EVIL QUOTES VII

quotations about evil

Evil is relative.... You can’t hang a sign on it. You can’t touch it or taste it or cut it with a sword. Evil depends on where you are standing, pointing your indicting finger.

GLEN COOK

The Black Company


Even an evil man can have principles--he can be true to his own evil, which is not always so easy.

NORMAN MAILER

The Paris Review, winter-spring 1964


Fairly examined, truly understood,
No man is wholly bad, nor wholly good.

THEOGNIS OF MEGARA

Fragment XLI


Universal bond, we're all the same
Evil man, not to be tamed
Open your mind, and you will find
You're just as evil, as evil as I

LAKE OF TEARS

"Evil Inside", Greater Art


Here there's no possibility of doing evil. You live in evil. In the absence of remorse. How could you do evil?

JEAN GENET

The Balcony


Those who return evil for good should not expect the kindness of others to last long.

AESOP

"The Countryman and the Snake", Aesop's Fables


Don't let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

The Good-Natured Man


It is much easier at all times to prevent an evil than to rectify mistakes.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

letter to James McHenry, Aug. 10, 1798


The world we live in is a world of mingled good and evil. Whether it is chiefly good or chiefly bad depends on how we take it. To look at the world in such a way as to emphasize the evil is the art of pessimism. To look at it in such a way as to bring out the good, and throw the evil into the background, is the art of optimism. The facts are the same in either case. It is simply a question of perspective and emphasis.

WILLIAM DEWITT HYDE

The Art of Optimism


It is not easy for some men to know they have done evil, for reasoning and honor are often clouded by pride.

BRIAN HERBERT & KEVEN J. ANDERSON

Dune: House Corrino


The hardest fact in the world to accept is the inevitable mixture of evil with good in all things.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


Evils draw men together.

ARISTOTLE

Rhetoric


Where Evil is returned for Evil, the first offender thinks himself excused, because the other is as faulty as he.

BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE

Moral and Religious Aphorisms


Without followers, evil cannot spread.

MR. SPOCK

"And the Children Shall Lead", Star Trek


Only as men succeed in seeing no evil in others will they become free from sin, and sorrow, and suffering.

JAMES ALLEN

Morning and Evening Thoughts


A check on itself, evil subserves the economies of good, as it were a condiment to give relish to good.

AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT

Table Talk


The small man thinks that small acts of goodness are of no benefit, and does not do them; and that small deeds of evil do no harm, and does not refrain from them. Hence, his wickedness becomes so great that it cannot be concealed, and his guilt so great that it cannot be pardoned.

CONFUCIUS

The Wisdom of Confucius


Good and evil and beauty and ugliness are only ornamental fruits of perspective, whose sole value lies in their linkage to what chance made our fathers think and feel, and whose finer details are different for every race and culture.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"The Silver Key"


All the evil that is tormenting the world seemed to him to be concentrated in a "red flower," in one red flower. It was but necessary to tear it down, and the incessant, heart-rending cries and moans which rise to the indifferent sky from all points of the earth, like its natural breathing, would be silenced. The evil of the world, he believed, lay in the evil will and in the madness of the people. They themselves were to blame for being unhappy, and they could be happy if they wished. This seemed so clear and simple that Max was dumfounded in his amazement at human stupidity. Humanity reminded him of a crowd huddled together in a spacious temple and panic-stricken at the cry of "Fire!"

LEONID ANDREYEV

"Love


As we have come to understand the psychology of evil, we have realized that such transformations of human character are not as rare as we would like to believe. Historical inquiry and behavioral science have demonstrated the "banality of evil" -- that is, under certain conditions and social pressures, ordinary people can commit acts that would otherwise be unthinkable.

PHILIP ZIMBARDO

"The Banality of Heroism", Greater Good, Sep. 1, 2006