Quotes about Evil
page 32

“All evils are to be considered with the good that is in them, and with what worse attends them.”

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) English trader, writer and journalist

Source: Robinson Crusoe (1719), Ch. 5, First Weeks on the Island.

“Navratri brings to me blessings of goddess Durga and teach me reverence of worship and help me to meditation myself. In these days fasting myself for goddess durga it ends the evil inside me.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Original: What's your?

Help

“God, at the beginning, created two human beings, from whom the whole multitude of the human race has descended; and thus it is not the equity of nature, but the ambition of evil desire, which has given rise to worldly nobility.”

Sulpicius Severus (360–420) Christian writer and historian and native of Aquitania (c. 363-c. 425)

"Take Heed that Ye Love not Human Glory in any Respect," A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 11, p. 66

God, Nature

“To overdraw its evil is a simple impossibility”

David Livingstone (1813–1873) Scottish explorer and missionary

Livingstone While talking about the slave trade in East Africa in his journals.

“I’ve never seen a religion that wasn’t basically evil.”

Rudy Rucker book Master of Space and Time

Source: Master of Space and Time (1984), Chapter 10, “God’s Laws” (p. 72)

Religion

“Death is regarded as an evil and our minds are only meditating upon life itself, and never upon the destroyer of pleasure, which is death.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Life, Death, Pleasure

“Peace can be find between good and evil. It's not so easy to find that sweet spot!”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Peace

“There is so much goodness in this world than evil. Even the devil himself experience some worse days (nightmares).”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

World

“Even the devils love their own kind and, they cannot be evil to themselves.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Love

“Good and evil are one. Just like a coin, the head and the tail.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“The purpose of meditation is not to calm the mind. It's all about controlling your thoughts and emotions. Familiarise yourself with good and evil, the shortest path to eternal wisdom.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Wisdom

“We must not, at any cost, behave like little children who are ready to take credit for good deeds but run away wherever evil ones appear.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Children, Appearance

“A universe of worlds, a dimensional macrocosm of worlds—and in all of them one thing that was always the same; one unifying force that was undeniably good, even if it now happened to be imprisoned in an evil place; the Talisman, axle of all possible worlds.”

Stephen King book The Talisman

The Talisman (1984)

World, Universe

“At all times and under all circumstances, overcome evil with good. Know thyself, and God will supply the wisdom and the occasion for a victory over evil. Clad in the panoply of Love, human hatred cannot reach you.”

Mary Baker Eddy book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures

Source: Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 571

Love, Wisdom, God, Time

“Evil will come to nought and will be completely destroyed. The divine, pure goodness will contain in itself every nature endowed with reason; nothing made by God is excluded from his kingdom once everything mixed with some elements of base material has been consumed by refinement in fire.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

A Treatise on 1 Corinthians 15.28 https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2019/10/04/in-illud-tunc-et-ipse-filius/

God, Nature

“I have often wondered why anger is considered by some Western religions to be a sin. It is such a marvelous protection against evil.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: The Marianne Trilogy, Marianne, the Magus, and the Manticore (1985), Chapter 2 (p. 45)

Religion, Anger

“Taxes are an evil—a necessary evil, but still an evil, and the fewer of them we have the better.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Churchill By Himself: The Definitive Collections of Quotations, ed. Richard Langworth, 2008, p. 424, (1907, 12 February)
Early career years (1898–1929)

“All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil.”

Robert Louis Stevenson book Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case.
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)

“The world is a complex place. In our struggles to simplify and understand, we often identify some bugbear and then make it responsible for all evils.”

Stephen Jay Gould book An Urchin in the Storm

Source: An Urchin in the Storm (1987) "Utopia, Limited", p. 218

World, Understanding

“A warrior doesn't know remorse for anything he has done, because to isolate one's acts as being mean, or ugly, or evil is to place an unwarranted importance on the self.”

