Quotes About 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

The communists think they have found the way to redeem mankind from evil. Man is equivocally good and well disposed to his neighbour, but his nature has been corrupted by the institution of private property ... I can recognize the psychological presumption behind it as a baseless illusion. With the abolition of private property the human love of aggression is robbed of one of its tools, a strong one no doubt, but certainly not the strongest ... Aggression was not created by property.

But even so, one can just as well hold God responsible for the existence of the devil as for the evil he personifies.

Não quebro muitas vezes a cabeça a propósito da questão do bem e do mal, mas, em média, descobri muito pouco «bem» entre os homens. Segundo o que deles sei, são na maioria escumalha, quer se reclamem da ética desta ou daquela doutrina, quer de nenhuma.

Simone Weil was right. Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.

It was the existence of social inequity and the evils it gave rise to that in turn gave rise to the evil of secrecy.

Now he began to divine that a deeper meaning and a deeper wisdom underlay Our Lord's commandment Thou shalt not kill than merely that which he had been told–God desires not the death of any sinner. Behind the commandment lay also a care for the slayer–the slayer also exposed his soul to many kinds of evil powers, which now found occasion for sudden assaults.

Behind the commandment lay also a care for the slayer—the slayer also exposed his soul to many kinds of evil powers, which now found occasion for sudden assaults.

Epicurus old questions are yet unanswered. Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil? Cleanthes

For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.

For evil to flourish it takes only a few good men to do nothing.

And I reflect that people like him are still being born, people who can be indoctrinated with evil. Mankind is ostensibly striving to avert catastrophes; medical progress gives us hope that one day disease can be conquered, but will we ever be able to prevent the creation of mass murderers?

Simonides of Amorgos says, "Women are the greatest evil God ever created: if they sometimes seem useful, they soon change into trouble for their masters." For Hipponax: "There are but two days in life when your wife brings you joy: her wedding day and her funeral.

Existentialism alone gives - like religions - a real role to evil, and it is this, perhaps, which make its judgments so gloomy. Men do not like to feel themselves in danger. Yet, it is because there are real dangers, real failures and real earthly damnation that words like victory, wisdom, or joy have meaning. Nothing is decided in advance, and it is because man has something to lose and because he can lose that he can also win.

The evil which he had made his refuge vanished when crime was justified by virtue.

Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.

Evil is license, and that is why it is monotonous: everything has to be drawn from ourselves. One is condemned to false infinity. That is hell itself.

The social order, though necessary, is essentially evil, whatever it may be.

There is something in our soul that loathes true attention much more violently than flesh loathes fatigue. That something is much closer to evil than flesh is. That is why, every time we truly give our attention, we destroy some evil in ourselves. If one pays attention with this intention, fifteen minutes of attention is worth a lot of good works.

Either God is not all-powerful, or God is not absolutely good, or God does not command wherever He has the power to do so. So the existence of evil here below, far from being a proof against the reality of God, is what reveals Him to us in truth.

Of these three sorts of lies – lying to the party, lying to the public, lying to oneself – the first is by far the least evil. Yet if belonging to a party compels one to lie all the time, in every instance, then the very existence of political parties is absolutely and unconditionally an evil.

Nothing is so beautiful and wonderful, nothing is so continually fresh and surprising, so full of sweet and perpetual ecstacy, as the good. No desert is so dreary, monotonous, and boring as evil. This is the truth about authentic good and evil. With fictional good and evil it is the other way round. Fictional good is boring and flat, while fictional evil is varied and intriguing, attractive, profound, and full of charm.

Evil inhabits the soul of a criminal without being felt there. It is felt in the heart of the man who is afflicted and innocent.

There isn't a man on earth who doesn't at times pronounce an opinion on good and evil, even if it be only to find fault with somebody else.