Quotes about Evil
page 7

“Real life's nasty. It's cruel. It doesn't care about heroes and happy endings and the way things should be. In real life, bad things happen. People die. Fights are lost. Evil often wins.”

Darren Shan (1972) Irish writer of English-language fiction under pen name, real name Darren O'Shaughnessy

Life, Happiness, People, Way

“The meaning of life has not much to do with good and evil, right and wrong, duty, honor, country, or any of that.

It has to do with cutting the right deal.”

Nelson DeMille (1943) American writer

Life, Country

“Leo: "So… giants who can throw mountains. Friendly wolves that will eat us if we show weakness. Evil espresso drinks. Gotcha. Maybe this isn't the best time to bring up my psycho babysitter."
Piper: "Is that another joke?”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Mountain, Drink, Time

“Weave the circle, tightly sewn,
Let nothing evil or unknown
Enter within. Stay without
On pain of death, we cast you out.”

Yasmine Galenorn (1961) American writer

Source: Blood Wyne

Death, Pain

“Can we just call them storm spirits?” Leo asked. “Venti makes them sound like evil espresso drinks.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Drink

“You seem to think that the only genuine existence evil can have is conscious existence - that no one is evil unless he admits it to himself. I disagree.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Thinking

“They don't realize evil lives on their streets”

Lisa Scottoline (1955) American writer

Source: Every Fifteen Minutes

“You don't love hatred and evil, of course. You have to practice and see the real gull, the good in every one of them, and to help them see it in themselves. That's what I mean by love.”

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Source: Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Love, Help

“There are times when the end justifies the means. But when you build an argument based on a whole series of such times, you may find that you've constructed an entire philosophy of evil." --Luke Skywalker”

Aaron Allston book Betrayal

Source: Betrayal

Time

“Let me ask you a question Alex. What do you think is the greatest evil on this plant today?"
"Is that including, or not including you?”

Anthony Horowitz book Eagle Strike

Source: Eagle Strike

Question, Thinking

“Perhaps evil is the crucible of goodness… and perhaps even Satan - Satan, in spite of himself - somehow serves to work out the will of God.”

William Peter Blatty book The Exorcist

Source: The Exorcist

God

“… occasionally I can be quite evil, when there's no-one around to realise.”

Sarra Manning (1950) British writer

Source: Kiss and Make Up

“Every person professes to love good and hate evil, but in his actions his real preferences emerges.”

Piers Anthony Bearing an Hourglass

Source: Bearing an Hourglass

Love, Hate, Personality

“The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.”

Anthony Burgess book A Clockwork Orange

Variant: The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.
Source: A Clockwork Orange

Life

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Life, Money

“They understand not only evil, it seemed, but the extravagance of tricks with which evil presents itself as good.”

Donna Tartt book The Secret History

Source: The Secret History

Understanding

“But she wondered why beautiful things had to be wrapped up with evil history. Or was it the other way around? Maybe the evil history made it necessary to build beautiful things, to mask the darker aspects.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Beauty, Way, History

“I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil. Government belongs wherever evil needs an adversary and there are people in distress.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

People

“Uh-huh," I said. "Because all you mad, evil scientists sit around whipping up batches of Pillsbury's finest during your coffee breaks. I mean, this is pathetic.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

Coffee, Madness

“The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947

People, Fear, Literature

“Love overlooks a person’s faults. That’s not always easy, but love believes the best in every person. Anybody can return evil for evil, but God wants His people to help heal wounded hearts.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

Love, God, People, Help

“it istrue that good can follow only from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true. Anyone who fails to see this is, indeed, a political infant.”

Max Weber (1864–1920) German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist

Source: From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology
Source: From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946), p. 124; Essay "Politics as a vocation"
Context: The problem — the experience of the irrationality of the world — has been the driving force of all religious evolution. The Indian doctrine of karma, Persian dualism, the doctrine of original sin, predestination and the deus absconditus, all these have grown out of this experience. Also the early Christians knew full well the world is governed by demons and that he who lets himself in for politics, that is, for power and force as means, contracts with diabolical powers and for his action it is not true that good can follow only from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true. Anyone who fails to see this is, indeed, a political infant.

