quotations about evil
A check on itself, evil subserves the economies of good, as it were a condiment to give relish to good.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
How many things are now called the worst evil, which are only twelve feet wide and three months long! But some day greater dragons will come into the world.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The hardest fact in the world to accept is the inevitable mixture of evil with good in all things.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
I believed in love, but I believed in evil too. Neither love nor evil conquers all, but evil cheats more.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Cerulean Sins
Evil eyes look out for occasion, therefore give none.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Urith
I've got evil in me as much as anyone, some desires that scare me. Even if I don't give in to them, just having them scares the living bejesus out of me sometimes. I'm no saint, the way you kid about. But I've always walked the line, walked that goddamned line. It's a mean mother of a line, straight and narrow, sharp as a razor, cuts right into you when you walk it long enough. You're always bleeding on that line, and sometimes you wonder why you don't just step off and walk in the cool grass.
DEAN KOONTZ
Dark Rivers of the Heart
All I ask of Fate is that the people she hurls into my life, whether they are evil or good, or morally bipolar, should be amusing to one degree or another.... The problem is finding smile-inducing evil people, because the evil are the most humorless, though in the movies they frequently get some of the best lines.
DEAN KOONTZ
Brother Odd
In some way the secret vice exhales its poison; and the evil passion, however cunningly masked, stains through to the surface.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil.
WALT DISNEY
Deeds Rather Than Words
Evils draw men together.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
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
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.
C.S. LEWIS
Perelandra
We return evil for evil, in which there is no sin, for it is necessary to pay a wicked man in his own coin.
CHANAKYA
Vridda-Chanakya
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
Those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters, for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves we collude with it through our apathy.
J. K. ROWLING
speech, Jun. 5, 2008
Evil's a word that gets tossed around a lot. Like "great". Or "awesome".
LOLA
"B.C.", Moonlight
When a man hath established a Throne of Judgment in his own soul and is able to put a difference between Good and Evil, Right and Wrong: then he must reform himself according to such knowledge and always hold himself to that which his Judgment tells him is Good and Right.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Devil inside
The devil inside
Every single one of us
The devil inside
INXS
"Devil Inside"
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
One may smile, and smile, and be a villain!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet