We’ve sourced some of the most interesting and thought-provoking Evil Quotes from Saint Augustine, Noelle Stevenson, Shuji Nakamura, Ayn Rand, William Makepeace Thackeray. Each of the following quotes is overflowing with creativity, and knowledge.
The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.
I think almost anyone is capable of doing things that are evil or hurtful or harmful.
There are still people in Japan who think money is something evil.
So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?
An evil person is like a dirty window, they never let the light shine through.
There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it.
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.
The Divine wisdom has given us prayer, not as a means whereby to obtain the good things of earth, but as a means whereby we learn to do without them; not as a means whereby we escape evil, but as a means whereby we become strong to meet it.
Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.
I feel it’s in people’s nature to want to stop evil and embrace the good.
Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil.
Microsoft isn’t evil, they just make really crappy operating systems.
That free will was demonstrated in the placing of temptation before man with the command not to eat of the fruit of the tree which would give him a knowledge of good and evil, with the disturbing moral conflict to which that awareness would give rise.
Yet the evil still increased, and, like the parasite of barnacles on a ship, if it did not destroy the structure, it obstructed its fair, comfortable progress in the path of life.
Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens.
To live without evil belongs only to the gods.
Evil has always been there; it’s always a part of us. Evil is no big surprise. But what about the people who gave freely, who stood up for human dignity? Even in the most extreme and terrible situations, these acts of dignity existed. And for me, that is the banality of good.
Stupidity always accompanies evil. Or evil, stupidity.
Evil communication corrupts good manners. I hope to live to hear that good communication corrects bad manners.
Buddha means awareness, the awareness of body and mind that prevents evil from arising in either.
I can pretty much get in touch with my evil side pretty easily.
Evil is the interruption of a truth by the pressure of particular or individual interests.
Europe and America must act together in the face of evil. It’s high time for Americans and Europeans to restore that unity and be able to take actions collectively together.
Apartheid – both petty and grand – is obviously evil. Nothing can justify the arrogant assumption that a clique of foreigners has the right to decide on the lives of a majority.
Terrorism is an evil that threatens all the countries in Europe. Vigorous cooperation in the European Union and worldwide is crucial in order to meet this evil head on.
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.
Cats are evil, and they hate me.
In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights.
There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.
Music is a part of someone’s soul. Music is a feeling for me. And if that soul is evil, then I don’t want anything to do with it.
The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance.
I do sometimes strongly hope that in a past life, my most recent life before this, I was absolutely horrible, evil, hideous. Because otherwise – well, hell, to even things up next time around, I’m going to have to pay for this one, am I not?
It’s not about ‘NBC is evil.’ It’s about that media structure – CBS, ABC, CNN, even some of the smaller operations are now multinationals, with these extraordinarily diverse holdings.
There are two different stories in horror: internal and external. In external horror films, the evil comes from the outside, the other tribe, this thing in the darkness that we don’t understand. Internal is the human heart.
We don’t defeat evil by becoming evil.
I’m saying that the WMD reporting was not consciously evil. It was bad journalism, even very bad journalism.
Nobody is born evil.
Death metal has now become exclusively about being evil, Satanic and playing full speed ahead. It’s not what I’m into at all.
Evil walks among us, and God help us if we don’t harden our schools and protect our kids.
Two urns on Jove’s high throne have ever stood, the source of evil one, and one of good; from thence the cup of mortal man he fills, blessings to these, to those distributes ills; to most he mingles both.
According to the Sutras, evil deeds result in hardships and good deeds result in blessings.
Tolerating evil leads only to more evil. And when good people stand by and do nothing while wickedness reigns, their communities will be consumed.
No tyrant, however evil, has yet lacked ready hands to execute his most abominable will. To read how eagerly men have rushed to serve the despot is the bitterest, the saddest matter of history; it is the saddest sight in our own day.
Americans must outgrow the unbecoming arrogance that leads us to assert that America somehow owns a monopoly on goodness and truth – a belief that leads some to view the world as but a stage on which to play out the great historical drama: the United States of America versus the Powers of Evil.
I think everyone must settle for what is in the parameter of their own rights. No one must have an evil intention toward the territorial benefit or integrity of other nations.
Even papists could not see that a moral evil was detained in the soul through its physical connection with the body; and that it required the dissolution of this physical connection before the moral contagion could be removed.
There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.
Despite my emphasis on technology, I do not view laws as inherently evil. My goals are political ones, even if my techniques are not. The only way to fundamentally succeed is by changing existing laws. If I rejected all help from the political arena I would inevitably fail.
In Arizona we have passed laws to free our people so that they can defend themselves and their loved ones. You cannot predict where evil will raise its head, but you can be prepared for it.
The way I wanted to write it, is with a hero, or sort of a pure character who was the protagonist. And the antagonists were these demonic evil children, cause when you’re a kid, seven or eight years old, and you’re looking at the world around you – everything seems black or white, good or bad.
Any new technology, if it’s used by evil people, bad things can happen. But that’s more a question of the politics of the technology.
Almost all people have this potential for evil, which would be unleashed only under certain dangerous social circumstances.
Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is good… Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place.
People desire to separate their worlds into polarities of dark and light, ugly and beautiful, good and evil, right and wrong, inside and outside. Polarities serve us in our learning and growth, but as souls we are all.
The great and important duty which is incumbent on Christians, is to guard against all appearance of evil; to watch against the first risings in the heart to evil; and to have a guard upon our actions, that they may not be sinful, or so much as seem to be so.
The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.
Being a philosopher is to think, seek wisdom, and have principles that guide and influence what you do. It’s to give meaning to things, find your way in the world, believe that in the end, in every instance, good will overcome evil, even if there’s a bit of suffering along the way.
In morals what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.
Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.
Once to every person and nation come the moment to decide. In the conflict of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.
One should see the world, and see himself as a scale with an equal balance of good and evil. When he does one good deed the scale is tipped to the good – he and the world is saved. When he does one evil deed the scale is tipped to the bad – he and the world is destroyed.
I’ve been fascinated by the idea that evil is the absence of empathy.
9/11 was a deliberate, carefully planned evil act of the long-waged war on the West by Koran-inspired soldiers of Allah around the world. They hated us before George W. Bush was in office. They hated us before Israel existed. And the avengers of the religion of perpetual outrage will keep hating us.
If the myth of pure evil is that evil is committed with the intention of causing harm and an absence of moral considerations, then it applies to very few acts of so-called ‘pure evil’ because most evildoers believe what they are doing is forgivable or justifiable.
No evil is honorable: but death is honorable; therefore death is not evil.
Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.
I shot a pilot for ABC, which I’m a bit confused about what the actual title is – I heard it was called ‘Chosen.’ It’s directed by Roland Emmerich – the master of disaster himself – and it’s his idea and concept for the show that’s a supernatural thriller about good and evil set in contemporary modern day New York.
I think that money is the root of all evil. I’ve seen it happen.
The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.
I do like to explore evil characters in my books.
I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.
Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.
Sometimes the right response to evil is an appeal to powerful and effective social organization – an appeal to civilization itself.
The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.
The God of the Old Testament is the depiction of evil.
Every judgement of conscience, be it right or wrong, be it about things evil in themselves or morally indifferent, is obligatory, in such wise that he who acts against his conscience always sins.
As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends.
I leave to others the decision as to the good or evil tendencies of my character, but such as it is it shines upon my countenance, and there it can easily be detected by any physiognomist.
Likewise, education can direct people toward good or evil ends. When education is based on a fundamentally distorted worldview, the results are horrific.
My success and my misfortunes, the bright and the dark days I have gone through, everything has proved to me that in this world, either physical or moral, good comes out of evil just as well as evil comes out of good.
I truly do believe that history teaches that weakness arouses evil, and whether it be the horrific attack in France, the inspired attacks here in the United States, the instability in Turkey that led to a coup.
Liberal interventions that enable all children to shoot for their potential aren’t just moral, they are pragmatic – any society that wastes talent to poverty or oppression isn’t just evil: it is stupid.
The evil that we know is best.
The world needs anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn’t angry enough.
It is bitter to lose a friend to evil, before one loses him to death.
Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.
Whoever has witnessed another’s ideal becomes his inexorable judge and as it were his evil conscience.
Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. For years we lived anyhow with one another in the naked desert, under the indifferent heaven.
No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.
I think that episode in the third season was great. I’m really glad that we did that. He got to sleep with Sydney and kill Evil Francie and go on a mission and pretend he’s a rock star.
