.
I think that generally music should be a positive thing, I like Bob Marley’s attitude: he said that his goal in life was to single handedly fight all the evil in the world with nothing but music, and when he went to a place he didn’t go to play, he went to conquer.
At some point we must make a decision not to allow the mere threat of charges of cultural or religious insensitivity to stop us from dealing with this evil.
People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don’t know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.
To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.
Struggle is strengthening. Battling with evil gives us the power to battle evil even more.
Johnny Depp is like a brother to me. We have matching tattoos on our backs – Charles Baudelaire, the flowers of evil, this giant skeleton thing. It’s kind of a secret. People say to us, ‘Why did you get that?’ And we say, ‘No reason.’
All things can corrupt when minds are prone to evil.
In conclusion, evil serves as a haunting reminder of the complexities and vulnerabilities of human nature. It urges us to confront the shadows within ourselves and in society, to recognize the consequences of our actions, and to strive for a world that embraces the values of empathy, justice, and compassion. As we reflect on these quotes, may we fortify our inner light, cultivate virtues that counteract the influence of evil, and work towards building a more harmonious and compassionate world. Let us confront the darkness with courage, while holding onto the hope and belief in the transformative power of goodness.