“Listen, every object's in flux. The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith, justice, evil-they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place forever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter 30, Colonel Sanders

Love, Life, Faith, Justice

“I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“You had evil inside you, and you indulged it. Men will always indulge it.”

John Connolly The Book of Lost Things

Source: The Book of Lost Things

Men

“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.”

John Stuart Mill book On Liberty

Source: On Liberty

Personality

“To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor. Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. The oppressed must never allow the conscience of the oppressor to slumber. Religion reminds every man that he is his brother's keeper. To accept injustice”

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

1950s, Three Ways of Meeting Oppression (1958)
Context: To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor. Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. The oppressed must never allow the conscience of the oppressor to slumber. Religion reminds every man that he is his brother's keeper. To accept injustice or segregation passively is to say to the oppressor that his actions are morally right. It is a way of allowing his conscience to fall asleep. At this moment the oppressed fails to be his brother's keeper. So acquiescence-while often the easier way-is not the moral way. It is the way of the coward.

Religion

“Vin, Vin. can't you see? This isn't about good or evil. Morality doesn't even enter into it. Good men will kill as quickly for what they want as evil men—only the things they want are different.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Hero of Ages

Men

“Good and evil are merely opposite sides of a coin. Get tossed in the air enough, it's easy to come down on the wrong side.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Dreamfever

“It's a library, only the stupid or the evil are afraid of those”

Iain Banks (1954–2013) Scottish writer

Stupidity

“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”

Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace

p. 120 http://books.google.it/books?id=lpuZIgerNroC&pg=PA120 (1997 edition) <br class="br">Gravity and Grace (1947)

“Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil -- or else an absolute ignorance.”

Graham Greene book The Heart of the Matter

Source: The Heart of the Matter

Happiness, Selfishness

“Honestly, for an evil god of darkness, he certainly can be dull.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

God

“A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

“She's evil. Evil, evil, evil. I want to see her naked.”

Christopher Moore book Bloodsucking Fiends

Source: Bloodsucking Fiends

“Angelic Sookie, vision of love and beauty, I am prostrate that the wicked evil maenad violated your smooth and voluptuous body, in an attempt to deliver a message to me. -Eric”

Charlaine Harris book Living Dead in Dallas

Source: Living Dead in Dallas

Love, Beauty, Angels

“It is because good is always stronger than evil. Always remember that, Antonio. The smallest bit of good can stand against all the powers of evil in the world and it will emerge triumphant.”

Rudolfo Anaya book Bless Me, Ultima

Source: Bless Me, Ultima

World

“Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

US News & World Report (27 October 1986)

Indifference

“I have neither curiosity, interest, pain nor pleasure, in anything, good or evil, they can say of me. I feel only a slight disgust, and a sort of wonder that they presume to write my name.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Pain, Pleasure, Feeling

“Genius does not excuse evil.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

“You cannot dispute the ridiculous. You cannot argue reasonably with evil.”

Alice Hoffman (1952) Novelist, young-adult writer, children's writer

Source: Incantation

“As for monkeys, I would have five, and they would be named: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, Do Pretty Much Whatever The Hell You Want, and Expensive Attorney.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Hell

“Quim," she said, "don't ever try to teach me about good and evil. I've been there, and you've seen nothing but a map.”

Orson Scott Card book Speaker for the Dead

Source: Speaker for the Dead

“I tell you to thinkthoughts and you come up with that?!" the lieutenant had screamed. "Is a guinea pigDo you consider a guinea pig the representation of all that is evil?"

Maybe… if it's an evil guinea pig.”

Frank Beddor book The Looking Glass Wars

Source: The Looking Glass Wars

“I don't suppose it would help if I told you that is the way life is. The good suffer, the evil flourish, and all that is mortal passes away.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Variant: Pointless, needless suffering and pain? I don’t suppose it would help if I told you that was the way life is. The good suffer, the evil flourish, and all that is mortal passes away.
Source: Clockwork Princess

Life, Way, Suffering, Help

“Virtue is imaginative, evil repetitive.”

Dean Koontz book Odd Apocalypse

Odd Apocalypse

Imagination