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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"When a man declares: "There are no blacks and whites [in morality]" he is making a psychological confession, and what he means is: "I am unwilling to be wholly good - and please don't regard me as wholly evil!""
"Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil."
"Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value - and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes."
"All the reasons which made the initiation of physical force evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative."
"The worst evil that you can do, psychologically, is to laugh at yourself. That means spitting in your own face."
"Observe how many people evade, rationalize and drive their minds into a state of blind stupor, in dread of discovering that those they deal with- their "loved ones" or friends or business associates or political rulers- are not merely mistaken, but evil. Observe that this dread leads them to sanction, to help and to spread the very evil whose existence they fear to acknowledge."
"Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us."
"Vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness."
"Evil succeeds when good men do nothing"
"Taste and elegance, though they are reckoned only among the smaller and secondary morals, yet are of no mean importance in the regulations of life. A moral taste is not of force to turn vice into virtue; but it recommends virtue with something like the blandishments of pleasure, and it infinitely abates the evils of vice."
"O magnet-South! O glistening perfumed South! My South! O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me!"
"With every exertion, the best of men can do but a moderate amount of good; but it seems in the power of the most contemptible individual to do incalculable mischief."
"We must just stay awake and see evil done for a little while it's not always."
"There can be no existence of evil as a force to the healthy-minded individual."
"Before the curing of a strong disease, Even in the instant of repair and health, The fit is strongest. Evils that take leave, On their departure most of all show evil."
"Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water."
"Antonio: Will you stay no longer? nor will you not that I go with you? Sebastian: By your patience, no. My stars shine darkly over me; the malignancy of my fate might, perhaps, distemper yours; therefore I shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone. It were a bad recompense for your love to lay any of them on you."
"No man means evil but the devil, and we shall know him by his horns."
"Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck, And yet methinks I have astronomy. But not to tell of good or evil luck, Of plagues, of dearths, or season's quality; Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell ... Or say with princes if it shall go well."
"Zounds! sir, you are one of those that will not serve God if the devil bid you."
