Quotes about Evil (3178 quotes, page 17)

“The Black Artist's role in America is to aid in the destruction of America as he knows it. His role is to report and reflect so precisely the nature of the society, and of himself, in that society, that other men will be moved by the exactness of his rendering, and if they are black men, grow strong through this moving, having seen their own strength, and weakness, and if they are white men, tremble, curse, and go mad, because they will be drenched with the filth of their evil.”

Amiri Baraka (1934–2014) African-American writer

Negro Digest, vol. 14, no. 6 (April 1965), p. 65

Men , Nature , Strong , Madness

“I was once interviewed in Italy and the headline of the interview the next day was wonderful. I saved this for my collection it was… "YES we have a soul but it's made of lots of tiny robots" and I thought that's exactly right. Yes we have a soul, but it's mechanical. But it's still a soul, it still does the work that the soul was supposed to do. It is the seat of reason. It is the seat of moral responsibility. It's why we are appropriate objects of punishment when we do evil things, why we deserve the praise when we do good things. It's just not a mysterious lump of wonder stuff… that will out live us.”

Daniel Dennett (1942) American philosopher

"Atheism Tapes, part 6", BBC TV documentation of Jonathan Miller, produced by Richard Denton, recorded 2003, broadcast 2004

Soul

“Guard thee from the power of evil;
Who cannot trust, vows to the devil.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Life Without and Life Within (1859), My Seal-Ring

“There is not a moral evil which has not its infallible antidote, nor any moral virtue which has not its spring and sustenance in Jesus Christ and Him crucified. To apprehend Him with every faculty of the mind, and with every affection of the heart, and to grow daily in that apprehension, is to emerge from every thing that enthralls, to surmount all that can contaminate.”

Alexander Knox (1757–1831)

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 96.

Spring , Heart , Christ

“I trust in God that my life may be spared for nine months longer, after which period, in the event of my death, no Regency would take place. I should then have the satisfaction of leaving the Royal authority to the personal exercise of that young lady [Princess, later Queen, Victoria], the heiress presumptive to the Crown, and not in the hands of a person now near me [Victoria's mother, the Duchess of Kent], who is surrounded by evil advisers and who is herself incompetent to act with propriety in the station in which she would be placed. I have no hesitation in saying that I have been insulted grossly insulted by that person, but I am determined to endure no longer a course of behaviour so disrespectful to me. Amongst other things, I have particularly to complain of the manner in which that young lady has been kept away from my Court; she has been repeatedly kept from my Drawing Rooms, at which she ought always to have been present, but I am fully resolved that this shall not happen again. I would have her know that I am King, and I am determined to make my authority respected, and for the future I shall insist and command that the Princess do upon all occasions appear at my Court, as it is her duty to do.”

William IV of the United Kingdom (1765–1837) King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of Hanover

As quoted in The Early Court of Queen Victoria http://www.archive.org/stream/earlycourtofquee00jerruoft/earlycourtofquee00jerruoft_djvu.txt (1912) by Clare Jerrold

Life , Death , God , Exercises

“Life-affirming people are a bit creepy and self-consciously life-affirming art is usually awful.
My books tend to have happy endings, or at least that’s one way of reading them. My characters are exuberant and funny as well as dark. Duality is the essence of my voice so it’s appropriate for me to have an evil twin to blame things on.”

Carole Morin British writer

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse (2013)

Life , People , Books , Art

“I’m not here to tell folk just what they should know, I’m here to call on folk to understand that in a moral moment, there is no neutral. In a moral moment, there is no bystanders. You are either complicit in evil, you are either contributing to wrong, or you are fighting against it.”

Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress

In [Bobic, Igor, Cory Booker Suggests Supporting Brett Kavanaugh Makes One ‘Complicit’ In Evil, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cory-booker-brett-kavanaugh-complicit-evil_us_5b59dce2e4b0fd5c73ccbb0e, 21 August 2018, The Huffington Post, June 26, 2018]
2018

Understanding , Fight

“[Their foremost task] … is to denounce the violence on which the present system is based, and all the evil — material and spiritual — this entails for the masses of menu throughout the world…. So long as we are not dealing honestly and adequately with this ninety percent of our problem, there is something ludicrous, and perhaps hypocritical, about our concern over the ten percent of violence employed by the rebels against oppression.”

A. J. Muste (1885–1967) Christian pacifist and civil rights activist

As quoted in American Power and the New Mandarins (2002) by Noam Chomsky, p. 160.

World , Problem

“Explain it,” Hamilton muttered. “This place—this bar. Why doesn’t God erase it? If this world operates by moral laws—”
“This bar is necessary to the moral order. This is a sinkpit of corruption and vice, a fleshpot of iniquity. You think salvation can function without damnation? You think virtue can exist without sin? That’s the trouble with you atheists; you don’t grasp the mechanics of evil. Get on the inside and enjoy life, man. If you’re one of the Faithful, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Opportunist.”

Philip K. Dick book Eye in the Sky

“Bet your sweet soul.”
Source: Eye in the Sky (1957), Chapter 5 (p. 66)

Life , God , World , Faith

“The world is not dialectical -- it is sworn to extremes, not to equilibrium, sworn to radical antagonism, not to reconciliation or synthesis. This is also the principle of evil.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

Jean Baudrillard in: Eldon Taylor What Does That Mean?: Exploring Mind, Meaning, and Mysteries http://books.google.co.in/books?id=pTAIRTJbENgC&pg=PA171, Hay House, Inc, 15 January 2010, p. 171
New millennium

World

“The most successful supporters of tyranny are without doubt those general declaimers who attribute the distresses of the poor, and almost all evils to which society is subject, to human institutions and the iniquity of governments.”

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) British political economist

Essay on the Principle of Population (1798; rev. through 1826)

Support , Success

“On this very spot a great city once stood,
It oozed with evil but it felt so good… ~ City”

Steve Kilbey (1954) British artist

Lyrics

“A recurring theme in western journalism, academia, and collectivist politics is the quaint notion that firearms are intrinsically evil. That is, that they have a will of their own, that somehow inspires their owners to murder and mayhem. I liken this nonsensical belief to voodoo.”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

Source: Tools For Survival (2009), p. 149

“Fear of evil is greater than the evil itself.”

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) Italian politician, Writer and Author

Sono maggiori li spaventi ch'e mali.
Act III, scene xi
The Mandrake (1524)

Fear

“According to a variety of very authoritative sources, Henry A. Kissinger is not a Jew, but a faggot. I will not tolerate any denial of civil rights to a person who happens to be homosexual. Ordinarily, a homosexual is like an ordinary person suffering the affliction of nasty boils; one recognizes the distinction between the person and the affliction.… Henry A. Kissinger is no ordinary, common, garden-variety of homosexual. His heathen sexual inclinations are merely an integral part of a larger evil.… Think of Nero, and then of Kissinger, and then of Nero, and then of Roy M. Cohn. That is the kind of faggot Henry Kissinger is.”

Lyndon LaRouche (1922–2019) American political activist and founder of the LaRouche movement

"Kissinger, the Politics of Faggotry" (3 August 1982)

Thinking , Affliction , Suffering , Parting

“Reporter: The “Protocols” trial is on today. I’ve been assigned to report on it for my paper.
Reporter 2: What’s your hurry Carl? The Jewish community’s lawyer is trying to show the damage done by the “Protocols of Zion” book.
Lawyer: Your honor, we have demonstrated that the “Protocols” is ‘’’smut…’’’ I would conclude by exhibiting evidence of its influence on public opinion as a fraud.
Judge: You may proceed!
Lawyer: Since its first publication in Russia by Dr. Nilus in 1905, four printings have been distributed there!
In 1919, type script copies were distributed to delegated at the Versailles peace conference by white Russians.
In England Victor Marsden translated the “protocols” into English in 1922.
In 1920, the first polish language edition was brought into the United States and South America by Polish immigrants.
In 1921, the first Arabic and the first Italian copies appeared!
In 1921, “The Times” of London published its famous expose of this false document!
And because of his fame, Henry Ford’s work deserves recounting.
Lawyer: In 1920, Henry ford the American auto magnate, bought a small newspaper, the “Dearborn Independent.” He began a series, “The International Jew,” made up of borrowings from the “Protocols of the Elders on Zion.”
Later, in 1922, it was published in sxteen language for a world-wide distribution. It sold over a ‘’’half million’’’ copies in America alone!
Reporter: Actually, Ford recanted in 1926 when he was threatened with a libel suit.

Reporter 2: Really?
Reporter 3: What did he say?
Reporter: He said in part, “…To my great regret I learn that in the ‘Dearborn Independent’ there appeared articles which induced the Jews to regard me as their enemy promoting anti-Semitism!”
HE WENT ON TO SAY, “…I am…mortified that this Journal…is giving currency to ‘The Protocols of the wise men of Zion,’ which I learn to be gross forgeries…I deem it my duty…to make amends for the wrong done to the Jews as fellow men and brothers by asking their forgiveness.
HE GOES ON BY RECITING SOME OF THE MORE “evil ingredients” in the “Protocols” AND HE REFERS TO IT AS AN “infamous forgery.”
Reporter 3: DID HIS APOLOGY CHANGE ANYTHING?? HENRY FORD WAS FAMOUS the world over…his apology must have had influence!
Reporter: Not very much. In fact publication increased all over the globe.
Reporter 3: Look! Here I have two French translations of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” that were published in ‘’’France,’’’ dated 1934. Later they had many printings!
Judge: …I hope to see the day when nobody will be able to understand why otherwise sane and reasonable men should torment their brains for fourteen days over the authenticity or fabrication of the “Protocols of Zion”’’’…I regard the “protocols” as ridiculous nonsense!
Reporter: Good news! …judge Meyer found against the Nazis and imposed a fine on them…

Publisher: We will publish the judge’s decision!
Reporter: This should put an end to the “Protocols” at last!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp. 102-107

Men , Books , World , Peace

“A growing belief that behind every event lay intention—be it an evil thought in the mind of another, or the benevolent whim of a god in the sky—was perhaps inevitable in creatures with an innate understanding of causality. If you were smart enough to make multicomponent tools, you eventually came to believe in gods, the end of all causal chains. There would be costs, of course. In the future, to serve their new gods and shamans, the people would have to sacrifice much: time, wealth, even the right to have children. Sometimes they would even have to lay down their lives. But the payback was that they no longer had to be afraid of dying.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 11 “Mother’s People” section IV (pp. 370-371)

God , Children , People , Understanding

“Communist ethics make it the highest duty to accept the necessity to act wickedly. This, he said, was the greatest sacrifice the revolution asked from us. The conviction of the true communist is that evil transforms itself into bliss through the dialectics of historical evolution.”

György Lukács (1885–1971) Marxist philosopher and literary critic

Quoted in "Utopia & Revolution: On the Origins of a Metaphor" by Melvin Jonah Lasky, pg 53. Transaction Publishers, 1976
Attributed

“When the Prophet saw injustice, either on the part of men or on the part of Providence, he did not inquire closely into its causes, nor bend the knee to necessity, and judge the evil-doers leniently; nor again did he give himself up to despair, or doubt the strength of Righteousness, or the possibility of its victory. He simply complained, pouring out his soul in words of fire; then went his way again, fighting for his ideal, and full of hope that in time—perhaps even "at the end of time"—Righteousness would be lord over all the earth.”

Ahad Ha'am (1856–1927) Hebrew essayist and thinker

Source: Selected Essays (1904), "Priest and Prophet" (1893), p. 133

Men , Hope , Way , Soul

“The prevalence of the corporation in America has led men of this generation to act, at times, as if the privilege of doing business in corporate form were inherent in the citizen; and has led them to accept the evils attendant upon the free and unrestricted use of the corporate mechanism as if these evils were the inescapable price of civilized life, and, hence to be borne with resignation.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

Dissent, Liggett Co. v. Lee, 288 U.S. 517 (1933).
Judicial opinions

Life , Men , Business , Time

“What we call evil, is the only and best shape, which, for the person and his condition at the time, could be assumed by the best good.”

George MacDonald book Phantastes

Phantastes (1858)

Time , Personality

“We find statements by religious, polital leaders and the media that incite Islamophobia. I'm going to give you some, otherwise we wind up talking in very true but general statements. And I think we need to hear the actual words, because these are the words that people, who are in churches, people who are watching the media, hear. And if they don't have a context within which to place them, they will draw us out of conclusions. While George Bush and Tony Blair may distinguish between Islam and extremism, Franklin Graham tells us that "Islam is a very evil religion. All the values that we as a nation hold dear, they don't share those same values at all … these countries that have the majority of Muslims." You might think of Franklin Graham as an individual, but if you are in the Muslim world, you know that Franklin Graham gave the invocation at the first inauguration of president Bush, that Franklin Graham a year and a half later was asked to speak on Good Friday at the Pentagon. That sends a signal. Pat Robertson: "This man [Muhammad] was an absolute wild-eyed fanatic, he was a robber and a brigand. And to say that these terrorists distort Islam … they are carrying out Islam. I mean: This man [Muhammed] was a killer and to think that this is a peaceful religion is fraudulent." Benny Hinn at a pro-Israel rally: "This not a war between Arabs and the Jews, this is between God and the devil."”

John Esposito (1940) writer and professor of Islamic studies

And there are many others.
Speech at the UN seminar on Islamophobia in 2004

God , War , People , World

“In the mind perfect intelligence flourished and reigned, uprightness attended as its companion, and all the senses were prepared and moulded for due obedience to reason; and in the body there was a suitable correspondence with this internal order. But now, although some obscure lineaments of that image are found remaining in us; yet are they so vitiated and maimed, that they may truly be said to be destroyed. For besides the deformity which everywhere appears unsightly, this evil also is added, that no part is free from the infection of sin.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Commentary on Genesis 1. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom01.vii.i.html, (1554)
Genesis (1554)

Intelligence , Sense , Appearance , Parting

“A callous disregard for the claims of innocent human life is the heart and soul of the evil of terrorism.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Speech at Thanksgiving Point, Lehi, Utah, September 24, 2002. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/02_09_24utah.htm.
2002

Life , Soul , Heart

“In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plane — the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times a bloody as it was before; but science does not teach brotherly love. Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit suicide; and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future.”

William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) United States Secretary of State

Summation
Scopes Trial (1925), Summations

Love , War , Suicide , Water

“The 'Planet X' story was partially intended as a comment on the exhausted, circular nature of the X-Men's ever-popular battle with Magneto and by extension, the equally cyclical nature of superhero franchise re-inventions. I ended the book exactly where I came on board, with Logan killing Magneto AGAIN, as he had done at the end of Scott Lobdell's run. Evil never dies in comic book universes. It just keeps coming back. Imagine Hitler back for the hundredth time to menace mankind. (2004)”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

https://web.archive.org/web/20040803001942/http://www.popimage.com/content/grant20044.html Popimage interview
On The X-Men

Men , Books , Imagination , Nature

“[the foreign Muslims (or Turks)] “alone are capable of virtue, kindness, generosity, valour, good deed, good works, truthfulness, keeping of promises… loyalty, clarity of vision, justice, equity, recognition of rights, gratitude for favours and fear of God. They are, consequently, said to be noble, free born, virtuous, religious, of high pedigree and pure birth. These groups, alone are worthy of offices and posts in the government… Owing to their actions the government of the king is strengthened and adorned.” [On the other hand the] “low-born” (Indian) Muslims are capable only of vices - immodesty, falsehood, miserliness, misappropriation, wrongfulness, lies, evil-speaking ingratitude,…shamelessness, impundence… [So they are called] low-born, bazaar people, base, mean, worthless, plebian, shameless and of dirty birth”.”

Ziauddin Barani (1285–1357) Indian Muslim historian and political thinker (1285–1357)

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1990). Indian muslims: Who are they. Chapter 2.
Fatawa-i-Jahandari

God , People , Truth , Fear

“Do sincerely repent, so that you stand before God; wail and weep with David; put on sackcloth and raiments of hair; scatter ashes upon your heads; humble yourselves with the king of Nineveh; confess your faults with Manasseh; die unto your ambitious flesh and pride; fear the Lord, your God, with all your powers; judge in all wisdom with fear and trembling; help the oppressed; grieve not the distressed; promote the just cause of the widows and orphans; protect the good; punish the evil in a christian manner; discharge the duties of your offices properly; seek the kingdom and country that will endure forever; and reflect that you, however highly esteemed, upon earth are only pilgrims and sojourners in a strange land.”

Menno Simons (1496–1561) Dutch theologian, founder of the Mennonites

Exhortation http://www.mennosimons.net/ft016-exhortation.html

Wisdom , God , Fear , Help

“I do think in the media there is a tendency to describe conservatives as one of two things: stupid or evil. And those are the two categories that every conservative gets put in by Democrats and the media. A conservative is either stupid — too dumb to know the right answer — and even worse, if they actually know the right answer, then they’re evil. They want people to suffer. I suppose I feel mildly complimented in that they have recently invented a third category, which is crazy. It’s the alternative to stupid or evil. And now crazy is the third one, because it seems inconceivable that there could be Americans who believe in free-market principles and believe in the Constitution and are working to defend them.”

Ted Cruz (1970) American politician

Interview with Alex Altman of Time Magazine, in Alex Altman, " Why Ted Cruz Thinks the Media Gets Conservatism Wrong http://swampland.time.com/2013/08/08/why-ted-cruz-thinks-the-media-gets-conservatism-wrong/#ixzz2cnxPPCOQ", Time Magazine (August 8, 2013).
2010s

People , Stupidity , Feeling , Thinking

“We need greater virtues to sustain good than evil fortune.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Il faut de plus grandes vertus pour soutenir la bonne fortune que la mauvaise.
Maxim 25.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

“And the evil is done in hopes that evil surrenders
but the deeds of the devil are burned too deep in the embers
and a world of hunger in vengeance will always remember
So please be reassured, we seek no wider war,
we seek no wider war.”

Phil Ochs (1940–1976) American protest singer and songwriter

"We Seek No Wider War" http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/lyrics/we-seek-no-wider-war.html (1965) from Farewells & Fantasies (1997)
The song title alludes to a speech by Lyndon Johnson (17 Februaty 1965), in which he said, referring to the war in Vietnam: "We have no ambition there for ourselves, we seek no wider war."
Lyrics

Hunger , War , World , Hope

“My primary object is to defend and advance a principle in which I see the only possible relief from much that enthralls and degrades and distorts, turning light to darkness and good to evil, rather than to gage a philosopher or weigh a philosophy. Yet the examination I propose must lead to a decisive judgment upon both.”

Henry George (1839–1897) American economist

Introduction : The Reason for the Examination
A Perplexed Philosopher (1892)

Decision , Light

“I am feeble, pale and weary,
And my wings are nearly furled;
I have caused a scene so dreary,
I am glad to quit the world!
With bitterness I'm thinking
On the evil I have done,
And to my caverns sinking
From the coming of the sun.”

Hannah Flagg Gould (1788–1865) American writer

"The Dying Storm" in Poems (published 1835), p. 59.

World , Thinking , Sun

“When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out "stop!"When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"When evil-doing comes like falling rain" [Wenn die Untat kommt, wie der Regen fällt] (1935), trans. John Willett in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 247
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

Suffering , Summer

“In foreign policy, a modest acceptance of fate will often lead to discipline rather than indifference. The realization that we cannot always have our way is the basis of a mature outlook that rests on an ancient sensibility, for tragedy is not the triumph of evil over good so much as triumph of one good over another that causes suffering. Awareness of that fact leads to a sturdy morality grounded in fear as well as in hope. The moral benefits of fear bring us to two English philosophers who, like Machiavelli, have for centuries disturbed people of goodwill: Hobbes and Malthus.”

Robert D. Kaplan (1952) American writer

Robert D. Kaplan (2011), Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Requires a Pagan Ethos, p. 110

Fate , People , Fear , Hope

“Europe resolved a great problem – the problem of the Zionist danger. The Zionists, who constituted a strong political party in Europe, caused much disorder there. Since they had a lot of property and controlled an empire of propaganda, they made the European governments helpless. What Hitler and the German Nazis did to the Jews of Europe at that time was partly due to these circumstances with the Jews. They wanted to expel the Zionists from Europe because they always were a pain in the neck for the governments there. This is how this calamity fell upon the Muslims, especially the Palestinians, and you all know this history, more or less. […]The first goal was to save Europe from the evil of Zionism, and in this, they have been relatively successful.”

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1934–2017) Iranian politician, Shi'a cleric and Writer

Excerpts from a Friday sermon on International Jerusalem Day http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/1575.htm (October 5, 2007)
2007

Pain , History , Problem , Strong

“Who seeth not that he that is an evil counsellor to a prince is an evil counsellor to a realm? If it be sin to be an evil counsellor to one man, wat abomination, what devilish and horrible sin is it to be a flatterer or an evil councillor to a prince?”

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex (1485–1540) English statesman and chief minister to King Henry VIII of England

Letter to Stephen Vaughan.

“It should be mentioned that any external supernatural agency plays no part whatever in the moulding of the character of a Buddhist. In Buddhism there is no one to reward or punish. Pain or happiness are the inevitable results of one's actions. The question of incurring the pleasure or displeasure of a God does not enter the mind of a Buddhist. Neither hope of reward nor fear of punishment acts as an incentive to him to do good or to refrain from evil.”

Narada Maha Thera (1898–1983) Sri Lankan monk and missionary

Buddhism in a Nutshell

God , Pain , Pleasure , Fear

“Isn't the use by America and some Western governments of their fire against others in the world including, or in the forefront of whom are the Arabs and the Muslims, one of the most important reasons of the lack of stability in the world at the present time? Isn't the evil inflicted on America in the act of September 11, 2001, and nothing else, a result of this and other acts? This is the main question and this is what the American administration along with of the Western governments or the Western public opinion should answer in the first place with serenity and responsibility, without emotional reaction and without the use of the same old methods that America used against the world.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

Open letter to the American peoples http://www.wadinet.de/news/iraq/nw273_saddamopenletter.htm (15 September 2001).

World , Question , Time

“To choose this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We always choose the good, and nothing can be good for us without being good for all.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Existentialism and Human Emotions (1957)

Time

“He harms himself who does harm to another, and the evil plan is most harmful to the planner.”

Hesiod book Works and Days

οἷ γ᾽ αὐτῷ κακὰ τεύχει ἀνὴρ ἄλλῳ κακὰ τεύχων
ἡ δὲ κακὴ βουλὴ τῷ βουλεύσαντι κακίστη.
The man who does evil to another does evil to himself, and the evil counsel is most evil for him who counsels it.
He for himself weaves woe who weaves for others woe,
and evil counsel recoils on the counsellor. https://archive.org/stream/b24865898#page/432/mode/2up
Source: Works and Days (c. 700 BC), lines 265-266

“It is only with this prelude that the Declaration of 1776 proclaims the right to revolution. The people do not have an indiscriminate or uncontrolled right to establish or to abolish governments. They have a right to abolish only those governments that become "destructive of these ends". "These ends" refers to the security of equal natural rights. It is only for the sake of security of these rights that legitimate governments are instituted, or that governments may be altered or abolished. And governments are legitimate only insofar as their "just powers" are derived "from the consent of the governed". All of the foregoing is omitted from South Carolina's declaration, for obvious reasons. In no sense could it have been said that the slaves in South Carolina were governed by powers derived from their consent. Nor could it be said that South Carolina was separating itself from the government of the Union because that government had become destructive of the ends for which it was established. South Carolina in 1860 had an entirely different idea of what the ends of government ought to be from that of 1776 or 1787. That difference can be summed up in the difference between holding slavery to be an evil, if possibly a necessary evil, and holding it to be a positive good.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

Source: 2000s, A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (2000), p. 231

People , Idea , Nature , Sense

“But you, my lord and venerable pope, you who take the place of Christ, and the successor to the supreme shepherd in apostolic dignity, do not through sloth allow this pestilence to grow, do not by conniving and dissimulation loosen the reins on this raging impurity. This disease is spreading like a cancer, and its poisonous breed will reach out endlessly unless its evil growth is cut off by the scythe of the gospel.”

Peter Damian (1007–1072) reformist monk

Letter 61:14. To Pope Nicholas II. Damian “deplores the situation in which bishops live in public concubinage to the scandal of some, and to the delight of others who ridicule the leadership of the Church on this account.” January - July 1059.
The Fathers of the Church, Medieval Continuation, Letters 61-90, 1992, Owen J. Blum, tr., Catholic University of America Press, ISBN 0813207509 ISBN 978-0813207506, vol. 3, p. 12 http://books.google.com/books?id=9smLdu9BvK0C&pg=PA12&dq=%22my+lord+and+venerable+pope,+you+who+take+the+place+of%22&hl=en&ei=N2xiTIOVIYT78Aa0-YGkCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22my%20lord%20and%20venerable%20pope%2C%20you%20who%20take%20the%20place%20of%22&f=false

Disease , Rage , Christ

“Go tell Mankind, that there are Devils and Witches; and that tho those night-birds least appear where the Day-light of the Gospel comes, yet New-Engl. has had Exemples of their Existence and Operation; and that no only the Wigwams of Indians, where the pagan Powaws often raise their masters, in the shapes of Bears and Snakes and Fires, but the House of Christians, where our God has had his constant Worship, have undergone the Annoyance of Evil spirits. Go tell the world, What Prays can do beyond all Devils and Witches, and What it is that these Monsters love to do; and through the Demons in the Audience of several standers-by threatned much disgrace to thy Author, if he let thee come abroad, yet venture That, and in this way seek a just Revenge on Them for the Disturbance they have given to such as have called on the Name of God.”

