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All concerns of men go wrong when they wish to cure evil with evil.
SOPHOCLES, The Sons of Aleus [fragment]
The soul that has conceived one wickedness can nurse no good thereafter.
- Evil is unspectacular and always human
- And shares our bed and eats at our own table.
W.H. AUDEN, Herman Melville
The whole gamut of good and evil is in every human being, certain notes, from stronger original quality or most frequent use, appearing to form the whole character; but they are only the tones most often heard. The whole scale is in every soul, and the notes most seldom heard will on rare occasions make themselves audible.
FANNY KEMBLE, Further Records, Feb. 12, 1875
Evil is a point of view.
ANNE RICE, Interview with the Vampire
The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.
Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art.
There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.
KURT VONNEGUT, JR., The Sirens of Titan
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Beyond Good and Evil
No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.
SIGMUND FREUD, Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria
The creed of evil has been, since the beginnings of highly industrialized society, not only a precursor of barbarism but a mask of good. The worth of the latter was transferred to the evil that drew to itself all the hatred and resentment of an order which drummed good into its adherents so that it could with impunity be evil.
THEODOR WIESENGRUND ADORNO, Minima Moralia
The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.
AYN RAND, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.
ANNE RICE, Interview with the Vampire
I happen to think that the singular evil of our time is prejudice. It is from this evil that all other evils grow and multiply. In almost everything I've written there is a thread of this: a man's seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself.
ROD SERLING, Los Angeles Times, 1967
No one becomes depraved all at once.
Apathy and evil. The two work hand in hand. They are the same, really.... Evil wills it. Apathy allows it. Evil hates the innocent and the defenseless most of all. Apathy doesn't care as long as it's not personally inconvenienced.
JAKE THOENE, Shaiton's Fire
Apathy is the glove in which evil slips its hand.
All things truly wicked start from an innocence.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY, A Moveable Feast
The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world.
MAX BORN, as quoted in Judith Sherven's The New Intimacy
In every man's heart there is a devil, but we do not know the man as bad until the devil is roused.
JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD, "The Case of Beauvais," Back to God's Country and Other Stories
A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.
THOMAS HARDY, Far from the Madding Crowd
What we call evil, it seems to me, is simply ignorance bumping its head in the dark.
HENRY FORD, Theosophist Magazine, Feb. 1930
Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.
ANATOLE FRANCE, The Revolt of the Angels
It is much easier at all times to prevent an evil than to rectify mistakes.
GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to James McHenry, Aug. 10, 1798
Don't let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH, The Good-Natured Man
Now I know the full power of evil. It makes ugliness seem beautiful and goodness seem ugly and weak.
AUGUST STRINDBERG, The Dance of Death
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
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
All evils are equal when they are extreme.
As long as what you are afraid of is something evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue. But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it also is dreadful? How if food itself turns out to be the very thing you can't eat, and home the very place you can't live, and your very comforter the person who makes you uncomfortable? Then, indeed, there is no rescue possible: the last card has been played.
Browse Evil Quotes II
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