Quotes about Evil
The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.
At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.
How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.
There surely is in human nature an inherent propensity to extract all the good out of all the evil.
I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room.
Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
It is told that Buddha, going out to look on life, was greatly daunted by death. "They all eat one another!" he cried, and called it evil. This process I examined, changed the verb, said, "They all feed one another," and called it good.
Death? Why this fuss about death. Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! ... Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.
The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.
All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Thus that which is the most awful of evils, death, is nothing to us, since when we exist there is no death, and when there is death we do not exist.
In seeking to avoid evil, [humanity] is responsible for bringing more evil into the world than organisms could ever do merely by exercising their digestive tracts. It is [our] ingenuity, rather than [our] animal nature, that has given [our] fellow creatures such a bitter earthly fate.
Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you.
It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings.
It is always good men who do the most harm in the world.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
We ought always to deal justly, not only with those who are just to us, but likewise to those who endeavor to injure us; and this, for fear lest by rendering them evil for evil, we should fall into the same vice.
Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart, for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done.
When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before.
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.
No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
If your heart acquires strength, you will be able to remove blemishes from others without thinking evil of them.
I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one knows the truth.
Life has a bright side and a dark side, for the world of relativity is composed of light and shadows. If you permit your thoughts to dwell on evil, you yourself will become ugly. Look only for the good in everything so you absorb the quality of beauty.
Man is neither angel nor brute, and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the brute.
To put it in a few words, the true malice of man appears only in the state and in the church, as institutions of gathering together, of recapitulation, of totalization.
When good people in any country cease their vigilance and struggle, then evil men prevail.
Hypocrisy, the lie, is the true sister of evil, intolerance, and cruelty.
The moral sense reappears today with the same morning newness that has been from of old the fountain of beauty and strength. You say there is no religion now. 'Tis like saying in rainy weather, There is no sun, when at that moment we are witnessing one of its superlative effects.
But goodness alone is never enough. A hard cold wisdom is required, too, for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom invariably accomplishes evil.
Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.
In this world everything changes except good deeds and bad deeds; these follow you as the shadow follows the body.
To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as morals.
The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.
At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.
How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.
There surely is in human nature an inherent propensity to extract all the good out of all the evil.
I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room.
Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
It is told that Buddha, going out to look on life, was greatly daunted by death. "They all eat one another!" he cried, and called it evil. This process I examined, changed the verb, said, "They all feed one another," and called it good.
Death? Why this fuss about death. Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! ... Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.
The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.
All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Thus that which is the most awful of evils, death, is nothing to us, since when we exist there is no death, and when there is death we do not exist.
In seeking to avoid evil, [humanity] is responsible for bringing more evil into the world than organisms could ever do merely by exercising their digestive tracts. It is [our] ingenuity, rather than [our] animal nature, that has given [our] fellow creatures such a bitter earthly fate.
Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you.
It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings.
It is always good men who do the most harm in the world.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
We ought always to deal justly, not only with those who are just to us, but likewise to those who endeavor to injure us; and this, for fear lest by rendering them evil for evil, we should fall into the same vice.
Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart, for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done.
When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before.
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.
No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
If your heart acquires strength, you will be able to remove blemishes from others without thinking evil of them.
I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one knows the truth.
Life has a bright side and a dark side, for the world of relativity is composed of light and shadows. If you permit your thoughts to dwell on evil, you yourself will become ugly. Look only for the good in everything so you absorb the quality of beauty.
Man is neither angel nor brute, and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the brute.
To put it in a few words, the true malice of man appears only in the state and in the church, as institutions of gathering together, of recapitulation, of totalization.
When good people in any country cease their vigilance and struggle, then evil men prevail.
Hypocrisy, the lie, is the true sister of evil, intolerance, and cruelty.
The moral sense reappears today with the same morning newness that has been from of old the fountain of beauty and strength. You say there is no religion now. 'Tis like saying in rainy weather, There is no sun, when at that moment we are witnessing one of its superlative effects.
But goodness alone is never enough. A hard cold wisdom is required, too, for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom invariably accomplishes evil.
Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.
In this world everything changes except good deeds and bad deeds; these follow you as the shadow follows the body.
To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as morals.