quotations about evil
The idea ... that collective society should take hold of Evil and set it down hard in its chair and make it cry seems to many of us absolutely sound. Of course, we feel that it is not for us, those who love righteousness, to jump on the necks of the wicked. We prefer to have it attended to in a more dignified, impersonal way by Society as a whole.
GERALD STANLEY LEE
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Crowds
Evil endures a moment's flush, and then--leaves but a burnt out shell.
ELISE PUMPELLY CABOT
"Arizona"
Evil's a word that gets tossed around a lot. Like "great". Or "awesome".
LOLA
"B.C.", Moonlight
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
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
Length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery.
C. S. LEWIS
The Magician's Nephew
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
Evils draw men together.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
Fairly examined, truly understood,
No man is wholly bad, nor wholly good.
THEOGNIS OF MEGARA
Fragment XLI
It is much easier at all times to prevent an evil than to rectify mistakes.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to James McHenry, Aug. 10, 1798
Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil.
G. K. CHESTERTON
"The Flying Stars", The Innocence of Father Brown
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
The evil which does me no harm is like the good which in no wise avails me.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
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
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
Don't let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Good-Natured Man
One may smile, and smile, and be a villain!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
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
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
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