Carlos Castaneda book The Wheel of Time

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from "Journey to Ixtlan" (Chapter 8)

“There is a kind of selective memory that afflicts men when they view the past. They see the good and overlook the evil.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Source: The Roman Empire (1967), p. 191

Men, Affliction, Memory, Past

“How can someone have the freedom to choose and the power to act freely, unless he were able to be evil, should he so wish?”

Gregory Palamas (1296–1359) Monk and archbishop

Predestination? On Why God Made Those Who Would Perish

Freedom

“It is not only others who are to blame for all our evils. Nor will in any circumstances only others shape our destiny. And for the present situation we all bear part of the responsibility in our own way. And especially for the future: our personal, our vocation and our people.”

Franjo Tuđman (1922–1999) Croatian politician, soldier and president

Source: Source https://arhiv.slobodnadalmacija.hr/11121999/prilozi.htm (1999)

People, Way, Future, Parting

“There was a time when evilness did not exist, and there will be a time when it will no more exist, whereas there was no time when virtue did not exist, and there will be no time when it will not exist. For the germs of virtue are impossible to destroy.”

Evagrius Ponticus (345–399) Christian monk

Kephalaia Gnostika 1.40

Time

“No evil can be excused because it is done with a good intention.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Original: (la) Nullum malum bona intentione factum excusatur.
Variant: Variant translation: An evil action cannot be justified by reference to a good intention.
Source: On the Ten Commandments (c. 1273)

“Our actions whether good or evil have an ultimate significance and have effects of infinite range and scope. We stand under incalculable responsibility. We must be faithful in little things because there are no little things; we must be faithful in God’s absence because God is never absent.”

Arulselvam Rayappan (1960) Indian prelate

Source: Responsible Servants https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/responsible-servants-arulselvam-rayappan-sermon-on-parable-general-77029 (7 March 2005)

God, Faith

“I know that I can give you examples of failed Socialist economies until I'm blue in the face and you won't care. Because of course Socialism is inherently more moral, more altruistic than the evil, greedy, capitalist warmongering seen in the West.”

Steven Crowder (1987) American actor

to be sorted

“Men personalize good and evil in a multiplicity of gods and devils, but Truth students follow Jesus in recognizing the supreme Spirit in man as the "one God and Father of all."”

Charles Fillmore (1854–1948) American mystic

Source: Mysteries Of John (1946)

Men, God, Truth, Personality

“We know most of our forefathers, all of our main Founding Fathers, were against slavery, recognized the evils of it.”

Kayleigh McEnany (1988) American political commentator and writer

Quoted by * 2021-07-06
Kayleigh McEnany Falsely Claims All The ‘Main Founding Fathers’ Opposed Slavery
Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kayleigh-mcenany-false-slavery-claim_n_60e4986ae4b06fb1a6f0128d

“I am a living member of the great Family of All Souls; and I cannot improve or suffer myself without diffusing good or evil around me through an ever-enlarging sphere.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Source: "The Father's Love for Persons" https://www.google.com/books/edition/Select_Discourses_and_Essays/loYfAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22I+am+a+living+member+of+the+great+Family+of+All+Souls%22&pg=PA343&printsec=frontcover, in Selected Discourses and Essays from the works of William Ellery Channing, DD (1895)

Family, Soul, Suffering

“Necromancy, and Goetia, which is Evil Magic, do produce such shells and demons, apparitions of deceit.”

Eliphas Levi (1810–1875) French writer

Miscellaneous Quotes On the Subjects of Magic and Magicians
Source: The Magical Ritual of the Sanctum Regnum, Eliphas Levi, Translated by W. Wynn Westcott, London, George Redway, 1896, p. 51.

“[T]he basic decisions are... about aims... what is desirable... the greater good or the lesser evil in the case of conflicting aims... what sacrifice we are willing to make for a certain achievement, and at what point the sacrifice outweighs the advantages.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Future of Industrial Man (1942), p. 120

Decision

“Prudishness is pretense of innocence without innocence. Women have to remain prudish as long as men are sentimental, dense, and evil enough to demand of them eternal innocence and lack of education. For innocence is the only thing which can ennoble lack of education.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Athenäum (1798 - 1800)
Source: “Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #31

Women, Men, Education

“Evil is thou', and the worst evil is thou', which thou knowest it not.”

Abu Sa'id Abu'l-Khayr (967–1049) poet

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 96

“Idleness is the open field of perdition, well tilled and sown with evil thoughts.”

Mateo Alemán book Guzmán de Alfarache

Pt. II, Lib. II, Ch. VI.
Guzmán de Alfarache (1599-1604)

“The absence of a decision could result in an impetuous, dangerous development of a situation which has got out of any control. There is no ideal solution in such circumstances. The only thing is to find the optimal solution, "a lesser evil."”

Wojciech Jaruzelski (1923–2014) Polish military officer and politician

Source: Speech at Kansas State University (11 March 1996)

Optimism, Decision

“Lo! the hosts of evil 'round us,
Scorn Thy Christ, assail His ways.
From the fears that long have bound us,
Free our hearts to faith and praise.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
For the living of these days,
For the living of these days.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969) American pastor

Source: God of Grace and God of Glory (1930)

Wisdom, Fear, Faith, Way

“The major weapon now being used by the combined Forces of Evil is chaos, disruption, lack of established security, and consequent fear... The entire rhythm of international thinking has to be altered, and that constitutes a slow and arduous task; the evil personalities which, in every country, are responsible for the chaos and uncertainty, have eventually to be replaced by those who can work in co-operation with the rhythm of the seventh Ray, and thus produce ordered beauty.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Externalization of the Hierarchy (1957) p. 668

Fear, Beauty, Thinking, Personality

“Few desire to know the truth of what is happening in our state’s abortion clinics. All of the outrage, all of the noise is directed at one thing: silencing the uncomfortable truth. It’s either willful ignorance or a decision to partner with the abortion industry. When I started in public office, I was intellectually pro-life, but now I have come to see that the life issue is truly the issue of our time. The depth of evil that exists to protect this lie prevents the states from protecting children. How we determine the answer to this issue is what will determine where our nation will end up. Unless the truth prevails, abortion will destroy us as a nation.”

Phill Kline (1959) American politician

Source: Ask the Attorney: An Interview with Former Kansas Attorney General and Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline http://lifelegalgiving.com/ask-the-attorney-an-interview-with-former-kansas-attorney-general-and-johnson-county-district-attorney-phill-kline/ (1 August 2009)

Life, Children, Truth, Lie

“Banish Evil from the world? Nonsense! Encourage it, foster it, sponsor it. The world owes Evil a debt beyond imagination. Think! Without greed ambition falters. Without vanity art becomes idle musing. Without cruelty benevolence lapses to passivity. Superstition has shamed man into self-reliance and, without stupidity, where would be the savor of superior understanding?”

Jack Vance book The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph

The Sub-Standard Sardines (p. 132)
Short fiction, The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph (1966)

Stupidity, World, Art, Imagination

“The first requirement to purifying the soul is that one continues to remove all evil and impure thoughts from the heart.”

Mirza Basheer-ud-Din Mahmood Ahmad (1889–1965) Caliph of the Messiah

Source: Irfan-e-Ilahi, Anwar-ul-Ulum, Vol. 4, p. 371

Soul, Heart

“The evils and dangers of which I speak are of slow growth, and their cure can only be gradual. Unless Great Britain is able by a united and well-instructed effort to grapple with her economic problems, and unless she is worthy to be the heart of her world-wide establishment, you here in this hall today will live long enough to lose not only your inheritance, but your livelihood. The continuance of our present confusion and disintegration will reduce us within a generation, and perhaps sooner, to the degree of States like Holland and Portugal, which nursed valiant races and held great possessions, but were stripped of them in the crush and competition of the world. That would be a melancholy end to all the old glories and recent triumphs.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Source: Rectorial address ("The present decline of Parliamentary government in Great Britain") to Edinburgh University (5 March 1931), quoted in The Times (6 March 1931), p. 19

World, Problem, Effort, Heart

“I don't know what makes a man
or a woman even think that
terror isn't evil.
How could anyone have plans
that would guarantee the death of
thousands of people?
And yet as I look back now on what happened,
like the calls from those in planes
they were trapped in,
whatever they felt that day,
"I love you":
that was all they wanted to say.”

