Motivational Quotes

Evil

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

- Cioran, E. M.

Best Quotes about Evil

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.

Before man is life and death, good and evil; that which he shall choose shall be given him. [Ecclesiasticus]

Bible

It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.

Hoffer, Eric

All evil is like a nightmare; the instant you stir under it, the evil is gone.

Carlyle, Thomas

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

Mirabeau, Gabriel Riqueti

The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.

Ayn Rand

One soweth and another reapeth is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.

Eliot, George

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

My mother's obsession with the good scissors always scared me a bit. It implied that somewhere in the house there lurked: the evil scissors.

Martin, Tony

10.

We are tainted by modern philosophy which has taught us that all is good, whereas evil has polluted everything and in a very real sense all is evil, since nothing is in its proper place.

Maistre, Joseph De

11.

To do no evil is good, to intend none better.

Claudius

12.

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

Edmund Burke

13.

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

14.

It is bitter to lose a friend to evil, before one loses him to death.

Mary Renault

15.

Evil draws men together.

Aristotle

16.

But evil is wrought by want of thought as well as want of heart!

Hood, Thomas

17.

We may draw good out of evil; we must not do evil, that good may come.

Chapman, Maria Weston

18.

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

19.

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

20.

If there was no moral evil upon earth, there would be no physical evil.

Maistre, Joseph De

21.

I know indeed what evil I intend to do, but stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury, fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils.

Euripides

22.

There can be no existence of evil as a force to the healthy-minded individual.

James, William

23.

Some people show evil as a great racehorse shows breeding. They have the dignity of a hard chancre.

Hemingway, Ernest

24.

Submit to the present evil, lest a greater one befall you.

Phaedrus

25.

As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.

Voltaire

26.

No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.

Theodore Roosevelt

27.

Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

28.

There is no bad in good.

Horton, Doug

29.

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.

30.

Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.

Auden, W. H.

31.

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

Burroughs, William S.

32.

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

Crowley, Aleister

33.

Whoever rewards evil for good, evil will not depart from their house.

Bible

34.

He harms himself who does harm to another, and the evil plan is most harmful to the planner.

Hesiod

35.

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

Plato

36.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

37.

Evil spelled backward is live.

38.

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

Horton, Doug

39.

Don't let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter.

Oliver Goldsmith

40.

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

Cioran, E. M.

41.

Evil brings men together.

Aristotle

42.

Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.

Aurelius, Marcus

43.

The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.

Ayn Rand

44.

When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before.

West, Mae

45.

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

46.

They that know no evil will suspect none.

Jonson, Ben

47.

Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other ones invariably slink in after it.

Gracian, Baltasar

48.

Evil is something you recognize immediately you see it: it works through charm.

Masters, Brian

49.

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

Simone Weil

50.

Nothing in the nature around us is evil. This needs to be repeated since one of the human ways of talking oneself into inhuman acts is to cite the supposed cruelty of nature.

Berger, John