“Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity.”
Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) British political economist
Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter XIX, paragraph 15, line 1
“There's only one great evil in the world today. Despair.”
— Evelyn Waugh, book Vile Bodies
Source: Vile Bodies
Last update June 3, 2021. History
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British writer 1903–1966Related quotes
“One sees the world's evil accurately only by exaggerating it.”
Léon Bloy (1846–1917) French writer, poet and essayist
Source: Pilgrim of the Absolute (1947), p. 87
“Despair and bitterness are not the only songs in the world”
Stephen R. Donaldson (1947) Novelist
Lord Mhoram, The Power That Preserves
“Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself.”
Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism
Max Born (1882–1970) physicist
Variants (these could be paraphrases or differing translations): The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world.
The belief that there is only one truth, and that oneself is in possession of it, is the root of all evil in the world.
Source: Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance (1964), p. 230, also in My Life and Views (1968), p. 183
“There is no good or evil in the world. Only images.”
Neamat Imam book The Black Coat
The Black Coat (2013)
“The war we have to wage today has only one goal, and that is to make the world safe for diversity.”
U Thant (1909–1974) 3rd Secretary-General of the United Nations
Address of 1964, republished in Portfolio for Peace (1968), p. 14
Context: Two world wars were fought to make the world safe for democracy. Today we have to wage a war on all fronts. This war has to be waged in peace time, but it has to be waged as energetically and with as much total national effort as in times of war. The war we have to wage today has only one goal, and that is to make the world safe for diversity.
The concept of peaceful coexistence has been criticized by many who do not see the need to make the world safe for diversity. I wonder if they have ever paused to ask themselves the question: What is the alternative to coexistence?
Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer
"The Death of Me", p. 150
Awareness (1992)
Context: Can one be fully human without experiencing tragedy? The only tragedy there is in the world is ignorance; all evil comes from that. The only tragedy there is in the world is unwakefulness and unawareness. From them comes fear, and from fear comes comes everything else, but death is not a tragedy at all. Dying is wonderful; it's only horrible to people who have never understood life. It's only when you're afraid of life that you fear death. It's only dead people who fear death.
“Do not despair, my friend. Today is theirs, but the future is ours”
Rodman Philbrick book The Last Book in the Universe
Source: The Last Book in the Universe