Cotton Mather (1663–1728) American religious minister and scientific writer

Memorable providence, relating to witchcraft's and possessions. (1689) http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/ASA_MATH.HTM

Love , God , World , Way

“[S]ervants of darkness had no lasting joy in their service. In all of them the will for darkness was a perversion of the will for the light. In all but a few maniacs the satisfaction of the will for darkness was at all times countered by a revulsion which the unhappy spirit either dared not confess even to itself, or else rejected as cowardly and evil.”

Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) British novelist and philosopher

Part V The Reign of Darkness, 2. A Synthetic War
Darkness and the light (1941/42)

Light , Time , Joy

“1/2 cup of hope and 1/2 cup of kindness seem like a litmus test by asking "Is the glass half empty or half full?" Nature shows us in every waking moment that where there is life, there is hope. And to quote the movie Horns starring Daniel Radcliffe and Juno Temple, "Man is not born evil. The Devil himself was a fallen angel," there is kindness in everyone if you dig deep enough.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2015

Life , Hope , Angels , Quotes

“Being against evil doesn't make you good. Tonight I was against it and then I was evil myself.”

Ernest Hemingway book Islands in the Stream

Pt. 1: Bimini, Section 4
Islands in the Stream (1970)

“Ay, 'tis thus. Evil us hath in bond;
By Thy grace guilt efface and respond
"Forgiven!"”

Yom Tov of Joigny English rabbi

Omnam Kayn, trans. from the Hebrew by Israel Zangwill

“If there were a clear prospect that such evils were part of a barbarian past, then at least we might find a small crumb of comfort. No such prospect exists: no scientific analysis can even remotely answer or account for past and present horrors of human behaviour.”

Simon Conway Morris (1951) British palaeontologist

Source: The Crucible of Creation (1998), p. 205.

Past , Parting

“I have denied my eyes, both inner and outer. I am not a child, or virgin, or modest wife, fearing to offend. No one owns my eyes now but me. If I have not the stomach by now to look upon any sight in the world, good or evil, beautiful or vile, when shall I? It is far too late for innocence. My only hope is the much more painful consolation of wisdom. Which can grow out of knowledge alone. Give me my true eyes. I want to see. I have to know.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Source: World of the Five Gods series, Paladin of Souls (2003), p. 201

Wisdom , Pain , World , Fear

“To those… who see in certain underlying economic forces, the source of nearly all of our distressing social evils, individual hatred and malice can make in reality no appeal.”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Violence and the Labor Movement (1914), p.xii

Reality

“And wel we see ther is none alive that in every respect may be accompted happie, yea though mortall men were free from all calamities, yet the torments & feare of death should stil attend them But b:sides them, behold, what, and how manye evilles there bee, that unlesse the cloude of error bee removed, impossible it is to see the truth, or receive allay of our earthly woes.”

Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576) Italian Renaissance mathematician, physician, astrologer

Cardanus Comforte (1574)

Death , Men , Truth , Fear

“I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own; where the law hath not been able to find an expedient.”

Jonathan Swift book A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding

A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding

World , Law , Suffering

“It is forbidden to dwell in the vicinity of any of those with an evil tongue, and all the more to sit with them and listen to their words.”

Maimónides (1138–1204) rabbi, physician, philosopher

Source: Hilkhot De'ot (Laws Concerning Character Traits), Chapter 7, Section 6, pp. 51-52

“Yes! We believe in a higher principle than your virtue and the kind of morality you speak of so paltrily and without much conviction. We believe that there is no imperative or reward for virtue for the soul because it simply acts according to the necessity of its inherent nature. The moral imperative expresses itself in an ought and presupposes the concept of an evil next to that of good. P. 43”

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) German philosopher (idealism)

Philosophy and Religion 1804)

Soul , Nature

“Hundreds of thousands of rouble notes are being issued daily by our treasury. This is done, not in order to ﬁll the coffers of the State with practically worthless paper, but with the deliberate intention of destroying the value of money as a means of payment… Experience has taught us it is impossible to root out the evils of capitalism merely by conﬁscation and expropriation… The simplest way to exterminate the very spirit of capitalism is therefore to ﬂood the country with notes of a high face-value without financial guarantees of any sort. …[T]he great illusion of the value and power of money, on which the capitalist state is based will have been definitely destroyed.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

The Daily Chronicle and New York Times (April 23, 1919), Paul Miliukov, Bolshevism: An International Danger, London: UK, Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010, pp. 75-76, first published in 1920
1910s

Money , Way , Country

“You have heard me talk of Logres. It was the old name for this country, thousands of years ago; in the old days when the struggle between good and evil was more bitter and open than it is now. That struggle goes on all round us all the time, like two armies fighting. And sometimes one of them seems to be winning and sometimes the other, but neither has ever triumphed altogether. Nor ever will,” he added softly to himself, “for there is something of each in every man.”

Susan Cooper (1935) English fantasy writer

Source: The Dark Is Rising (1965-1977), Over Sea, Under Stone (1965), Chapter 6 (p. 74)

Time , Fight , Country

“Learn to recognise the mother in Evil, Terror, Sorrow, Denial, as well as in Sweetness and in Joy.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Address to his English disciples, as quoted in The life of Vivekananda and the Universal Gospel, 5th edition (1960) by Romain Rolland, p. 53

Learning , Joy

“Men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.”

John the Evangelist (10–98) author of the Gospel of John; traditionally identified with John the Apostle of Jesus, John of Patmos (author o…

Jesus in John 3:19-20 KJV
Gospel of John

Love , Men , Light

“I must say that when my Southern Christian Leadership Conference began its work in Birmingham, we encountered numerous Negro church reactions that had to be overcome. Negro ministers were among other Negro leaders who felt they were being pulled into something that they had not helped to organize. This is almost always a problem. Negro community unity was the first requisite if our goals were to be realized. I talked with many groups, including one group of 200 ministers, my theme to them being that a minister cannot preach the glories of heaven while ignoring social conditions in his own community that cause men an earthly hell. I stressed that the Negro minister had particular freedom and independence to provide strong, firm leadership, and I asked how the Negro would ever gain freedom without his minister's guidance, support and inspiration. These ministers finally decided to entrust our movement with their support, and as a result, the role of the Negro church today, by and large, is a glorious example in the history of Christendom. For never in Christian history, within a Christian country, have Christian churches been on the receiving end of such naked brutality and violence as we are witnessing here in America today. Not since the days of the Christians in the catacombs has God's house, as a symbol, weathered such attack as the Negro churches.
I shall never forget the grief and bitterness I felt on that terrible September morning when a bomb blew out the lives of those four little, innocent girls sitting in their Sunday-school class in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. I think of how a woman cried out, crunching through broken glass, "My God, we're not even safe in church!" I think of how that explosion blew the face of Jesus Christ from a stained-glass window. It was symbolic of how sin and evil had blotted out the life of Christ. I can remember thinking that if men were this bestial, was it all worth it? Was there any hope? Was there any way out?… time has healed the wounds -- and buoyed me with the inspiration of another moment which I shall never forget: when I saw with my own eyes over 3000 young Negro boys and girls, totally unarmed, leave Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church to march to a prayer meeting -- ready to pit nothing but the power of their bodies and souls against Bull Connor's police dogs, clubs and fire hoses. When they refused Connor's bellowed order to turn back, he whirled and shouted to his men to turn on the hoses. It was one of the most fantastic events of the Birmingham story that these Negroes, many of them on their knees, stared, unafraid and unmoving, at Connor's men with the hose nozzles in their hands. Then, slowly the Negroes stood up and advanced, and Connor's men fell back as though hypnotized, as the Negroes marched on past to hold their prayer meeting. I saw there, I felt there, for the first time, the pride and the power of nonviolence.
Another time I will never forget was one Saturday night, late, when my brother telephoned me in Atlanta from Birmingham -- that city which some call "Bombingham" -- which I had just left. He told me that a bomb had wrecked his home, and that another bomb, positioned to exert its maximum force upon the motel room in which I had been staying, had injured several people. My brother described the terror in the streets as Negroes, furious at the bombings, fought whites. Then, behind his voice, I heard a rising chorus of beautiful singing: "We shall overcome."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Tears came into my eyes that at such a tragic moment, my race still could sing its hope and faith.
Interview in Playboy (January 1965) https://web.archive.org/web/20080706183244/http://www.playboy.com/arts-entertainment/features/mlk/04.html
1960s

Life , Men , God , People

“It was a rotten world, full of treachery and evil, and you had to be on your toes at all times, ready to combat, outfox, outwit, outdeal everybody else. Archie endorsed the graffiti he had once seen scrawled on a downtown brick wall: Do Unto Others, Then Split.”

Robert Cormier book Beyond the Chocolate War

Source: Beyond the Chocolate War (1985), p. 40

World , Time

“I was born in the Realms of Etiquette;
In early years, unprotected and poor.
Alone, I learnt to distinguish between Evil and Good;
Untutored, I toiled at bitter tasks.
The World's Law honours Learning and Fame;
Scholars prize marriages and Caps.
With these fetters I gyved my own hands;
Truly I became a much-deceived man.
At ten years old I learnt to read books;
At fifteen, I knew how to write prose.
At twenty I was made a Bachelor of Arts;
At thirty I became a Censor at the Court.
Above, the duty I owe to Prince and parents;
Below, the ties that bind me to wife and child.
The support of my family, the service of my country—
For these tasks my nature is not apt.”

Bai Juyi (772–846) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

"Chu Ch'ēn Village" (A.D. 811)
Arthur Waley's translations

Marriage , Books , World , Family

“It is almost impossible systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Il est à peu près impossible de constituer systématiquement une morale naturelle. La nature n'a pas de principes. Elle ne nous fournit aucune raison de croire que la vie humaine est respectable. La nature, indifférente, ne fait nulle distinction du bien et du mal.
La Révolte des Anges [The Revolt of the Angels] (1914), ch. XXVII

Life , Law , Nature , Indifference

“One of the darkest evils of our world is surely the unteachable wildness of the Good.”

H. G. Wells book A Modern Utopia

Source: A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 2, sect. 6

World

“Prophecy is a critical response to the "urban revolution," that irreversible commitment of the human race to the city and civilization which spread outward from the "Nile to Oxus" heartland beginning around 3000 B. C. Prophecy is the perception of the potentialities, both for "good" and for "evil," inherent in the new social structure. The urban complex makes a process of world unification in one sense—commercial, technological—inevitable, and makes world unification in another sense—the peaceable Kingdom—ever more problematical. The whole prophetic tradition is an attempt to give direction to the social structure precipitated by the urban revolution; to resolve its inherent contradictions; to put an end to the injustice, inequality, anomie, the state of war … that has been its history from start to finish.”

Norman O. Brown (1913–2002) classicist

Source: "The Prophetic Tradition" (1982), p. 367

War , World , History , Sense

“America's foreign police is Disneyfied production, starring, invariably, an evil dictator who was killing his noble people, until, high on paternalism, America rode to the rescue.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

" Truman Would Have Agreed With Trump On The CIA In Syria https://townhall.com/columnists/ilanamercer/2017/07/23/truman-would-have-agreed-with-trump-on-the-cia-in-syria-n2358572," Townhall.com, July 23, 2017.
2010s, 2017

People , Star

“As in geometry, the oblique must be known, as well as the right; and in arithmetic, the odd as well as the even; so in actions of life, who seeth not the filthiness of evil, wanteth a great foil to perceive the beauty of virtue.”

Philip Sidney (1554–1586) English diplomat

Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney; with remarks, by Miss Porter (1807), p. 23. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.aa0000617332;view=1up;seq=53

Life , Beauty

“Tyranny produces two results, exactly opposite in character, and which are symbolized in those two great types of the slave in classical times — Epictetus and Spartacus. The one is hatred with its evil train, the other meekness with its Christian graces.”

Honoré de Balzac book Une fille d'Ève

La tyrannie produit deux effets contraires dont les symboles existent dans deux grandes figures de l'esclavage antique: Epictète et Spartacus, la haine et ses sentiments mauvais, la résignation et ses tendresses chrétiennes.
Source: A Daughter of Eve (1839), Ch. 3: The Story of a Happy Woman.

Time , Training

“With respect to those works which, from unscientific design, give way during or immediately after their erection, I shall say little; for with all their evils, they add to our experimental knowledge, and convey a lesson, though a costly one.”

William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) civil engineer

p, 125
"On the Harmony of Theory and Practice in Mechanics" (Jan. 3, 1856)

Way , Knowledge

“The monopoly of a single bank is certainly an evil. The multiplication of them was intended to cure it; but it multiplied an influence of the same character with the first, and completed the supplanting the precious metals by a paper circulation. Between such parties the less we meddle the better.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Albert Gallatin, 1802. ME 10:323
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

“A Christian will consider a tyrannical person bossing a city brutally a lesser evil than a whole city lynching one man. In the first case there is one sinner and thousands of sufferers, in the latter case thousands of sinners and one sufferer. The materialist will look at the problem the other way round. He is never interested in sin, but as a humanitarian only in suffering. His final logical conclusion is euthanasia and the sacrifice of individuals to the whim of the masses.”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

Pg 104n
The Menace of the Herd (1943)

Way , Problem , Suffering , Personality

“Nietzsche … explicates his preferred distinction between good and bad individuals as non-condemnatory of the latter. A ‘bad person’ is merely devoid of what Nietzsche personally considers to be noble or virtuous qualities; he is not morally evil. Nietzsche’s aim is … to defuse morality of reactive emotion. … It would be futile, tactless, and cruel, he suggests, to try to change a bad person, one with whom one does not empathize; his formula advises: ‘Where you cannot love, pass by’. No on should be blamed for what he is; there is no point in lamenting fate.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 91

Love , Fate , Change , Personality

“For men use, if they have an evil turn, to write it in marble: and whoso doth us a good turn we write it in dust.”

Thomas More (1478–1535) English Renaissance humanist

Richard III and His Miserable End (1543)

Men

“The last six years afforded me much time and food for thought. I came to the conclusion that the human race is not divided into two opposing camps of good and evil. It is made up of those who are capable of learning and those who are incapable of doing so. Here I am not talking of learning in the narrow sense of acquiring an academic education, but of learning as the process of absorbing those lessons of life that enable us to increase peace and happiness in our world. Women in their role as mothers have traditionally assumed the responsibility of teaching children values that will guide them throughout their lives. It is time we were given the full opportunity to use our natural teaching skills to contribute towards building a modern world that can withstand the tremendous challenges of the technological revolution which has in turn brought revolutionary changes in social values.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Opening Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China (1995)

Life , Women , Children , World

“You cannot undo your acts. If you have depraved another's will, and injured another's soul, it may be in the grace of God that hereafter you will be personally accepted, and the consequence of your guilt inwardly done away; but your penitence cannot undo the evil you have done. The forgiveness of God — the blood of Christ itself — does not undo the past.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 217.

God , Soul , Forgiveness , Past

“Nature proceeds by blunders; that is its way. It is also ours. So if we have blundered by regarding consciousness as a blunder, why make a fuss over it? Our self-removal from this planet would still be a magnificent move, a feat so luminous it would bedim the sun. What do we have to lose? No evil would attend our departure from this world, and the many evils we have known would go extinct along with us. So why put off what would be the most laudable masterstroke of our existence, and the only one?”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)

World , Way , Departure , Nature

“I am the guru of greatness, the shaman of sexy, the ECW champion John Morrison. I am beyond good and evil, a portal to the infinite. Punk, you are temporary, fleeting, a footnote to an average reality. You want me to embarrass you at SummerSlam? Is that it? Then go ahead, sign it, but the fact is you can't handle the pressure, Punk. You couldn't handle being the ECW champion.”

John Hennigan (1979) American professional wrestler

CM Punk/John Morrison contract signing http://youtube.com/watch?v=6EUO__hwKvE

Reality

“I mean, the Nazis did terrible evil but they had a sufficient sense of shame to try to hide it”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Tony Abbott's Nazi reference shows his penchant for alienating voters http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbotts-nazi-reference-shows-his-penchant-for-alienating-voters-20150903-gjeccu.html#ixzz3liz6US8O, September 4, 2015.
2015

Sense

“The straightening board was created because of warped wood, and the plumb line came into being because of things that are not straight. Rulers are established and ritual and rightness are illuminated because the nature is evil.”

Xun Zi (-313–-238 BC) Ancient Chinese philosopher

Sources of Chinese Tradition (1999), vol. 1, p. 182
Human nature is evil

Nature

“The Quakers sent me books, from which I learnt how they had, years ago, established beyond doubt the duty for a Christian of fulfilling the command of non-resistance to evil by force, and had exposed the error of the Church's teaching in allowing war and capital punishment.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894)

War , Books , Error

“We need honest, reasoned debate; not fear-mongering. To those who pit Americans against immigrants, and citizens against non-citizens; to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty; my message to you is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists- for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil.”

John Ashcroft (1942) American politician

Source: Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice (2006), p. 192

Love , People , Fear , Peace

“"Let us give them a portion of the Evil Forest. They boast about victory over death. Let us give them a real battlefield in which to show their victory." […] They offered them as much of the Evil Forest as they cared to take. And to their great amazement the missionaries thanked them and burst into song.”

Chinua Achebe book Things Fall Apart

Source: Things Fall Apart (1958), Chapter 17 (p. 139)

Death , Victory

“There are those who would say that it is unfortunate that his campaign for the presidency did not turn out like one of his movies--for in 2004, it appeared that the villains had won the day. As his spokesperson then, I know that he would have told us not to lose hope for, like in the movies, good will ultimately triumph over evil.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Statement: Remembering the King

Hope , Appearance

“There is a certain kind of morality which is even more alien to good and evil than amorality is.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

“The responsibility of writers,” p. 169
On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968)

“Who sings of all of Love's eternity
Who shines so bright
In all the songs of Love's unending spells? Holy lightning strikes all that's evil
Teaching us to love for goodness sake.
Hear the music of Love Eternal
Teaching us to reach for goodness sake.”

Jon Anderson (1944) English singer

Lyrics of "Loved by the Sun", on the soundtrack of the film Legend (1986).

