Quotes About Evil

If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange—meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil.

This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world today. It is perpetrated by fanatics who are utterly indifferent to the sanctity of human life and we, the democracies of this world, are going to have to come together to fight it together and eradicate this evil completely from our world.

Willing or preferring is the same with respect to good and evil, that judging is with respect to truth or falsehood.

How does one cope with evil? Not by fighting it but by understanding it. In understanding, it disappears. How does one cope with darkness? Not with one's fist. You don't chase darkness out of the room with a broom, you turn on a light. The more you fight darkness, the more real it becomes to you, and the more you exhaust yourself. But when you turn on the light of awareness, it melts.

To fight evil with activity is like fighting darkness with one's hands. So what you need is light, not fit.

there's not a single evil in the world that you cannot trace to fear. Not one.

There is no explanation you can give that would explain away all the sufferings and evil and torture and destruction and hunger in the world! You'll never explain it. You can try gamely with your formulas, religious and otherwise, but you'll never explain it. Because life is a mystery, which means your thinking mind cannot make sense out of it. For that you've got to wake up and then you'll suddenly

What is scripture, then? It's a hint, a clue, not a description. The fanaticism of one sincere believer who thinks he knows causes more evil than the united efforts of two hundred rogues. It's terrifying to see what sincere believers will do because they think they know.

And there's not a single evil in the world that you cannot trace to fear. Not one.

He understands that people will want to hear something, but not the truth: they'll want a story of perseverance and pluck, good overcoming evil, a homecoming song about a hero who brought light into dark places.

Supreme Good and Evil (De finibus)

War is glorious and, at the same time, a great evil.

The difficulty of reconciling the existence of evil with God's alleged omnipotence and mercy has, it can plausibly be argued, defeated every orthodox theologian in the history of monotheism.

there is, he reasoned, no such thing as evil or suffering from God's point of view, and this explains why God never tries to do anything about it.

What makes them dangerous is their belief that they should not be stopped, that they are justified in what they do. I will not speak of my experiences in the war, but I will say this. The greatest evil occurs when people, no matter what their aims or their motives, become utterly convinced that they are right.

He had entered a veritable miasma of evil, and harm, in the worst possible way, was to come to us all too soon.

Let me ask you a question, Alex. What do you think is the greatest evil on this planet today?" "Is that including or not including you?" Alex asked.

It's easy enough to change your personality, to become evil. The trouble is, it stays with you. And it damages you.

It was strange how very bad men felt a need to live somewhere not just spectacular but slightly insane.

He wants to make money! And he doesn't care if he trashes my life to get it. I told you. That man is vile. He should never have come to this island. He's positively evil.

peering at the world with a malevolence that she wore like mascara.

Do we not learn in the church that evil has a physical presence, that we may feel it like a cold winter or a coming storm? "Deliver us from evil!" We say it every night.

She never murdered anyone. She didn't want to destroy the world. But I think there's another sort of evil that is often overlooked ... and it is this. Granny never did anything to help anyone else. She was rich and healthy (she lived into her nineties) but she was utterly selfish and complained all the time. ... As far as I know, she never tried to make anyone happy ... and if you ask me, evil is a perfectly reasonable description of someone like that.

Man was a complicated animal capable of extraordinary good and great evil – but he was definitely on his own.