quotations about evil
The salvation of the world depends on the men who will not take evil good-humouredly, and whose laughter destroys the fool instead of encouraging him.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Quintessence of Ibsenism
When we understand the source of evils, and are alive to their existence, they are already half conquered.
HENRY WHITNEY BELLOWS
Re-statements of Christian Doctrine
The true rule, in determining to embrace, or reject any thing, is not whether it have any evil in it; but whether it have more of evil, than of good. There are few things wholly evil, or wholly good. Almost every thing, especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech in the United States House of Representatives, June 20, 1848
Where there is a choice of two evils, most men take both.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
EDMUND BURKE
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
One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to the good.
EDMUND BURKE
On the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, Feb. 15, 1788
In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.
AYN RAND
Atlas Shrugged
The world was new each day for God so made it daily. Yet it contained within it all the evils as before, no more, no less.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
The Crossing
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
If there is good to be said, the writer should say it. If there is bad to be said, he should say it in a way that reflects the truth that, though we see the evil, we choose to continue among the living.
JOHN GARDNER
The Art of Fiction
The soul that has conceived one wickedness can nurse no good thereafter.
SOPHOCLES
Philoctetes
Love is the medicine of all moral evil. By it the world is to be cured of sin.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Don't be in a hurry to change one evil for another.
AESOP
"The Oxen and the Butchers", Aesop's Fables
Whoever has the power to label others as evil is automatically, or reflexively, the good person. Good people label bad people as evil. And once you do that, then it demonizes them. You don't negotiate with evil. You don't sit down at the table with the devil and say, "Okay, let's work this out." What you want to do is destroy evil. Every Catholic kid every night says, or should say, "Lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil." And so you've got to go to God to help you deal with evil rather than your State Department or your negotiators.
PHILIP ZIMBARDO
interview, American Scientist, Apr. 2007
The way to overcome evil is to love something that is good.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
All human beings ... are commingled out of good and evil.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Why was so much evil pleasant, pretty on the outside, like poisoned candy?
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
"Here Be Dragons"
Most things you consider evil or wicked are simply lonely, and lacking in the social niceties.
DANIEL WALLACE & JOHN AUGUST
Big Fish
And the good delight to hear of the past evils of such as are now freed from them, not because they are evils, but because they have been and are not.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions