Quotes on Evil

Destroy the seed of evil, or it will grow up to your ruin.

Author: Aesop

You know George M. Steinbrenner III is the center of all evil in the universe.

Author: Ben Affleck

We all say, 'You don't have to run around playing all these tournaments and trying to conquer the world like Dr. Evil.'

Author: Stuart Appleby

Good can exist without evil, whereas evil cannot exist without good.

Author: Thomas Aquinas

No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

Author: Aristotle

Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good.

Author: W. Auden

The greatest evil is physical pain.

Author: Saint Augustine

There is no possible source of evil except good.

Author: Saint Augustine

He that is kind is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.

Author: Saint Augustine

Be good to others, that will protect you against evil.

Author: Abu Bakr

Piety is the most solid goodness, and the vilest of what is evil is vice.

Author: Abu Bakr

Cursed is the man who dies, but the evil done by him survives.

Author: Abu Bakr

To fight against the infidels is Jihad; but to fight against your evil self is greater Jihad.

Author: Abu Bakr

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.

Author: Lester Bangs

We are all born marked for evil.

Author: Charles Baudelaire

The world is not dialectical - it is sworn to extremes, not to equilibrium, sworn to radical antagonism, not to reconciliation or synthesis. This is also the principle of evil.

Author: Jean Baudrillard

The humblest individual exerts some influence, either for good or evil, upon others.

Author: Henry Beecher

All punishment is mischief; all punishment in itself is evil.

Author: Jeremy Bentham

In this very real world, good doesn't drive out evil. Evil doesn't drive out good. But the energetic displaces the passive.

Author: William Bernbach

Active Evil is better than Passive Good.

Author: William Blake

Taxes are not good things, but if you want services, somebody's got to pay for them so they're a necessary evil.

Author: Michael Bloomberg

Stupidity always accompanies evil. Or evil, stupidity.

Author: Louise Bogan

The world is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil.

Author: F. Bradley

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.

Author: Pearl Buck

I believe that dogma is often evil.

Author: Pat Buckley

There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it.

Author: Buddha

No evil can result from its inhibition more pernicious than its toleration.

Author: Martin Buren

The face of evil is always the face of total need.

Author: William Burroughs

We can overcome evil with greater good.

Author: Laura Bush

Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.

Author: Samuel Butler

There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.

Author: Samuel Butler

Where there is mystery, it is generally suspected there must also be evil.

Author: Lord Byron

A great book is like great evil.

Author: Callimachus

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.

Author: John Calvin

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.

Author: Giraldus Cambrensis

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.

Author: Albert Camus

May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.

Author: George Carlin

Evil hiding among us is an ancient theme.

Author: John Carpenter

In the world we make good as evil and evil as good.

Author: James Caviezel

It's taken us 10 years, and it was constant excitement. I was constantly shocked by how evil he could be. Mao was very, very shrewd but he didn't have human feeling.

Author: Jung Chang

This is the essential evil of vice, that it debases man.

Author: Edwin Chapin

We may draw good out of evil; we must not do evil, that good may come.

Author: Maria Chapman

Evil is not something superhuman, it's something less than human.

Author: Agatha Christie

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.

Author: Marcus Cicero

In every man sleeps a prophet, and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world.

Author: Emile Cioran

To do no evil is good, to intend none better.

Author: Claudius

To do nothing evil is good; to wish nothing evil is better.

Author: Claudius

January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer's forehead.

Author: Sidonie Colette

I think that episode in the third season was great. I'm really glad that we did that. He got to sleep with Sydney and kill Evil Francie and go on a mission and pretend he's a rock star.

Author: Bradley Cooper

The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing.

Author: Aleister Crowley

I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries.

Author: Marie Curie

The winged words uttered in this House have gone forth to the world, on their mission of good or of evil.

Author: Caleb Cushing

It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.

Author: Charles Darwin

He uses his good powers for evil, and that's when it gets to the dangerous side of it.

Author: Rosario Dawson

This is a struggle of good and evil. And we're the good.

Author: Howard Dean

Evil changes everybody!

Author: Vincent D'Onofrio

I've learned a lot about good and evil. They are not always what they appear to be.

Author: Charles Doren

Little evil would be done in the world if evil never could be done in the name of good.

Author: Marie Ebner-Eschenbach

Evil be to him who evil thinks.

Author: Edward Edward II

The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.

Author: Ralph Emerson

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

Author: Epictetus

Evil societies always kill their consciences.

Author: James Farmer, Jr.

You're meant to be playing the distillation of evil, which can be anything.

Author: Ralph Fiennes

There is another thing about a kid, if we all remember, that you have an attraction to evil. Evil is exciting and evil is interesting, and plenty of kids have a fascination for it.

Author: Thomas Foran

Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.

Author: E. Forster

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

Author: Mohandas Gandhi

Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.

Author: Mohandas Gandhi

Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.

Author: Jerry Garcia

How easy it is to judge rightly after one sees what evil comes from judging wrongly!

Author: Elizabeth Gaskell

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.

Author: William Gibson

Everything understood by the term co-operation is in some sense an evil.

Author: William Godwin

Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.

Author: Baltasar Gracian

When good befalls a man he calls it Providence, when evil fate.

Author: Knut Hamsun

A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.

Author: Thomas Hardy

The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.

Author: Thomas Hardy

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.

Author: Augustus Hare

A man prone to suspect evil is mostly looking in his neighbor for what he sees in himself.

