Quotes About Evil

Hating life, despising life—even for the genuine pain that life inflicts—merely serves to make life itself worse, unbearably worse. There is no genuine protest in that. There is no goodness in that, only the desire to produce suffering, for the sake of suffering. That is the very essence of evil. People who come to that kind of thinking are one step from total mayhem.

The philosophical study of morality—of right and wrong—is ethics. Such study can render us more sophisticated in our choices. Even older and deeper than ethics, however, is religion. Religion concerns itself not with (mere) right and wrong but with good and evil themselves—with the archetypes of right and wrong.

The cross is the burden of life. It is a place of betrayal, torture, and death. It is therefore a fundamental symbol of mortal vulnerability. In the Christian drama, it is also the place where vulnerability is transcended, as a consequence of its acceptance. [...] By accepting life's suffering, therefore, evil may be overcome. The alternative is hell, at least in its psychological form: rage, resentment, and the desire for revenge and destruction.

The worst of all possible snakes is the eternal human proclivity for evil. The worst of all possible snakes is psychological, spiritual, personal, internal.

And if there is something that is not good, then there is something that is good. If the worst sin is the torment of others, merely for the sake of the suffering produced—then the good is whatever is diametrically opposed to that. The good is whatever stops such things from happening.

only the desire to produce suffering, for the sake of suffering. That is the very essence of evil.

The worst of all possible snakes is the eternal human proclivity for evil. The worst of all possible snakes is psychological, spiritual, personal, internal. No walls, however tall, will keep that out. Even if the fortress were thick enough, in principle, to keep everything bad whatsoever outside, it would immediately appear again within.

Me?utim, sama tragedija (shva?ena kao proizvoljna grubost društva i prirode, nasuprot ranjivosti pojedinca) nije jedini - možda ?ak ni prvenstveni - izvor patnje. Treba uzeti u obzir i problem zla. Svijet je ?vrsto protiv nas, to je sigurno, ali ?ovjekova nehumanost prema ?ovjeku nešto je još gore.

These are evil actions. No excuses are available for engaging in them. To dehumanize a fellow being, to reduce him or her to the status of a parasite, to torture and to slaughter with no consideration of individual innocence or guilt, to make an art form of pain—that is wrong.

Earthquakes, floods, poverty, cancer—we're tough enough to take on all of that. But human evil adds a whole new dimension of misery to the world.

But a villain who despairs of his villainy has not become a hero. A hero is something positive, not just the absence of evil.

Conscious human malevolence can break the spirit that even tragedy could not shake.

Things fall apart: this is one of the great discoveries of humanity. And we speed the natural deterioration of great things through blindness, inaction and deceit. Without attention, culture degenerates and dies, and evil prevails.

Tan solo el ser humano podía concebir el potro de torturas, la doncella de hierro y el aplastapulgares. Tan solo el ser humano hará sufrir únicamente por el gusto de hacer sufrir. Esta es la mejor definición del mal que he sido capaz de formular. Los animales son incapaces de hacer algo así, pero los humanos, con sus atroces capacidades de semidioses, sí que pueden.

Zaklju?ak toga procesa? ''Neka su djela u sebi toliko užasna da se protive samoj naravi ljudskoga Bi?a''. Ta je istina temeljna, vrijedi za sve kulture, za svako vrijeme i prostor. ''Postoje zla djela koja se ni?im ne mogu opravdati. Dehumanizirati ljudsko bi?e, uniziti muškarca ili ženu do razine parazita, mu?iti ih i zaklati ne razmišljaju?i o njihovoj nevinosti ili krivnji, nanošenje boli pretvoriti u umije?e - pogrješno je.

Only man will inflict suffering for the sake of suffering. That is the best definition of evil I have been able to formulate.

Pojavom samosvijesti zlo ulazi u svijet.

la mayor consciencia de uno mismo y el consiguiente descubrimiento de nuestro carácter mortal, así como el conocimiento del bien y del mal, se presentan en los primeros capítulos del Génesis, junto a la amplia tradición que los rodea, como un cataclismo de magnitud cósmica.

we speed the natural deterioration of great things through blindness, inaction and deceit. Without attention, culture degenerates and dies, and evil prevails.

Only man will inflict suffering for the sake of suffering. That is the best definition of evil I have been able to formulate. Animals can't manage that, but humans, with their excruciating, semi-divine capacities, most certainly can.

A villain who despairs of his villainy has not become a hero. A hero is something positive, not just the absence of evil.

At some point in our evolutionary and cultural history, we began to understand that human evil could rightly be considered the greatest of all snakes.

I looked at my spices again. Salt for protection, cinnamon to enhance psychic ability, and pepper to drive away evil. I figured I should start with the cinnamon. My first impulse was to snort it.

What do you call a planet where bad guys stroll through life with success draped around their shoulders like a King's cloak, while random horrors are visited upon the innocent heads of children? I call it Earth.