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
The theory of evil being merely permitted by God, is unspeakably absurd; for, if he permits any act, he either does the act himself, or some other power, who is not God, does it; but no other power, which is not God, can possibly do anything whatever; for then there would exist an operative power, acting from itself, independently of God, a power of the Divine Order, only weaker -- which is absurd by the hypothesis that God is absolute.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
Remarks on the Science of History
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
Fairly examined, truly understood,
No man is wholly bad, nor wholly good.
THEOGNIS OF MEGARA
Fragment XLI
Evil endures a moment's flush, and then--leaves but a burnt out shell.
ELISE PUMPELLY CABOT
"Arizona"
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
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
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
Evils draw men together.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
It is much easier at all times to prevent an evil than to rectify mistakes.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to James McHenry, Aug. 10, 1798
Without followers, evil cannot spread.
MR. SPOCK
"And the Children Shall Lead", Star Trek
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
Don't let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Good-Natured Man
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
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
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"
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
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
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
When a man hath established a Throne of Judgment in his own soul and is able to put a difference between Good and Evil, Right and Wrong: then he must reform himself according to such knowledge and always hold himself to that which his Judgment tells him is Good and Right.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms