Evil Quotes
But we must not forget... this ritual expressed... certain ideas which lie at the very root of true religion, the fellowship of the worshippers with one another in their fellowship with the deity, and the consecration of the bonds of kinship as the type of all right ethical relations between man and man.
Aristotle
We must as second best...take the least of the evils.
Bailey, Gamaliel
Evil and good are God's right hand and left.
Blavatsky, H. P.
Strive with thy thoughts unclean before they overpower thee. Use them as they will thee, for if thou sparest them and they take root and grow, know well, these thoughts will overpower and kill thee. Beware! Suffer not their shadow to approach. For it will grow, increase in size and power, and then this thing of darkness will absorb thy being before thou hast well realized the black foul monster's presence.
Browne, Thomas
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.
Burke, Edmund
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Chinese Proverb
Mankind fears an evil man but heaven does not.
Conrad, Joseph
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor
Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.
Goldsmith, Oliver
Don't let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter.
Gurdjieff
One may say that evil does not exist for subjective man at all, that there exist only different conceptions of good. Nobody ever does anything deliberately in the interests of evil, for the sake of evil. Everybody acts in the interests of good, as he understands it. But everybody understands it in a different way. Consequently men drown, slay, and kill one another in the interests of good.
Hesiod
Do not seek evil gains; evil gains are the equivalent of disaster.
Hesiod
He harms himself who does harm to another, and the evil plan is most harmful to the planner.
Hesiod
Often an entire city has suffered because of an evil man.
Homer
Evil deeds do not prosper; the slow man catches up with the swift.
Hunt, Leigh
Whenever evil befalls us, we ought to ask ourselves, after the first suffering, how we can turn it into good. So shall we take occasion, from one bitter root, to raise perhaps many flowers.
Kempis, Thomas à
Of two evils we must always choose the least.
Mann, Horace
If evil is inevitable, how are the wicked accountable? Nay, why do we call men wicked at all? Evil is inevitable, but is also remediable.
Mill, John Stuart
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.
Newman, John Henry
Evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance.
Ovid
All things may corrupt when minds are prone to evil.
Pascal, Blaise
I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room.
Pascal, Blaise
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.
Plato
No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.
Plautus, Titus Maccius
Bad conduct soils the finest ornament more than filth.
Rand, Ayn
The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.
Rand, Ayn
The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.
Renault, Mary
It is bitter to lose a friend to evil, before one loses him to death.
Roosevelt, Theodore
No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.
More Quotes Below...
Evil exists to glorify the good. Evil is negative good. It is a relative term. Evil can be transmuted into good. What is evil to one at one time, becomes good at another time to somebody else.
Sophocles
The end excuses any evil.
Steinem, Gloria
Evil is obvious only in retrospect.
Underhill, Evelyn
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.
Weil, Simon
Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.
West, Mae
Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.