Evil quotes
5.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside evil — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon..."
"Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating."
"He said that there was one only good, namely, knowledge; and one only evil, namely, ignorance."
"Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings."
"There is some good in the worst of us, and some evil in the best of us."
"I have no doubt that faith is only pure when it does not negate the faith of another. I have no doubt that evil can be fought and that indifference is no option. I have no doubt that fanaticism is dangerous. And of all the books in the world on life, I have no doubt that the life of one person weighs more than them all."
"Laziness is the mother of all evils."
"For so sworn good or evil an oath may not be broken and it shall pursue oathkeeper and oathbreaker to the world's end."
"Who knows if the one whose hands are bloodied with Father Grande's murder, or the one who shot Father Navarro, if those who have killed, who have tortured, who have done so much evil, are listening to me? Listen, there in your criminal hideout, perhaps already repentant, you too are called to forgiveness."
"It is more important to prevent animal suffering, rather than sit to contemplate the evils of the universe praying in the company of priests."
"Unless a man becomes the enemy of an evil, he will not even become its slave but rather its champion."
"I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest."
"The God whom we worship is not a weak and incompetent God. He is able to beat back gigantic waves of opposition and to bring low prodigious mountains of evil. The ringing testimony of the Christian faith is that God is able."
"We don't want apartheid liberalized. We want it dismantled. You can't improve something that is intrinsically evil."
"Forces of good and evil are massed and armed and opposed as rarely before in history. Freedom is pitted against slavery; lightness against the dark... In the final choice, a soldier's pack is not so heavy a burden as a prisoner's chains."
"Since you make evil or good by your own thoughts, it is your ruling of your thoughts which proves to be your principal concern."
"Whosoever does wrong, wrongs himself; whosoever does injustice, does it to himself, making himself evil."
"In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which."
"It is much easier at all times to prevent an evil than to rectify mistakes."
"A kiss without a moustache, they said then, is like an egg without salt; I will add to it: and it is like Good without Evil."