Love , Music , Singing

“[W]e live in a popular-front moment, where no one on “our side” is worth criticizing too much, if at all, and everyone on “their side” is evil. This has as much to do with ratings and page views as it does with ideology. Moths chase light, but the incentive for politicians, producers, and pundits is to follow the heat. I’m still torn over how people such as Mark Zuckerberg should deal with slanderous carnival barkers like Alex Jones. But I’m convinced a lot of people are to blame for the problem reaching Zuckerberg’s desk in the first place.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2018, Are We to Blame for the Alex Jones Problem? (2018)

People , Problem , Light

“If we cannot take away all the grief, all the evil, all the death, we will start with loving everyone, trying ourselves not to give the grief, the evil, the death, with the faith that the rest of the grief, evil and death will disappear.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

Love , Death , Faith

“If the Soul sees, after death, what passes on this earth, and watches over the welfare of those it loves, then must its greatest happiness consist in seeing the current of its beneficent influences widening out from age to age, as rivulets widen into rivers, and aiding to shape the destinies of individuals, families, States, the World; and its bitterest punishment, in seeing its evil influences causing mischief and misery, and cursing and afflicting men, long after the frame it dwelt in has become dust, and when both name and memory are forgotten.”

Albert Pike book Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. XIX : Grand Pontiff, p. 315

Love , Death , Men , Age

“Who shall count up the evil brood that is born from power - the pitiful fear, the madness, the despair, the overpowering craving for revenge, the treachery, the unmeasured cruelty?”

Auberon Herbert (1838–1906) British politician

Westminster Gazette (1893)

Fear , Revenge , Madness , Despair

“[I]f you look at Europe and see a continent adrift, with no identity and no strong values beyond economic equality and possessing little capacity to identify evil, let alone a will to fight it, then you need to start fighting.”

Dennis Prager (1948) American writer, speaker, radio and TV commentator, theologian

Dennis Prager. "America Founded To Be Free, Not Secular" https://www.creators.com/read/dennis-prager/01/07/america-founded-to-be-free-not-secular at creators.com, 3 January 2007.
2000s

Strong , Fight

“In his home-life Turgot remained most frugal and laborious, treating his servants with a benevolence then accounted contemptible, and working out his quiet schemes with an infinite patience and thoroughness. When he was offered the richer Intendancy of Lyons, he would not take it. Here, as he said of himself, though he was 'the compulsory instrument of great evil,' he was doing a little good. Only a little, it might be. But if every man did the little he could — what a different world!”

Evelyn Beatrice Hall book The Friends of Voltaire

Source: The Friends of Voltaire (1906), Ch. 8 : Turgot: The Statesman, p. 221

Life , World , Home , Patience

“We’ve been bombarded with nauseating narratives about the evils of factory farming for over 40 years. The fact that we have not, as a collective gesture of consumer outrage, monkey wrenched these hellholes into oblivion speaks either to the human tendency to procrastinate or, worse, our pathological indifference.”

James E. McWilliams (1968) American historian

"The Amnesia-ville Horror", in all-creatures.org (June 2012) https://www.all-creatures.org/articles/ar-jw-amnesia.html.

Indifference

“Tommy locked his doors, armed his security system, replaced all the 9-volt batteries in his smoke detectors, made sure the gun in his dresser drawer was loaded, and went to bed where, before falling asleep, he recited a psalm from memory, with an emphasis on one line in particular: “yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me...””

Lis Wiehl (1961) American legal scholar

Source: Waking Hours: Book 1 in East Salem Trilogy with Pete Nelson (Thomas Nelson), p. 165

Death , Fear , Art , Memory

“To do good is difficult. One who does good first does something hard to do. I have done many good deeds, and, if my sons, grandsons and their descendants up to the end of the world act in like manner, they too will do much good. But whoever amongst them neglects this, they will do evil. Truly, it is easy to do evil.”

Ashoka (-304–-232 BC) Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty

Edicts of Ashoka (c. 257 BC)

World

“Of Optimism I have said that "The world is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil."”

F. H. Bradley book Appearance and Reality

Appearance and Reality, preface http://books.google.com/books?id=EtgtAAAAYAAJ&q=%22of+optimism+I+have+said+that+The+world+is+the+best+of+all+possible+worlds+and+everything+in+it+is+a+necessary+evil%22&pg=PR14#v=onepage (1893).

World , Optimism

“There comes not seldom a crisis in the life of men, of nations, and of worlds, when the old forms seem ready to decay, and the old rules of action have lost their binding force. The evils of existing systems obscure the blessings that attend them; and, where reform is needed, the cry is raised for subversion.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) United States federal judge

Other writings, The Altruist in Politics (1889)

Life , Men , World , Cry

“Anyone familiar with my work knows that I am extremely critical of all religious faiths. I have argued elsewhere that the ascendancy of Christian conservatism in American politics should terrify and embarrass us. And yet, there are gradations to the evil that is done in name of God, and these gradations must be honestly observed. So let us now make sense of the impossible by acknowledging the obvious: there is a direct link between the doctrine of Islam and Muslim terrorism. Acknowledging this link remains especially taboo among political liberals….. While the other major world religions have been fertile sources of intolerance, it is clear that the doctrine of Islam poses unique problems for the emergence of a global civilization.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/bombing-our-illusions_b_8615.html 2011-03-08 Bombing Our Illusions - The Huffington Post, October 10, 2005
2010s

God , World , Faith , Religion

“It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Talk titled "The World After September 11th", AFSC Conference at Tufts University, Massachusetts, December 8, 2001 https://web.archive.org/web/20011230091612/http://www.zmag.org/chomskyafter911.htm.
Quotes 2000s, 2001

Children , World

“[President George W. Bush] has a vision which can be described with two other words: Manichaean paranoia… the notion that he is leading the forces of good against the empire of evil, that in that setting, the fact that we are morally superior justifies us committing immoral acts. And that is a very dangerous posture for the country that is the number one global power. … The fact is he squandered our credibility, our legitimacy, and even respect for our power.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński (1928–2017) Polish-American political scientist

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (March 14, 2007).

Country

“Good evening. Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. The victims were in airplanes or in their offices -- secretaries, businessmen and women, military and federal workers. Moms and dads. Friends and neighbors. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, A Great People Has Been Moved to Defend a Great Nation (September 2001)

Life , Women , Way , Moms

Quotes about Evil page 17

Quotes about Evil
page 17