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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"What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!' Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity."
"There was a solemn article in the local paper seriously advocating systematic exterminating of the entire German nation as the only proper course after military victory: because, if you please, they are rattlesnakes, and don't know the difference between good and evil! (What of the writer?) The Germans have just as much right to declare the Poles and Jews exterminable vermin, subhuman, as we have to select the Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they have done."
"We have sworn, and not lightly. This oath we will keep. We are threatened with many evils, and treason not least; but one thing is not said: that we shall suffer from cowardice, from cravens or the fear of cravens. Therefore I say that we will go on, and this doom I add: the deeds that we shall do shall be the matter of song until the last days of Arda."
"And it is not always good to be healed in body. Nor is it always evil to die in battle, even in bitter pain. Were I permitted, in this dark hour I would choose the latter."
"Hard times always uncover the basic goodness and evil of the day."
"The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason."
"There are a thousand forms of evil; there will be a thousand remedies."
"Do not be thoughtless, always be mindful, watch your thoughts! Draw yourself out of the path of evil, like an elephant sunk in mud."
"Little by little a person becomes evil, as a water pot is filled by drops of water... Little by little a person becomes good, as a water pot is filled by drops of water."
"Speak only endearing speech, speech that is welcomed. Speech, when it brings no evil to others, is pleasant."
"Happiness and suffering support each other. To be is to inter-be. It's like the left and the right. If the left is not there, the right cannot be there. The same is true with suffering and happiness, good and evil."
"It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope."
"Inability to tell good from evil is the greatest worry of man's life."
"You seem to think that the only genuine existence evil can have is conscious existence - that no one is evil unless he admits it to himself. I disagree."
"It doesn't always have a shape,Almost never does it have a name,It maybe has a pitchfork, maybe has a tail,But evil is alive and well."
"Our hearts are not stones. A stone may disintegrate in time and lose its outward form. But hearts never disintegrate. They have no outward form, and whether good or evil, we can always communicate them to one another."
"The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith justice, evil - they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place forever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box."
"The concept of portraying evil and then destroying it - I know this is considered mainstream, but I think it is rotten. This idea that whenever something evil happens someone particular can be blamed and punished for it, in life and in politics is hopeless."
"There are heroes in evil as well as in good."
"Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it."