Author: Augustus Hare

The most painful moral struggles are not those between good and evil, but between the good and the lesser good.

Author: Barbara Harrison

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne

He fashions evil for himself who does evil to another, and an evil plan does mischief to the planner.

Author: Hesiod

Often an entire city has suffered because of an evil man.

Author: Hesiod

The man who does evil to another does evil to himself, and the evil counsel is most evil for him who counsels it.

Author: Hesiod

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.

Author: Eric Hoffer

The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.

Author: Eric Hoffer

I can pretty much get in touch with my evil side pretty easily.

Author: Kelly Hu

Transportation made sublimation literal. It conveyed evil to another world.

Author: Robert Hughes

Evil. Mistrust those who rejoice at it even more than those who do it.

Author: Victor Hugo

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.

Author: Thomas Jarvis

They that know no evil will suspect none.

Author: Ben Jonson

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.

Author: Carl Jung

There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.

Author: Franz Kafka

The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.

Author: Franz Kafka

The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason.

Author: Immanuel Kant

Where liberty dies, evil grows.

Author: Hamid Karzai

I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.

Author: Robert Kennedy

It's better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a terrific cost.

Author: Stephen King

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.

Author: Martin King, Jr.

Pain is no evil, unless it conquers us.

Author: Charles Kingsley

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.

Author: William Kunstler

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?

Author: Johann Lavater

Mistrust the person who finds everything good, and the person who finds everything evil, and mistrust even more the person who is indifferent to everything.

Author: Johann Lavater

This is the very worst wickedness, that we refuse to acknowledge the passionate evil that is in us. This makes us secret and rotten.

Author: David Lawrence

When evil acts in the world it always manages to find instruments who believe that what they do is not evil but honorable.

Author: Max Lerner

When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil.

Author: Max Lerner

Evil is only good perverted.

Author: Henry Longfellow

Evil, by definition, is that which endangers the good, and the good is what we perceive as a value.

Author: Konrad Lorenz

But other vampire stories? Well, no, I really haven't read too many, and I can't say I'm crazy about romantic vampires anyway - to me the vampire is simply an evil monster.

Author: Brian Lumley

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.

Author: Frank Luntz

Afternoon classes - that evil invention!

Author: John Machen

Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.

Author: Niccolo Machiavelli

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.

Author: Norman Mailer

We are tainted by modern philosophy which has taught us that all is good, whereas evil has polluted everything and in a very real sense all is evil, since nothing is in its proper place.

Author: Joseph Maistre

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.

Author: Horace Mann

There's good and evil going on. We have cops. We have robbers.

Author: Joe Mantegna

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.

Author: W. Maugham

Nobody thinks that they're evil or bad, they think that they're doing the right thing.

Author: Andrew McCarthy

You can best fight any existing evil from the inside.

Author: Hattie McDaniel

I think there are some very evil things about gentrification.

Author: Jim McKay

Our cautious ancestors, when yawning, blocked the way to the entrance of evil spirits by putting their hands before their mouths. We find a reason for the gesture in the delicacy of manner which forbids an indecent exposure.

Author: George Mead

It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.

Author: Margaret Mead

Mankind fears an evil man but heaven does not.

Author: Mencius

I don't think good and evil are polarized.

Author: Sam Mendes

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.

Author: John Mill

The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.

Author: Henry Miller

The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity.

Author: Maria Montessori

In restoring man from evil sovereignty, we must cheat.

Author: Sun Moon

Violence isn't always evil. What's evil is the infatuation with violence.

Author: Jim Morrison

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.

Author: Gerard Nerval

I'm saying that the WMD reporting was not consciously evil. It was bad journalism, even very bad journalism.

Author: Daniel Okrent

All things can corrupt when minds are prone to evil.

Author: Ovid

I really don't want to portray the Islamists as simply evil, the way it's often done in the west.

Author: Orhan Pamuk

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.

Author: Blaise Pascal

Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.

Author: Blaise Pascal

That some are poorer than others, ever was and ever will be: And that many are naturally querulous and envious, is an Evil as old as the World.

Author: William Petty

Submit to the present evil, lest a greater one befall you.

Author: Phaedrus

The way I understand it, the Russians are sort of a combination of evil and incompetence... sort of like the Post Office with tanks.

Author: Emo Philips

Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.

Author: Plato

Keep what you have; the known evil is best.

Author: Titus Plautus

The evil that we know is best.

Author: Titus Plautus

The omission of good is no less reprehensible than the commission of evil.

Author: Plutarch

That in man which cannot be domesticated is not his evil but his goodness.

Author: Antonio Porchia

Conservatives divide the world in terms of good and evil while liberals do it in terms of the rich and poor.

Author: Dennis Prager

Where evil habits are once settled, they are more easily broken than mended.

Author: Marcus Quintilian

I couldn't claim that I have never felt the urge to explore evil, but when you descend into hell you have to be very careful.

Author: Kathleen Raine

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.

Author: Ayn Rand

Evil requires the sanction of the victim.

Author: Ayn Rand

We will fight evil, but we will do it from above 15,000 feet.

Author: Pat Roberts

There are heroes in evil as well as in good.

Author: Francois Rochefoucauld

No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.

Author: Francois Rochefoucauld

Nothing is so contagious as example; and we never do any great good or evil which does not produce its like.

Author: Francois Rochefoucauld