Gilbert O'Sullivan (1946) Irish singer-songwriter

"All They Wanted to Say" (song) <br class="br">Song lyrics <br class="br">Source: Gilbert O'Sullivan, "All They Wanted to Say" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeaqKqed6V4 (song on YouTube)

Love, Death, People, Thinking

“Language has become the universal evil. And we can certainly see why. What characterizes any word is its difference from the thing – the fact that, taken in itself, in its own reality, language contains nothing of the reality of the thing, none of its properties. This difference from the thing explains its indifference to the thing. Since a word has nothing in itself that is identical or similar to what is in the thing, it could as well be united with any other thing whatever. One could use the same name for two different things or else attribute several names to the same thing. But because, in and of itself, the word contains nothing that is real and ignores everything about that reality, it could just as well bring reality back to itself, identify with it, define it, in such a way that everything the word says becomes reality, and pretends to stand for it. Emerging from its own powerlessness, the power of language suddenly becomes frightening, shaking up reality, twisting it up in its frenzy.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Books on Religion and Christianity, I am the Truth. Toward a philosophy of Christianity (1996)
Source: Michel Henry, I am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, translated by Susan Emanuel, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 9

Way, Reality, Universe, Indifference

“I figured out my pro-nouns after watching Vampire Diaries which made me decide on Vam/Pire/Evil”

#1 Broncos Fan

“There is a certain indolence in us, a wish not to be disturbed, which tempts us to think that when things are quiet, all is well. Subconsciously, we tend to give the preference to 'social peace,' though it be only apparent, because our lives and possessions seem then secure. Actually, human beings acquiesce too easily in evil conditions; they rebel far too little and too seldom. There is nothing noble about acquiescence in a cramped life or mere submission to superior force.”

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

"Pacifism and Class War" in The Essays of A. J. Muste (1967) edited by Nat Hentoff p. 179-85; also quoted in American Power and the New Mandarins (2002) by Noam Chomsky, p. 160.

Life, Peace, Thinking

“I have been opposed to vivisection for many years; not just because it is unbelievably barbaric and unforgivably cruel but also because it is worthless, wasteful, inaccurate, uninformative and dangerously misleading. The cruelty is indefensible and an affront to human dignity, but in a desperate attempt to justify their evil practices many vivisectors still claim that what they do helps save human lives. They are lying. The truth is that animal experiments kill people and animal researchers are responsible for the deaths of thousands of men, women and children every year; they are also directly responsible for a massive amount of human suffering.”

Vernon Coleman (1946) British doctor

"Why Animal Experiments Must Stop" (1991), in animalliberationfront.com http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/Animal%20Testing/Vivisection/waems.htm.

Death, Women, Men, Children

“Language is an evil thing, a very evil thing. And a force to be reckoned with.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

As quoted in The Guardian (19 March 2005)

“Absolute Evil exists. As kids we geriatrics learned all about it, and no damn social worker had better come along and blame “evil” on “conditions.””

Jack Cady (1932–2004) American writer

Evil is a force in the universe, a force using any weakness it finds to do its dirt; and with Evil, Hell is just a sideline.
Source: Kilroy Was Here (1996), p. 134

Learning

“Prepare your mind to live in the company of evil people, with your mind unsullied; to do this is to live like an angel.”

Guigo I (1083–1136) Cartusian monk

#22
The Meditations of Guigo I, Prior of the Charterhouse

People, Angels

“I never liked horses, but after this scene, I hate them. I hate them, they are nasty animals, and I hate cows. Cows are evil. Cows are absolutely evil, I tell you. They look, like, inoffensive, but they're perverted creatures, and so are horses, they are absolutely evil motherfuckers.”

Guillermo del Toro (1964) Mexican film director

Pan's Labyrinth DVD director's commentary

Hate, Animals, Horse

“When grace comes, all the schemes of the evil one cease, for it abolishes them. It comes like a gentle breeze, like a subtle, fragrant zephyr which deadens the flesh and then raises the soul. It enlightens our nous. And in the end, when it comes, grace itself teaches a person.”

Joseph the Hesychast (1897–1959) Greek Orthodox Christian Athonite monk

Letter 55
Monastic Wisdom (2016)

Soul, Personality

“There is no greater social evil than religion. It is the cancer in the body of humanity.”

A. C. Grayling (1949) English philosopher

Source: Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God (2002), Chapter 9, “Evil” (p. 34)

Religion

““Evil” is first and foremost a religious notion. It means whatever a religion dislikes.”

A. C. Grayling (1949) English philosopher

Source: Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God (2002), Chapter 9, “Evil” (p. 33)

Religion

“One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), On Stupidity

Stupidity, Sense

“The smallest evil that is inflicted on us seems to us a monstrous and horrible injustice. On the contrary, we are willing to consider the evils of others' light and to excuse and mitigate the injustices suffered by them.”

Daniel Salamanca (1863–1935) President of Bolivia (1863-1935)

Light, Suffering

“Human beings have this peculiar capacity that no other creatures have: I know how I can be hurt, because I am aware of my own limitations–painfully aware—and now, because I know how I can be hurt, I know how you can be hurt, and I can take advantage of that. And that's how evil enters the world.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Unsourced

World, Hurt

“Authoritarians always blame whole groups. That's what the Left does, they're sick and they're evil.”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

#671: April 13, 2022 https://knowledgefight.libsyn.com/671-april-13-2022(Knowledge Fight April 13th, 2022)

“Slavery is an evil of the first magnitude, ... and contrary to all the genuine principles of Christianity, and yet carried on by men denominated thereby.”

Ottobah Cugoano (1757–1791) African abolitionist in England

Source: Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery (1787), p. 24

Men

“Freedom only comes through persistent revolt, through persistent agitation, through persistently rising up against the system of evil.”

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

1950s, The Birth of a New Nation (1957)

Freedom

“Baptism is the washing away of evils that were in us before, but sins committed after baptism are washed away by tears.”

John Climacus book The Ladder of Divine Ascent

7:6
The Ladder of Divine Ascent

Tear

“Happy are they who know not the taste of evil.”

Sophocles (-496–-406 BC) ancient Greek tragedian

Source: Antigone, Line 583 (Ode II)

Happiness

“The stance against abortion is the pre-eminent priority. How could it not be? We have to get it right from the beginning. Our stance on life, that is our pre-eminent priority. We have to fight against this evil.”

Michael Francis Burbidge (1957) American Catholic bishop

The Walk Humbly Podcast - Episode 39: Protecting children online, priority of abortion, homelessness pilot project, and more! https://www.arlingtondiocese.org/bishop/walk-humbly-podcast/the-walk-humbly-podcast---episode-39/ (18 November 2019)

Life, Fight

“Dialogue for the sake of conversation serves no ethical, moral or practical purpose. Dialogue that is one way, or in which we are silent about our grave concerns about injustice, or where we end up kowtowing, appeasing or unwittingly complicit with evil, is immoral.”

Benedict Rogers (1974) London-based human rights activist

Vatican should talk to China — but not at any price https://www.ucanews.com/amp/vatican-should-talk-to-china-but-not-at-any-price/93985 (1 October 2021)

Way

“War is an evil thing.”

Victor Hope, 2nd Marquess of Linlithgow (1887–1952) British politician, agriculturalist and colonial administrator (1887-1952)

26 March 1940, Speech at St. John Ambulance Association and Indian Red Cross Society, also quoted in Speeches and Statements of the Marquess of Linlithgow, p. 241

War

“Mere abstention from a life of evil does not constitute a life devoted to good works.”

Lin Carter book Kesrick

Source: Kesrick (1982), Chapter 3, “The Monster-Guarded Gate” (p. 25)

Life