Motivational Quotes

Evil

There is only one good -- knowledge; and only one evil -- ignorance.

- Socrates

Best Quotes about Evil

Whenever evil befalls us, we ought to ask ourselves, after the first suffering, how we can turn it into good. So shall we take occasion, from one bitter root, to raise perhaps many flowers.

Leigh Hunt

The evil that we know is best.

Titus Maccius Plautus

Every minute you are thinking of evil, you might have been thinking of good instead. Refuse to pander to a morbid interest in your own misdeeds. Pick yourself up, be sorry, shake yourself, and go on again.

Evelyn Underhill

There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it.

Buddha

Nature, more of a stepmother than a mother in several ways, has sown a seed of evil in the hearts of mortals, especially in the more thoughtful men, which makes them dissatisfied with their own lot and envious of another s.

Erasmus, Desiderius

The Supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things -- the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.

Johnson, Samuel

When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil.

Lerner, Max

Evil is neither suffering nor sin; it is both at the same time, it is something common to them both. For they are linked together; sin makes us suffer and suffering makes us evil, and this indissoluble complex of suffering and sin is the evil in which we are submerged against our will, and to our horror.

Weil, Simone

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

10.

What wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian.

Milton, John

11.

There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever... money, for instance, or war.

Bellow, Saul

12.

There surely is in human nature an inherent propensity to extract all the good out of all the evil.

Haydon, Benjamin

13.

But what is the greatest evil? If you are going to epitomize evil, what is it? Is it the bomb? The greatest evil that one has to fight constantly, every minute of the day until one dies, is the worse part of oneself.

Mcgoohan, Patrick

14.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

Plato

15.

We must as second best...take the least of the evils.

Aristotle

16.

To rid ourselves of our shadows -- who we are -- we must step into either total light or total darkness. Goodness and evil.

Johnson, Jeremy P.

17.

So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist.

Eliot, T. S.

18.

Man must vanquish himself, must do himself violence, in order to perform the slightest action untainted by evil.

Cioran, E. M.

19.

Of two evils we must always choose the least.

Thomas a Kempis

20.

Nothing baffles the schemes of evil people so much as the calm composure of great souls.

Mirabeau, Gabriel Riqueti

21.

Remember only the good, the bad will never forget you.

Horton, Doug

22.

It is a power stronger than will. Could a stone escape from the laws of gravity? Impossible. Impossible, for evil to form an alliance with good.

Lautreamont, Isidore Ducasse, Comte De

23.

All evils are equal when they are extreme.

Corneille, Pierre

24.

Of two evils, it is always best to vote for the least hypocritical.

Proverb, American

25.

Evil, and evil spirits, devils and devil possession, are the outgrowth of man's inadequate consciousness of God. We must avoid thinking of evil as a thing in itself-a force that works against man or, against God, if you will.

Butterworth, Eric

26.

There is hardly a man clever enough to recognize the full extent of the evil he does.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

27.

There is no bad in good.

Horton, Doug

28.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.

Blaise Pascal

29.

Evil deeds do not prosper; the slow man catches up with the swift.

Homer

30.

May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.-

Carlin, George

31.

Overcome evil with good. [St. Paul]]

Bible

32.

The pious pretence that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing.

Crowley, Aleister

33.

The face of evil is always the face of total need.

Burroughs, William S.

34.

Those that are evil have not only the good against them, but also the bad.

Bischer

35.

Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

36.

No evil shall happen to the just.

Bible

37.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Edmund Burke

38.

What is worse than evil? The inability to bear it.

Weber, C. J.

39.

Of two evils, choose neither.

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

40.

This is the very worst wickedness, that we refuse to acknowledge the passionate evil that is in us. This makes us secret and rotten.

Lawrence, D. H.

41.

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

42.

Do not seek evil gains; evil gains are the equivalent of disaster.

Hesiod

43.

The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even -- if you will -- eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with.

Brodsky, Joseph

44.

No evil is without its compensation. The less money, the less trouble; the less favor, the less envy. Even in those cases which put us out of wits, it is not the loss itself, but the estimate of the loss that troubles us.

Seneca

45.

There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.

Plato

46.

Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.

Simone Weil

47.

No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

Aristotle

48.

Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.