Quotes about Evil
page 4

“The story of Adam and Eve represents the fruit as producing a psychological transformation. So the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is an abstraction across trees, and it's trying to say: 'Here's something that's common across trees, it's a fruit that's common across trees.' The fruit that's common across trees is something that you might call food, fair enough. But here's something that's even more cool: food that's stable across the entire domain of food, isn't food – it's information. We use the same bloody circuits in our brain to forage for information, that animals use to forage for information. Why is that? Because we figured out knowing where the food is, is more important than having the food… That's why we're information foragers.”

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

Biblical Series IV: Adam and Eve: Self-Consciousness, Evil, and Death https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifi5KkXig3s

Food, Knowledge, Tree, Animals

“We know today that nothing will restore the pre-machine condition of reasonably universal employment save an artificial allocation of working hours involving the use of more men than formerly to perform a given task.... The primary function of society, in spite of all the sophistries spurred of selfishness, is to give men better conditions than they could get without it; and the basic need today is jobs for all—not for "property" for a few of the luck and the acquisitive.... In view of the urgent need for change, there is something almost obscene in the chatter of the selfish about various psychological evils allegedly inherent in a New Deal promising decent economic security and humane leisure for all instead of for a few.... What is worth answering is the kindred outcry about "regimentation", "collective slavery", "violation of Anglo-Saxon freedom", "destruction of the right of the individual to make his own way" and so on; with liberal references to Stalin, Hitler, Mustapha Kemal, and other extremist dictators who have sought to control men's personal, intellectual, and artistic lives, and traditional habits and folkways, as well as their economic fortunes. Naturally the Anglo-Saxon balks at any programme calculated to limit his freedom as a man and a thinker or to disturb his inherited perspectives and daily customs—and need we say that no plan ever proposed in an Anglo-Saxon country would conceivably seek to limit such freedom or disturb such perspectives and customs? Here we have a deliberate smoke-screen—conscious and malicious confusion of terms. A decent planned society would indeed vary to some extent the existing regulations (for there are such) governing commercial and economic life. Yet who save a self-confessed Philistine or Marxist (the plutocrat can cite "Das Kapital" for his purpose!) would claim that the details and conditions of our merely economic activities form more than a trivial fraction of our whole lives and personalities? That which is essential and distinctive about a man is not the routine of material struggle he follows in his office; but the civilised way he lives, outside his office, the life whose maintenance is the object of his struggle. So long as his office work gains him a decently abundant and undisputedly free life, it matters little what that work is—what the ownership of the enterprise, and what and how distributed its profits, if profits there be. We have seen that no system proposes to deny skill and diligence an adequate remuneration. What more may skill and diligence legitimately ask? Nor is any lessening in the pride of achievement contemplated. Man will thrill just as much at the overcoming of vast obstacles, and the construction of great works, whether his deeds be performed for service or for profit. As it is, the greatest human achievements have never been for profit. Would Keats or Newton or Lucretius or Einstein or Santayana flourish less under a rationally planned society? Any intimation that a man's life is wholly his industrial life, and that a planned economic order means a suppression of his personality, is really both a piece of crass ignorance and an insult to human nature. Incidentally, it is curious that no one has yet pointed to the drastically regulated economic life of the early Mass. Bay colony as something "American!"”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Unpublished (and probably unsent) letter to the Providence Journal (13 April 1934), quoted in Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy, edited by J. T. Joshi, pp. 115-116
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, Men, Way, Nature

“I have never believed that the securing of material resources ought to form the central interest of human life—but have instead maintained that personality is an independent flowering of the intellect and emotions wholly apart from the struggle for existence. Formerly I accepted the archaic dictum that only a few can be relieved of the engulfing waste of the material struggle in its bitterest form—a dictum which is, of course, true in an agricultural age having scanty resources. Therefore I adopted an aristocratic attitude; regretfully arguing that life, in any degree of fulness, is only for the fortunate few whose ancestors' prowess has given them economic security and leisure. But I did not take the bourgeois position of praising struggle for its own sake. While recognising certain worthy qualities brought out by it, I was too much impressed by its stultifying attributes to regard it as other than a necessary evil. In my opinion, only the leisured aristocrat really had a chance at adequate life—nor did I despise him because he was not forced to struggle. Instead, I was sorry that so few could share his good fortune. Too much human energy was wasted in the mere scramble for food and shelter. The condition was tolerable only because inevitable in yesterday's world of scanty resources. Millions of men must go to waste in order that a few might really live. Still—if those few were not upheld, no high culture would ever be built up. I never had any use for the American pioneer's worship of work and self-reliance for their own sakes. These things are necessary in their place, but not ends in themselves—and any attempt to make them ends in themselves is essentially uncivilised. Thus I have no fundamental meeting-ground with the rugged Yankee individualist. I represent rather the mood of the agrarian feudalism which preceded the pioneering and capitalistic phases. My ideal of life is nothing material or quantitative, but simply the security and leisure necessary for the maximum flowering of the human spirit.... Well—so much for the past. Now we live in an age of easy abundance which makes possible the fulfilment of all moderate human wants through a relatively slight amount of labour. What shall be the result? Shall we still make resources prohibitively hard to get when there is really a plethora of them? Shall we allow antique notions of allocation—"property," etc.—to interfere with the rational distribution of this abundant stock of resources among all those who require them? Shall we value hardship and anxiety and uncertainty so fatuously as to impose these evils artificially on people who do not need to bear them, through the perpetuation of a set of now irrelevant and inapplicable rules of allocation? What reasonable objection is there to an intelligent centralised control of resources whose primary object shall be the elimination of want in every quarter—a thing possible without removing comfortable living from any one now enjoying it? To call the allocation of resources something "uncontrollable" by man—and in an age when virtually all natural forces are harnessed and utilised—is simply infantile. It is simply that those who now have the lion's share don't want any fresh or rational allocation. It is needless to say that no sober thinker envisages a workless equalitarian paradise. Much work remains, and human capacities differ. High-grade service must still receive greater rewards than low-grade service. But amidst the present abundance of goods and minimisation of possible work, there must be a fair and all-inclusive allocation of the chances to perform work and secure rewards. When society can't give a man work, it must keep him comfortable without it; but it must give him work if it can, and must compel him to perform it when it is needed. This does not involve interference with personal life and habits (contrary to what some reactionaries say), nor is the absence of insecurity anything to deplore.... But of course the real need of change comes not from the mere fact of abundant resources, but from the growth of conditions making it impossible for millions to have any chance of getting any resources under the present outworn set of artificial rules. This development is no myth. Machines had displaced 900,000 men in the U. S. before the crash of '29, and no conceivable regime of "prosperity" (where by a few people will have abundant and flexible resources and successfully exchange them among one another) will ever make it possible to avoid the permanent presence of millions of unemployed, so long as old-fashioned laissez-faire capitalism is adhered to.... And so I have readjusted my ideas. … I have gone almost reluctantly—step by step, as pressed by facts too insistent to deny—and am still quite as remote from Belknap's naive Marxism as I am from the equally naive Republican orthodoxy I have left behind. I am as set as ever against any cultural upheaval—and believe that nothing of the kind is necessary in order to achieve a new and feasible economic equilibrium. The best of culture has always been non-economic.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Hitherto it has grown out of the secure, non-struggling life of the aristocrat. In future it may be expected to grow out of the secure and not-so-struggling life of whatever citizens are personally able to develop it. There need be no attempt to drag culture down to the level of crude minds. That, indeed, would be something to fight tooth and nail! With economic opportunities artificially regulated, we may well let other interests follow a natural course. Inherent differences in people and in tastes will create different social-cultural classes as in the past—although the relation of these classes to the holding of material resources will be less fixed than in the capitalistic age now closing. All this, of course, is directly contrary to Belknap's rampant Stalinism—but I'm telling you I'm no bolshevik! I am for the preservation of all values worth preserving—and for the maintenance of complete cultural continuity with the Western-European mainstream. Don't fancy that the dethronement of certain purely economic concepts means an abrupt break in that stream. Rather does it mean a return to art impulses typically aristocratic (that is, disinterested, leisurely, non-ulterior) rather than bourgeois.
Letter to Clark Ashton Smith (28 October 1934), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 60-64
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, Men, People, Age

“History of Jews is full of deception, trickery, rebellion, oppression, evil and corruption. They always seek to cause mischief on the earth and Allaah loves not the mischief-makers.”

Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais (1962) Imam in Mecca

Shaykh Abdur Rahmaan As-Sudays, 2007-03-19, April 19, 2002, www.alharamainsermons.org http://www.alharamainsermons.org/eng/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=71,.

Love, History

“Evil – to exploit the knowledge of your own vulnerability by turning it on others' vulnerability in order to bring more pain into the world.”

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

Other

Pain, World, Knowledge

“Something in all human beings makes them want to do the right thing. Not that this desire always prevails; oftentimes it is overcome and they turn towards evil. But some power is constantly calling them back. Ever there comes a resistance to wrongdoing. When bad conditions begun to accumulate, when the forces of darkness become prevalent, always they are ultimately doomed to fail, as the better angels of human nature are roused to resistance.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

Angels, Nature

“The company of good men is like enjoying sweet honey. The company of evil men is like the stinking stuff in the sewer.”

Sarvajna Kannada poet, pragmatist and philosopher

Tripadis

Men

“For I deem it to be the chief function of history to rescue merit from oblivion, and to hold up before evil words and evil deeds the terror of the reprobation of posterity.”

Tacitus book Annals

Book III, 65 https://books.google.com/books?id=rPwLAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA247&lpg=PA247&dq=%22rescue+merit+from+oblivion%22+tacitus&source=bl&ots=uZvo03YXoQ&sig=WCpqNyg6Qyg-5xCJP4iiibym6pc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjln4Xl9YbVAhWMHD4KHbHBCc8Q6AEIJDAA#v=onepage&q=%22rescue%20merit%20from%20oblivion%22%20tacitus&f=false Annals (117)

History

“Religion has ever filled the mind of man with darkness, and kept him in ignorance of his real duties and true interests. It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of Religion, that we shall discover Truth, Reason, and Morality. Religion diverts us from the causes of evils, and from the remedies which nature prescribes; far from curing, it only aggravates, multiplies, and perpetuates them.”

Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789) French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist

ibid., chap. 206

Truth, Religion, Nature

“Of all evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Justice in War-Time (1916), p. 27
1910s

War, Truth

“I'm not vicious really. I consider myself kind-hearted. I love my mum.”

Sid Vicious (1957–1979) English bassist and vocalist

Daily Mirror, June 11, 1977, as reported in Fred Vermorel, Judy Vermorel, Sex Pistols: The Inside Story (1987), p. 169.

Love, Heart

“Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”

Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

Cited as from an address in Addis Ababa (1963) in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (1988) http://www.bartleby.com/63/73/1173.html edited by James B. Simpson ISBN 0395430852

Justice, History, Silence, Indifference

“While the recent attacks are not connected by common networks, they are connected in one important sense. They are bound together by the single evil ideology of Islamist extremism that preaches hatred, sows division and promotes sectarianism. It is an ideology that claims our Western values of freedom, democracy and human rights are incompatible with the religion of Islam. It is an ideology that is a perversion of Islam and a perversion of the truth. Defeating this ideology is one of the great challenges of our time, but it cannot be defeated by military intervention alone. It will not be defeated by the maintenance of a permanent defensive counter-terrorism operation, however skillful its leaders and practitioners. It will only be defeated when we turn people’s minds away from this violence and make them understand that our values – pluralistic British values – are superior to anything offered by the preachers and supporters of hate.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech after the London Bridge attack (4 June 2017)

Hate, People, Truth, Religion

“Covetousness, and the desire of having in our possession, and under our dominion, more than we have need of, being the root of all evil, should be early and carefully weeded out, and the contrary quality of a readiness to impart to others, implanted. This should be encourag'd by great commendation and credit, and constantly taking care that he loses nothing by his liberality.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 110
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

“We imagine that hardness, violence, slavery, peril in the street and in the heart, concealment, Stoicism, temptation, and deviltry of every sort, everything evil, frightful, tyrannical, raptor- and snake-like in man, serves as well for the advancement of the species "man" as their opposite.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Beyond Good and Evil

Beyond Good and Evil, translated by Marianne Cowan [Henry Regnery Company, 1955, p. 50]; Jenseits von Gut und Böse [Philipp Reclam, Stuttgart, 1988, p. 130]

Imagination, Heart

“Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people’s Liberty teeth and keystone under Independence. The church, the plow, the prairie wagon, and citizens’ firearms are indelibly related. From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events, occurrences and tendencies prove that to insure peace, security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable. Every corner of this Land knows firearms and more than 99 99/100 per cent of them by their silence indicate they are in safe and sane hands. The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference and they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good. When firearms go all goes, therefore we need them every hour.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

This is the conclusion to an article entitled "Older Ideas of Firearms" by C. S. Wheatley; it was published in the September 1926 issue of Hunter, Trader, Trapper (vol. 53, no. 3), p. 34. Wheatley had referred to George Washington's address to the second session of the first Congress immediately before this passage, which may have given rise to the mistaken attribution. See this piece http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/02/26/firearm/ at Quote Investigator Misattributed

Happiness, People, Peace, Silence

“[T]he Jewish people were driven by their drunkenness and plumpness to the ultimate evil; they kicked about, they failed to accept the yoke of Christ, nor did they pull the plow of his teaching. Another prophet hinted at this when he said: "Israel is as obstinate as a stubborn heifer." … Although such beasts are unfit for work, they are fit for killing. And this is what happened to the Jews: while they were making themselves unfit for work, they grew fit for slaughter. This is why Christ said: "But as for these my enemies, who did not want me to be king over them, bring them here and slay them."”

John Chrysostom (349–407) important Early Church Father

Luke 19:27 Eight Homilies Against the Jews http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/chrysostom-jews6.html, Homily 1

People, Christ

“"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil!"”

Edgar Allan Poe The Raven

Stanza 15.
The Raven (1844)

Bird

“How much education may reconcile young people to pain and sufference, the examples of Sparta do sufficiently shew; and they who have once brought themselves not to think bodily pain the greatest of evils, or that which they ought to stand most in fear of, have made no small advance toward virtue.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 115
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Pain, People, Education, Fear

“I do not believe that it is wise or safe for us as a party to take refuge in mere negation and to say that there are no evils to be corrected. It seems to me that our attitude should be one of correcting evils and thereby showing that, whereas the Populists, Socialists, and others really do not correct evils at all, or else do so at the expense of producing others in aggravated form, on the contrary we Republicans hold the just balance and set ourselves as resolutely against improper corporate influence on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the other. I understand perfectly that such an attitude of moderation is apt to be misunderstood when passions are greatly excited and when victory is apt to rest with the extremists on one side or the other; yet I think it is in the long run the only wise attitude…”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Source: 1910s, Theodore Roosevelt — An Autobiography (1913), Ch. VIII : The New York Governorship

Understanding, Thinking, Passion, Victory

“The greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a despot, great though that evil be, but he who is in the thrall of his own moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice.”

Samuel Smiles (1812–1904) Scottish author

Source: Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859), Ch. I : Self-Help — National and Individual

Selfishness

“Evil is the conscious desire to produce suffering where suffering is not necessary”

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

Concepts

Suffering

“Corruption is an endemic evil -- a cultural problem, not only for Mexico but for [all] Latin America. Fighting it has to do with [improving] the environment for individual development. And this involves improving the economy, which we’re doing. And wherever there’s corruption, people have to denounce it so that there’s no impunity and we can penalize or sanction corrupt practices.”

Enrique Peña Nieto (1966) 57th President of Mexico

Foreign Affairs interview (January 2014)

People, Problem, Fight

“Selectively choosing what gets condemned and forcing people to join sides while hiding behind semantics is pure evil.”

Markus Persson (1979) Swedish video game programmer

In response to the Silence procedure phrase "qui tacet consentire videtur, ubi loqui debuit ac potuit" (Thus, silence gives consent, when he ought to have spoken and was able to) (14 August 2017) https://twitter.com/notch/status/897158641962319878

People

“The meaning of this story is not found in the drowning of the Egyptian soldiers, for no one should rejoice at the death or defeat of a human being. Rather, this story symbolizes the death of evil and of inhuman oppression and unjust exploitation.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. book Strength to Love

Strength to Love, p. 73
1960s, Strength to Love (1963)

Death

“If you kill such a one as I am, you will injure yourselves more than you will injure me. Meletus and Anytus will not injure me: they cannot; for it is not in the nature of things that a bad man should injure one better than himself. I do not deny that he may, perhaps, kill him, or drive him into exile, or deprive him of civil rights; and he may imagine, and others may imagine, that he is doing him a great injury: but in that I do not agree with him; for the evil of doing what Anytus is doing — of unjustly taking away another man's life — is greater far.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

30c–d
Plato, Apology

Life, Imagination, Nature

“The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is, different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.”

Henry Miller book The Air-Conditioned Nightmare

With Edgar Varèse in the Gobi Desert http://books.google.com/books?id=jAEY3Kbnj3oC&q=&quot;The+new+always+carries+with+it+the+sense+of+violation+of+sacrilege+What+is+dead+is+sacred+what+is+new+that+is+different+is+evil+dangerous+or+subversive&quot;&pg=PA172#v=onepage, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945)

Sense, Dead

“Personally, I feel more irritated by a challenge to an accepted scientific theory than I do by an act of so-called "evil" or "injustice" among mankind; although I never allow my irritation to hamper my acceptance of the new theory as soon as positive evidence warrants it. Thus I have reluctantly exchanged the old nebular for the planetesimal hypothesis, and am beginning to accept the main points of relativity despite a profound intellectual distaste. What is, is—and our emotions regarding the cosmos and its phenomena are of no significance whatever, being wholly subjective matters dependent on individual accidents of neural and glandular physiology and of experience and environment.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Woodburn Harris (25 February-1 March 1929), in Selected Letters II, 1925-1929 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 287-288
Non-Fiction, Letters

Feeling, Dependency, Personality

“As a community, you’ve inspired us, Newtown. In the face of indescribable violence, in the face of unconscionable evil, you’ve looked out for each other. You’ve cared for one another. And you’ve loved one another. This is how Newtown will be remembered, and with time and God’s grace, that love will see you through.
But we as a nation, we are left with some hard questions.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2012, Sandy Hook Prayer Vigil (December 2012)

Love, God, Communication, Question

“All wishes are not idle, nor in vain
fulfilment we devise — for pain is pain,
not for itself to be desired, but ill;
or else to strive or to subdue the will
alike were graceless; and of Evil this
alone is deadly certain: Evil is.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

Mythopoeia (1931)

Pain

“Throughout your treatment you forget that you said that 'free-will' can do nothing without grace, and you prove that 'free-will' can do all things without grace! Your inferences and analogies "For if man has lost his freedom, and is forced to serve sin, and cannot will good, what conclusion can more justly be drawn concerning him, than that he sins and wills evil necessarily?”

Martin Luther book On the Bondage of the Will

Source: On the Bondage of the Will (1525), p. 149

Freedom, Forgetting

“Tis thus we heed no instincts but our own;
Believe no evil till the evil's done.”

Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.

Nous n'écoutons d'instincts que ceux qui sont les nôtres,
Et ne croyons le mal que quand il est venu.
Book I (1668), fable 8.
Fables (1668–1679)

“From the first appearance of man upon the earth, down to very recent times, the words "stranger" and "enemy" were quite or almost, synonymous. Long after civilized nations had defined robbery and murder as high crimes, and had affixed severe punishments to them, when practiced among and upon their own people respectively, it was deemed no offence, but even meritorious, to rob, and murder, and enslave strangers, whether as nations or as individuals. Even yet, this has not totally disappeared. The man of the highest moral cultivation, in spite of all which abstract principle can do, likes him whom he does know, much better than him whom he does not know. To correct the evils, great and small, which spring from want of sympathy, and from positive enmity, among strangers, as nations, or as individuals, is one of the highest functions of civilization.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1850s, Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society (1859)

People, Spring, Appearance, Time

“Those who chose not to empathize enable real monsters; for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it through our own apathy.”

Joanne K. Rowling (1965) British novelist, author of the Harry Potter series

Harvard address (2008)

“I would not have him sorrow at my hard lot, or say at the burial, Thus we lay out Socrates, or, Thus we follow him to the grave or bury him; for false words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. Be of good cheer then, my good Crito, and say that you are burying my body only, and do with that as is usual, and as you think best.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Soul, Thinking, Falseness

“The extravagant expenditure of public money is an evil not to be measured by the value of that money to the people who are taxed for it.”

Chester A. Arthur (1829–1886) American politician, 21st President of the United States (in office from 1881 to 1885)

Veto message of Rivers and Harbor Bill (1882).
1880s

Money, People

“Dante was trying to get to the bottom of what constitutes evil. There's a hierarchy of reprehensible behavior, and Dante thought it was betrayal. And I think that's right, because I believe the fundamental human resource is trust. Trust is an unbelievably powerful economic force.”

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

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdrLQ7DpiWs "Biblical Series II: Genesis 1: Chaos & Order"

Behavior, Thinking, Betrayal

“A pessimist is one who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Similar quotes are found, unattributed, from as early as 1899 https://books.google.com/books?id=lC81AAAAIAAJ&pg=RA4-PA32&dq=%22two+evils%22+both+pessimist&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMIuveP5uz0yAIVBVqICh0GRQQJ#v=onepage&q=%22two%20evils%22%20both%20pessimist&f=false. First clear attribution to Wilde was not until 1977 https://books.google.com/books?id=eOcWAQAAMAAJ&q=oscar+wilde+%22two+evils%22&dq=oscar+wilde+%22two+evils%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CE4Q6AEwCWoVChMIjMLEuO30yAIVBpSICh0c4Qi9 Disputed

“They who have a care of their souls, and do not merely live in the fashions of the body, say farewell to all this; they will not walk in the ways of the blind: and when philosophy offers them purification and release from evil, they feel that they ought not resist her influence, and to her they incline, and whither she leads they follow her.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Way, Feeling, Soul, Fashion

“What's the enemy? It's the snake. Fair enough. That's good if you're a tree dwelling primate. But for a sophisticated human being with six million years of additional evolution, and you're really trying to solve the problem of what it is that's the great enemy of mankind, well it's the human propensity for evil… as such. Well, that's the figure of Satan. That's what that figure means. Just like there's a Logos that's the Truth that speaks order out of chaos at the beginning of time, there's an antithetical spirit - the hostile brother… that's Cain to Abel - that's doing exactly the opposite. It's motivated by absolutely nothing but malevolence and the willingness to destroy. And it has every reason for doing so. That's what's revealed in the next story in Cain and Abel. In one paragraph, the first glimmerings of that - outside of the strange insistence by the Christian mystics - on the identity of the snake in the Garden of Eden and the author of all evil himself.”

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

Concepts

Hostility, Truth, Motivation, Problem

“What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"Ars Poetica?"

Hope

“The Court's justification for consulting its own notions rather than following the original meaning of the Constitution, as I would, apparently is based on the belief of the majority of the Court that for this Court to be bound by the original meaning of the Constitution is an intolerable and debilitating evil; that our Constitution should not be 'shackled to the political theory of a particular era,' and that to save the country from the original Constitution the Court must have constant power to renew it and keep it abreast of this Court's more enlightened theories of what is best for our society. It seems to me that this is an attack not only on the great value of our Constitution itself but also on the concept of a written constitution which is to survive through the years as originally written unless changed through the amendment process which the Framers wisely provided.”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

Dissenting in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966).

Change, Country

“If you are a Christian, no earthly city is yours. Of our City ‘the Builder and Maker is God.’ Though we may gain possession of the whole world, we are withal but strangers and sojourners in it all. We are enrolled in heaven: our citizenship is there! Let us not, after the manner of little children, despise things that are great, and admire those which are little! Not our city’s greatness, but virtue of soul is our ornament and defence. If you suppose dignity to belong to a city, think how many persons must partake in this dignity, who are whoremongers, effeminate, depraved and full of ten thousand evil things, and at last despise such honour! But that City above is not of this kind; for it is impossible that he can be a partaker of it, who has not exhibited every virtue.”

John Chrysostom (349–407) important Early Church Father

Homilies on the Statues http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf109/Page_456.html, Homily XVII

God, Children, World, Soul

“[Unlike the] utilitarian… I judge pleasure and pain to be of small importance compared to knowledge, the appreciation and contemplation of beauty, and a certain intrinsic excellence of mind which, apart from its practical effects, appears to me to deserve the name of virtue. [For] many years it seemed to me perfectly self-evident that pleasure is the only good and pain the only evil. Now, however, the opposite seems to me self-evident.
What first turned me away from utilitarianism was the persuasion that I myself ought to pursue philosophy, although I had (and have still) no doubt that by doing economics and the theory of politics I could add more to human happiness. It appeared to me that the dignity of which human existence is capable is not attainable by devotion to the mechanism of life, and that unless the contemplation of eternal things is preserved, mankind will become no better than well-fed pigs. But I do not believe that such contemplation on the whole tends to happiness. It gives moments of delight, but these are outweighed by years of effort and depression.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Letter to Gilbert Murray, April 3, 1902
1900s

Life, Pain, Happiness, Pleasure

“Tragedy, you can lay that at God's feet. But if we didn't bring additional evil into the world… we could tolerate the tragedy of Being without becoming corrupt. I think the answer to that is Yes, because I've seen people react quite heroically to the arbitrary burdens of their life. But malevolence, man, that lays them low. It seems to be nothing but a destructive force. The root of malevolence, and you see this in Cain and Abel, is the desire for revenge against God for creation itself. It's revenge against Being itself for the crime of Being.”

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

Other

Life, God, People, World

“I do not merely assert that the ideal orator should be a good man, but I affirm that no man can be an orator unless he is a good man. For it is impossible to regard those men as gifted with intelligence who on being offered the choice between the two paths of virtue and of vice choose the latter, nor can we allow them prudence, when by the unforeseen issue of their own actions they render themselves liable not merely to the heaviest penalties of the laws, but to the inevitable torment of an evil conscience.”
Neque enim tantum id dico, eum qui sit orator virum bonum esse oportere, sed ne futurum quidem oratorem nisi virum bonum. Nam certe neque intellegentiam concesseris iis qui proposita honestorum ac turpium via peiorem sequi malent, neque prudentiam, cum in gravissimas frequenter legum, semper vero malae conscientiae poenas a semet ipsis inproviso rerum exitu induantur.

Quintilian (35–96) ancient Roman rhetor

Book XII, Chapter I, 3; translation by H. E. Butler
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)

Men, Law, Penalty, Intelligence

“Out of the unconscious you get ritual, dreams, drama, story, art, music, and that sort of buffers us. We have our little domain of competence, and we're buffered by the domain of fantasy and culture. That's really what you learn about when you come to university if you're lucky and the professors are smart enough to actually teach you something about culture instead of constantly telling you that it's completely reprehensible and that it should be destroyed. Why you would prefer chaos to order is beyond me. The only possible reason is that you haven't read enough history to understand exactly what chaos means. And believe me, if you knew what chaos means, you'd be pretty goddamn careful about tearing down the temple that you live in, unless you want to be a denizen of chaos. And some people do. That's when the impulses you harbor can really come out and shine. And so a little gratitude is in order, and that makes you appreciative of the wise king while being smart enough to know that he's also an evil tyrant. That's a total conception of the world. It's balanced. Yah, we should preserve nature, but it IS trying to kill us. YES our culture is tyrannical and oppresses people, but it IS protecting us from dying. And YES we're reasonably good people, but don't take that theory too far until you've tested yourself. That's wisdom, at least in part, and that's what these stories try to teach you.”

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

Other

Wisdom, People, World, Dreams

“…there is a sum of evil equal to the sum of good, the continuing equilibrium of the world requires that there be as many good people as wicked people…”

Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) French novelist and philosopher

Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue (1787)

People, World

“Moreover, it is well to remember that these movements never achieve the end they nominally have in view. They do nothing whatsoever except to increase among the men of the various churches the spirit of sectarian intolerance which is base and unlovely in any civilization, but which is utterly revolting among a free people that profess the principles we profess. No such movement can ever permanently succeed here. All that it does is for a decade or so to greatly increase the spirit of theological animosity, both among the people to whom it appeals and among the people whom it assails. Furthermore, it has in the past invariably resulted, in so far as it was successful at all, in putting unworthy men into office; for there is nothing that a man of loose principles and of evil practices in public life so desires as the chance to distract attention from his own shortcomings and misdeeds by exciting and inflaming theological and sectarian prejudice.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)

Life, Men, People, Chance

“It may be quite true that some negroes are better than some white men; but no rational man, cognisant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the average white man. And, if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favour, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites. The highest places in the hierarchy of civilisation will assuredly not be within the reach of our dusky cousins, though it is by no means necessary that they should be restricted to the lowest.
But whatever the position of stable equilibrium into which the laws of social gravitation may bring the negro, all responsibility for the result will henceforward lie between nature and him. The white man may wash his hands of it, and the Caucasian conscience be void of reproach for evermore. And this, if we look to the bottom of the matter, is the real justification for the abolition policy.
The doctrine of equal natural rights may be an illogical delusion; emancipation may convert the slave from a well-fed animal into a pauperised man; mankind may even have to do without cotton-shirts; but all these evils must be faced if the moral law, that no human being can arbitrarily dominate over another without grievous damage to his own nature, be, as many think, as readily demonstrable by experiment as any physical truth. If this be true, no slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

"Emancipation — Black and White" (1865) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE3/B&W.html, later published in Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews (1871) Comments accepting many racist and sexist assumptions made in the context of rejecting oppressions based on racist and sexist arguments. More information is available at the Talk Origins Archive http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA005_3.html 1860s

Men, Truth, Lie, Law

“As the liberal sees it, the task of the state consists solely and exclusively in guaranteeing the protection of life, health, liberty, and private property against violent attacks. Everything that goes beyond this is an evil. A government that, instead of fulfilling its task, sought to go so far as actually to infringe on personal security of life and health, freedom, and property would, of course, be altogether bad.”

Ludwig von Mises book Liberalism

Source: Liberalism (1927), Ch. 1 : The Foundations of Liberal Policy § 11. The Limits of Governmental Activity

Life, Health, Freedom, Personality

“The face of "evil" is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control. In the words of total need: "Wouldn't you?" Yes you would. You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do anything to satisfy total need. Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way. Dope fiends are sick people who cannot act other than they do. A rabid dog cannot choose but bite.”

William S. Burroughs book Naked Lunch

Introduction
Naked Lunch (1959)

People, Lie, Dogs, Way

“I find in myself as much evil as in anyone, but detesting action — mother of all vices — I am the cause of no one's suffering.”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

Suffering

“The mechanism of modern business is so delicate that extreme care must be taken not to interfere with it in a spirit of rashness or ignorance. Many of those who have made it their vocation to denounce the great industrial combinations which are popularly, although with technical inaccuracy, known as "trusts," appeal especially to hatred and fear. These are precisely the two emotions, particularly when combined with ignorance, which unfit men for the exercise of cool and steady judgment. In facing new industrial conditions, the whole history of the world shows that legislation will generally be both unwise and ineffective unless undertaken after calm inquiry and with sober self-restraint. […] All this is true; and yet it is also true that there are real and grave evils, one of the chief being over-capitalization because of its many baleful consequences; and a resolute and practical effort must be made to correct these evils. There is a widespread conviction in the minds of the American people that the great corporations known as trusts are in certain of their features and tendencies hurtful to the general welfare. This […] is based upon sincere conviction that combination and concentration should be, not prohibited, but supervised and within reasonable limits controlled; and in my judgment this conviction is right.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, First Annual Message to Congress (1901)

Men, People, World, Fear

“If those democrats really think slavery wrong they will be much pleased when earnest men in the slave states take up a plan of gradual emancipation and go to work energetically and very kindly to get rid of the evil. Now let us test them. Frank Blair tried it; and he ran for Congress in '58, and got beaten. Did the democracy feel bad about it? I reckon not, I guess you all flung up your hats and shouted 'Hurrah for the Democracy!”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)

Men, Feeling, Democracy, Thinking

“Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

Attributed to Plato on quotes sites but never sourced.
Disputed

“The lion laying with the lamb is the idea that is either projected back in time, saying that there was a time, or maybe that there will be a time when the horrors of life are no longer necessary for life itself to exist. And the horrors of life are of course that everything eats everything else, and that everything dies, and that everything is born, and that the whole place is a charnal house. It's a catastrophe from beginning to end. This is the vision of it being other than that. There's a strong idea that human beings can interact with reality in such a way so that the tragic and evil elements of it can be mitigated, so that we can move closer to a state of being where we have the benefits of existence without the catastrophe that seems to go along with it.”

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

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifi5KkXig3s "Biblical Series IV: Adam and Eve: Self-Consciousness, Evil, and Death"

Life, Way, Idea, Reality

“The power which a man's imagination has over his body to heal it or make it sick is a force which none of us is born without. The first man had it, the last one will possess it. If left to himself, a man is most likely to use only the mischievous half of the force—the half which invents imaginary ailments for him and cultivates them; and if he is one of these—very wise people, he is quite likely to scoff at the beneficent half of the force and deny its existence. And so, to heal or help that man, two imaginations are required: his own and some outsider's. The outsider, B, must imagine that his incantations are the healing-power that is curing A, and A must imagine that this is so. I think it is not so, at all; but no matter, the cure is effected, and that is the main thing. The outsider's work is unquestionably valuable; so valuable that it may fairly be likened to the essential work performed by the engineer when he handles the throttle and turns on the steam; the actual power is lodged exclusively in the engine, but if the engine were left alone it would never start of itself. Whether the engineer be named Jim, or Bob, or Tom, it is all one—his services are necessary, and he is entitled to such wage as he can get you to pay. Whether he be named Christian Scientist, or Mental Scientist, or Mind Curist, or King's-Evil Expert, or Hypnotist, it is all one; he is merely the Engineer; he simply turns on the same old steam and the engine does the whole work.”

Mark Twain Christian Science

Book I, Ch. 8 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3187/3187-h/3187-h.htm#link2HCH0008 Christian Science (1907)

People, Imagination, Thinking, Help

“Let us be aware that while they [the Soviet leadership] preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Speech to the National Association of Evangelicals (8 March 1983)
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

People, World

“God, the devil, good, evil, it's all in our heads, not in Heaven or Hell, which we also invented. We do not realize that, having invented God, we immediately became His slaves.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

Interview with "El País", 2009.

God, Hell

“Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guided.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 54
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Motivation

“What does opening your eyes and realizing your vulnerability have to do with the knowledge of good and evil? Here's the key: You know you're vulnerable. No other animal knows that. You know what hurts you, because you're vulnerable. And now that you know what hurts you, you can figure out what hurts someone else. And as soon as you know what can hurt someone as, and you can use that, then you have the knowledge of good and evil. Well it's a pretty good trick that the snake pulled because it doesn't seem like the thing that we would have exactly wanted if we knew what the consequence was going to be. As soon as a human being is self conscious and aware of his nakedness, then he has the capacity for evil. That's introduced into the world right at that point.”

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

Concepts

World, Knowledge, Animals, Hurt

“We have now completed both the spiritual and the temporal government, that is, the divine and the paternal authority and obedience. But here now we go forth from our house among our neighbors to learn how we should live with one another, every one himself toward his neighbor. Therefore God and government are not included in this commandment nor is the power to kill, which they have taken away. For God has delegated His authority to punish evil-doers to the government instead of parents, who aforetime (as we read in Moses) were required to bring their own children to judgment and sentence them to death. Therefore, what is here forbidden is forbidden to the individual in his relation to any one else, and not to the government.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/catechism/web/cat-07.html The Large Catechism by Martin Luther, Translated by F. Bente and W.H.T. Dau Published in: Triglot Concordia: The Symbolical Books of the Ev. Lutheran Church (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921) pp. 565-773, (1529)

Death, God, Children, Parent

“The real problem is that programmers have spent far too much time worrying about efficiency in the wrong places and at the wrong times; premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming.”

Donald Ervin Knuth Literate Programming

Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%. Variant in Knuth, "Structured Programming with Goto Statements" http://pplab.snu.ac.kr/courses/adv_pl05/papers/p261-knuth.pdf. Computing Surveys 6:4 (December 1974), pp. 261–301, §1. Knuth refers to this as "Hoare's Dictum" 15 years later in "The Errors of Tex", Software—Practice & Experience 19:7 (July 1989), pp. 607–685. However, the attribution to C. A. R. Hoare is doubtful. http://shreevatsa.wordpress.com/2008/05/16/premature-optimization-is-the-root-of-all-evil/ All three of these papers are reprinted in Knuth, Literate Programming, 1992, Center for the Study of Language and Information ISBN 0937073806 Source: Computer Programming as an Art (1974), p. 671

Optimism, Problem, Time

“Money is the fruit of evil as often as the root of it.”

Henry Fielding (1707–1754) English novelist and dramatist

Don Quixote in England (1731), Act I, scene vi http://books.google.com/books?id=8_VbAAAAQAAJ&q=%22Money+is+the+fruit+of+evil+as+often+as+the+root+of+it%22&pg=PA13#v=onepage

Money

“Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope, that my Country will never cease to view them with indulgence; and that, after forty-five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

1790s, Farewell Address (1796)

Life, Hope, Error, Thinking

“Evil is the force that believes its knowledge is complete.”

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

Other

Knowledge

“Christ’s resurrection is not an event of the past; it contains a vital power which has permeated this world. Where all seems to be dead, signs of the resurrection suddenly spring up. It is an irresistible force. Often it seems that God does not exist: all around us we see persistent injustice, evil, indifference and cruelty. But it is also true that in the midst of darkness something new always springs to life and sooner or later produces fruit. On razed land life breaks through, stubbornly yet invincibly. However dark things are, goodness always re-emerges and spreads. Each day in our world beauty is born anew, it rises transformed through the storms of history. Values always tend to reappear under new guises, and human beings have arisen time after time from situations that seemed doomed. Such is the power of the resurrection, and all who evangelize are instruments of that power.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Section 276
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

Life, God, World, Beauty

“The Art of Peace is not easy. It is a fight to the finish, the slaying of evil desires and all falsehood within. On occasion the Voice of Peace resounds like thunder, jolting human beings out of their stupor.”

Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969) founder of aikido

The Art of Peace (1992)

Peace, Art, Fight

“It is freedom, it is particularity, it is solitude that we are aiming at, and not Evil for its own sake”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

(179).
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

Solitude, Freedom

“If the Republicans, who think slavery is wrong, get possession of the general government, we may not root out the evil at once, but may at least prevent its extension. If I find a venomous snake lying on the open praire, I seize the first stick and kill him at once. But if that snake is in bed with my children, I must be more cautious. I shall, in striking the snake, also strike the children, or arouse the reptile to bite the children. Slavery is the venomous snake in bed with the children. But if the question is whether to kill it on the prairie or put it in bed with other children, I think we'd kill it!”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Allow the humblest man an equal chance (1860)
Context: If I saw a venomous snake crawling in the road, any man would say I might seize the nearest stick and kill it; but if I found that snake in bed with my children, that would be another question. I might hurt the children more than the snake, and it might bite them. Much more if I found it in bed with my neighbor's children, and I had bound myself by a solemn compact not to meddle with his children under any circumstances, it would become me to let that particular mode of getting rid of the gentleman alone. But if there was a bed newly made up, to which the children were to be taken, and it was proposed to take a batch of young snakes and put them there with them, I take it no man would say there was any question how I ought to decide!
Context: If I saw a venomous snake crawling in the road, any man would say I might seize the nearest stick and kill it; but if I found that snake in bed with my children, that would be another question. I might hurt the children more than the snake, and it might bite them. Much more if I found it in bed with my neighbor's children, and I had bound myself by a solemn compact not to meddle with his children under any circumstances, it would become me to let that particular mode of getting rid of the gentleman alone. But if there was a bed newly made up, to which the children were to be taken, and it was proposed to take a batch of young snakes and put them there with them, I take it no man would say there was any question how I ought to decide! That is just the case! The new Territories are the newly made bed to which our children are to go, and it lies with the nation to say whether they shall have snakes mixed up with them or not. It does not seem as if there could be much hesitation what our policy should be!

Children, Lying, Question, Thinking

“Corporations are necessary to the effective use of the forces of production and commerce under modern conditions. We cannot effectively prohibit all combinations without doing far-reaching economic harm; and it is mere folly to do as we have done in the past—to try to combine incompatible systems—that is, to try both to prohibit and regulate combinations. Combinations in industry are the result of an imperative economic law which cannot be repealed by political legislation. The effort at prohibiting all combination has substantially failed. The only course left is active corporate regulation – that is, the control of corporations for the common good—the suppression of the evils that they work, and the retention, as far as maybe, of that business efficiency in their use which has placed us in the forefront of industrial peoples.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

People, Law, Business, Effort

“Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1910s, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays http://archive.org/stream/mysticism00russuoft/mysticism00russuoft_djvu.txt (1918), Ch. 1: Mysticism and Logic

World, Forgetting

“I have an idea. … If Ethan and Mark are so similar, we might as well arbitrarily assign them distinct personality traits. I know—Mark, from here on, you're to be called 'Evil Mark.”

Douglas Coupland book JPod

JPod (2006)

Idea, Personality

““The dominance hierarchy is a mechanism that selects heroes and breeds them. And so then we watch that for six million years. We start to understand what it means to be the hero. We start to tell stories about that, and so then not only are we genetically aiming at that with the dominance hierarchies - the selection mechanism mediated by female choice - but our stories are trying to push us in that direction. And so then we say, 'Well, look, that person is admirable.' We tell a story about him. And then we say, 'This person is admirable,' and we tell a story about him. And at the same time we talk about the people who aren't admirable. And then we start having admirable and non-admirable as categories. And out of that you get something like good and evil. And then you can start to imagine the perfect person. You take ten admirable people and you pull out someone who is meta-admirable. And that's a hero. That becomes a religious figure across time. That becomes a savior or a messiah across time as we conceptualize what the ideal person is. In the West here's how we figured it out: we said that the ideal man is the person that tells the truth. And what that means is that it's the best way of climbing up any possible dominance hierarchy in the way that's most stable and most lasting. That's the conclusion of Western culture."”

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

Concepts

People, Truth, Way, Imagination

“The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semihuman, and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, "divine."”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

The Practice of Psychotherapy, p. 364 (1953)

Nature, Sense, Light

“But all this even, is not the full extent of the evil. — By such examples, by instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit, are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint, but dread of punishment, they thus become, absolutely unrestrained. — Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation. While, on the other hand, good men, men who love tranquillity, who desire to abide by the laws and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country, seeing their property destroyed, their families insulted, and their lives endangered, their persons injured, and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better, become tired of and disgusted with a government that offers them no protection, and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose. Thus, then, by the operation of this mobocratic spirit which all must admit is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed — I mean the attachment of the people.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)

Love, Men, People, Family

“I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.”

W. H. Auden September 1, 1939

Source: September 1, 1939 (1939), Lines 19–22

Learning

“Riches are a cause of evil, not because, of themselves, they do any evil, but because they goad men on so that they are ready to do evil.”

Posidonius (-135–-51 BC) ancient greek philosopher

As quoted in Epistulae morales ad Lucilium by Seneca, Epistle LXXXVII (trans. R. M. Gummere)

Men

“Heretics cannot themselves appear good unless they depict the Church as evil, false, and mendacious. They alone wish to be esteemed as the good, but the Church must be made to appear evil in every respect.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Dictata super Psalterium (Dictations on the Psalter). This is Luther's first major work from the years 1513 to 1515. (See What Luther Says, Ewald Martin Plass, ed., vol. 3, p. 1590. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&tbs=bks%3A1&q=%22This+is+Luther%27s+first+major+work.+It+was+begun+in+the+summer+of+1513%22&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=) Denifle, Heinrich, Luther and Lutherdom http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029249567, p. 15; primary source: D. Martin Luthers Werke: kritische Gesamtausgabe, Weimar, Herman Bohlau, 1883, Vol. 3, p. 445. http://books.google.com/books?id=9YkVtSs8WdUC&pg=PA1&dq=%22Dictata+Super+Psalterium%22&hl=en&ei=Ms4qTJ3VGIe5nAewp8iqAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCQQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&q=%22Dictata%20Super%20Psalterium%22&f=false

Appearance, Falseness

“Read the history to know that yesterday’s Jews are evil predecessors and today’s Jews are worse successors. They an ingrate people, they altered God’s words, worshipped calf, killed Messengers and denied their Messages. They are exiled people and the worst of mankind. Allaah cursed them and cast His wrath upon them. He turned some of them to monkeys and pigs and worshippers of creatures. They are worst in position and are astray from the right path…”

Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais (1962) Imam in Mecca

Shaykh Abdur Rahmaan As-Sudays, 2007-03-19, April 19, 2002, www.alharamainsermons.org http://www.alharamainsermons.org/eng/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=71,.

God, People, History, Reading

“We do not rush toward death, we flee the catastrophe of birth, survivors struggling to forget it. Fear of death is merely the projection into the future of a fear which dates back to our first moment of life. We are reluctant, of course, to treat birth as a scourge: has it not been inculcated as the sovereign good — have we not been told that the worst came at the end, not at the outset of our lives? Yet evil, the real evil, is behind, not ahead of us. What escaped Jesus did not escape Buddha: "If three things did not exist in the world, O disciples, the Perfect One would not appear in the world. …" And ahead of old age and death he places the fact of birth, source of every infirmity, every disaster.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Life, Death, Age, World

“Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Citas, Candide (1759)

“The state is God, deifies arms and prisons. The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inﬂicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.”

Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) austrian economist

Source: Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War (1944), Chapter III: Etatism

Men, God, History

“Should a person on returning from the city discover his house to be in flames, let him examine well the change which he has received from the chair-carrier before it is too late; for evil never travels alone.”

Ernest Bramah book The Wallet of Kai Lung

The Career of the Charitable Quen-Ki-Tong
The Wallet of Kai Lung (1900)

Travel, Change, Housing, Personality

“Judas' is a metaphor and an analogy about forgiveness and betrayal and things that haunt you in your life, and how I believe that it's the darkness in your life that ultimately shines and illuminates the greater light that you have upon you. … Someone once said to me, 'If you have no shadows then you're not standing in the light.' So the song is about washing the feet of both good and evil, and understanding and forgiving the demons from your past in order to move into the greatness of your future … I just like really aggressive metaphors — harder, thicker, darker — and my fans do as well. So it is a very challenging and aggressive metaphor, but it is a metaphor.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Lady Gaga Says 'Judas' Video 'Celebrates Faith' in MTV News (26 Apr 26 2011) http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1662707/lady-gaga-judas-music-video.jhtml.

Life, Forgiveness, Understanding, Light

“When a man asked him whether God coerced his bondsmen to sin. Al-Sadiq replied "Allah is more just than to make them commit misdeeds then chastise them for what they have done." The man further asked, "Has he empowered them with their actions?" al-Sadiq said, "If He had delegated it to them, He would have not confined them to enjoining good and forbidding evil." The man further asked, "Is there a station or a position between the two?"”

Ja'far al-Sadiq (702–765) Muslim religious person

The Imam said, "Yes, wider than [the space] between the heaven and the earth."
Views on free will
Source: [Nasr & Leaman, The History of Islamic Philosophy, February 1, 1996, Routledge, 978-0415056670, 256-257, 1, http://www.amazon.com/History-Islamic-Philosophy-Routledge-Philosophies/dp/0415056675]

God

“The duration of every political phase is just as long as it takes to unveil its shortcomings and evil. While discovering its defects, it makes way for a new phase, liberated from these failings. Thus, these impairments that appear in a situation and destroy it are the very forces of human evolution, as they raise humanity to a more corrected state.”

Yehuda Ashlag (1886–1954) Orthodox Jewish Rabbi and Kabbalist

Assorted Themes, On Politics

Way, Appearance

“But this letter is long, Sir, and it is time to conclude it.
I accuse Lt. Col. du Paty de Clam of being the diabolical creator of this miscarriage of justice — unwittingly, I would like to believe — and of defending this sorry deed, over the last three years, by all manner of ludricrous and evil machinations.
I accuse General Mercier of complicity, at least by mental weakness, in one of the greatest inequities of the century.
I accuse General Billot of having held in his hands absolute proof of Dreyfus’s innocence and covering it up, and making himself guilty of this crime against mankind and justice, as a political expedient and a way for the compromised General Staff to save face.
I accuse Gen. de Boisdeffre and Gen. Gonse of complicity in the same crime, the former, no doubt, out of religious prejudice, the latter perhaps out of that esprit de corps that has transformed the War Office into an unassailable holy ark.
I accuse Gen. de Pellieux and Major Ravary of conducting a villainous enquiry, by which I mean a monstrously biased one, as attested by the latter in a report that is an imperishable monument to naïve impudence.
I accuse the three handwriting experts, Messrs. Belhomme, Varinard and Couard, of submitting reports that were deceitful and fraudulent, unless a medical examination finds them to be suffering from a condition that impairs their eyesight and judgement.
I accuse the War Office of using the press, particularly L’Eclair and L’Echo de Paris, to conduct an abominable campaign to mislead the general public and cover up their own wrongdoing.
Finally, I accuse the first court martial of violating the law by convicting the accused on the basis of a document that was kept secret, and I accuse the second court martial of covering up this illegality, on orders, thus committing the judicial crime of knowingly acquitting a guilty man.”

Emile Zola J’accuse…!

J'accuse! (1898)

War, Secret, Justice, Law

“It is just so with personal liberty. The unlimited freedom which the individual property-owner has enjoyed has been of use to this country in many ways, and we can continue our prosperous economic career only by retaining an economic organization which will offer to the men of the stamp of the great captains of industry the opportunity and inducement to earn distinction. Nevertheless, we as Americans must now face the fact that this great freedom which the individual property-owner has enjoyed in the past has produced evils which were’ inevitable from its unrestrained exercise. It is this very freedom - this absence of State ‘and National restraint - that has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. Any feeling of special hatred toward these men is as absurd as any feeling of special regard. Some of them have gained their power by cheating and swindling, just as some very small business men cheat and swindle; but, as a whole, big men are no better and no worse than their small competitors, from a moral standpoint. Where they do wrong it is even more important to punish them than to punish as small man who does wrong, because their position makes it especially wicked for them to yield to temptation; but the prime need is to change the conditions which enable them to accumulate a power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise, and to make this change not only, without vindictiveness, without doing injustice to individuals, but also in a cautious and temperate spirit, testing our theories by actual practice, so that our legislation may represent the minimum of restrictions upon the individual initiative of the exceptional man which is compatible with obtaining the maximum of welfare for the average man.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

Men, Way, Feeling, Exercises

“If I knew a foreigner from anywhere in his virtue who would love God and would be interested in the good more than my own brother, he would be dearer to me than my brother. And hence I prefer good English priests over timid Czech priests and good German over an evil brother.”

Jan Hus (1369–1415) Czech linguist, religion writer, theologist, university educator and science writer

Source: A Companion to Jan Hus (2015), p. 225.

Love, God

“My wife has been killed by a machine which should never have come into the hands of any human being. It is called a firearm. It makes the blackest of all human wishes come true at once, at a distance: that something die. There is evil for you. We cannot get rid of mankind's fleetingly evil wishes. We can get rid of the machines that make them come true. I give you a holy word: DISARM.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Deadeye Dick

Statement of the husband of the woman killed in the accident
Deadeye Dick (1982)

“Flagrant evils cure themselves by being flagrant.”

John Henry Newman (1801–1890) English cleric and cardinal

Essays Volume II, Essay XIV: "Private Judgment" http://www.newmanreader.org/works/essays/volume2/private.html British Critic (July 1841).

“I am not clear that a discrimination will not render slavery more irksome to those who remain in it. Most of the good and evil things in this life are judged of by comparison; and I fear a comparison in this case will be productive of much discontent in those who are held in servitude.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to Henry Laurens (20 March 1779) https://web.archive.org/web/20141008220806/http://amrevmuseum.org/reflections/african-americans-continental-army-and-state-militias-during-american-war-independence 1770s, Letter to Henry Laurens (1779)

Life, Fear

““Why are you quitting?”
“Sick of my job.”
“Because what you were doing was morally bad?” suggested the voice.
“Because it wasn’t getting anybody anywhere. Because it was getting everybody nowhere.”
“Because it was evil?” insisted the voice.
“Because it was pointless.””

Kurt Vonnegut book Player Piano

Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 29 (p. 271)

“Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us that they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy "accommodation." And they say if we only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he will forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)

Love, Peace, Way, Freedom

“We think Slavery a great moral wrong, and while we do not claim the right to touch it where it exists, we wish to treat it as a wrong in the Territories, where our votes will reach it. We think that a respect for ourselves, a regard for future generations and for the God that made us, require that we put down this wrong where our votes will properly reach it. We think that species of labor an injury to free white men — in short, we think Slavery a great moral, social and political evil, tolerable only because, and so far as its actual existence makes it necessary to tolerate it, and that beyond that, it ought to be treated as a wrong.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Allow the humblest man an equal chance (1860)
Context: To us it appears natural to think that slaves are human beings; men, not property; that some of the things, at least, stated about men in the Declaration of Independence apply to them as well as to us. I say, we think, most of us, that this Charter of Freedom applies to the slave as well as to ourselves, that the class of arguments put forward to batter down that idea, are also calculated to break down the very idea of a free government, even for white men, and to undermine the very foundations of free society. We think Slavery a great moral wrong, and while we do not claim the right to touch it where it exists, we wish to treat it as a wrong in the Territories, where our votes will reach it. We think that a respect for ourselves, a regard for future generations and for the God that made us, require that we put down this wrong where our votes will properly reach it. We think that species of labor an injury to free white men — in short, we think Slavery a great moral, social and political evil, tolerable only because, and so far as its actual existence makes it necessary to tolerate it, and that beyond that, it ought to be treated as a wrong.

Men, God, Thinking, Future