Let us not paralyze our capacity for good by brooding of man’s capacity for evil.
I don’t need to be made to look evil. I can do that on my own.
It is in his knowledge that man has found his greatness and his happiness, the high superiority which he holds over the other animals who inhabit the earth with him, and consequently no ignorance is probably without loss to him, no error without evil.
What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant, marvelous and awful, good and evil.
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.
If your religion doesn’t teach you the difference between good and evil, your religion is worse than useless.
I am always loath to use the world ‘evil,’ but if ‘evil’ is the reverse of ‘live,’ Guy de Rothschild is thoroughly evil. He stands for the opposite of life.
When I was sixteen, I wrote the first hundred or so pages of a novel about a piano that was haunted by the ghost of an evil blues musician.
Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.
Submit to the present evil, lest a greater one befall you.
It would be lovely if it was all Right vs. Wrong, Good overcomes Evil – I think most Americans, going about their daily lives, fool themselves into thinking that that’s how our little world works, but it just isn’t so.
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
If they exert it not for good, they will for evil; if they advance not knowledge, they will perpetuate ignorance.
The heart of man will always be dark. There will always be evil people. The problem is that there is nothing we can humanly do to change them.
In France, they call the beauty of youth ‘the evil beauty.’ You don’t have it because of you but because you’re born with it. The other kind of beauty is your own work, and it takes forever.
What bothers most critics of my work is the goofiness. One reviewer said I need to make up my mind if want to be funny or serious. My response is that I will make up my mind when God does, because life is a commingling of the sacred and the profane, good and evil. To try and separate them is fallacy.
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
A lot of the evil in the world is actually not intentional. A lot of people in the financial system did a lot of damage without intending to.
I prefer ensemble casts, but with games like ‘Resident Evil 6,’ where there’s just so much dialogue and recording mo-cap, or with ‘Resident Evil: Damnation,’ where the story pace is already set by a previous set of mo-cap actors, it makes more sense to do it individually.
I’m a really evil person on TV! It’s way more fun to be the bad guy.
Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.
Here we are in the 70’s when everything really is horrible and it really stinks. The mass media, everything on television everything everywhere is just rotten. You know it’s just really boring and really evil, ugly and worse.
I live in sin, to kill myself I live; no longer my life my own, but sin’s; my good is given to me by heaven, my evil by myself, by my free will, of which I am deprived.
Evil is a source of moral intelligence in the sense that we need to learn from our shadow, from our dark side, in order to be good.
There is nothing evil save that which perverts the mind and shackles the conscience.
Some things must be good in themselves, else there could be no measure whereby to lay out good and evil.
Little evil would be done in the world if evil never could be done in the name of good.
We, therefore, here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends in this hour of tragedy, and we, like them, will not rest until this evil is driven from our world.
Words can sometimes be used to confuse, but it’s up to the practitioners of the study of language to apply them for good and not for evil. It is just like fire; fire can heat your house or burn it down.
If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another.
Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.
It is not enough for us to restrain from doing evil, unless we shall also do good.
Whatever contributes to the preservation of life is good; all that destroys life is evil.
You shall always find what you created in your mind, for instance, a benevolent God or an evil Devil. Between them are countless facets. Therefore, concentrate on the depth of your consciousness and on what you consider to be positive and good.
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
That in man which cannot be domesticated is not his evil but his goodness.
The Jew is upset because the nations of the world – the United Nations – lash him, brand him as racist and evil, hate him and openly demonstrate their desire to destroy him.
Cursed is the man who dies, but the evil done by him survives.
Pain is no evil, unless it conquers us.
George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as ‘evil.’ Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism.
In that wide struggle which we call Progress, evil is always the aggressor and the vanquished, and it is right that this should be so, for without its onslaughts and depredations humanity might fall to a fat slumber upon its cornsacks and die snoring.
The lack of money is the root of all evil.
Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.
A child rightly trained may be a world-wide blessing, with an influence reaching onward to eternal years. But a neglected or misdirected directed child may live to blight and blast mankind, and leave influences of evil which shall roll on in increasing volume till they plunge into the gulf of eternal perdition.
No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.
The current health crisis, however, is a little more the work of the evil empire. We were told, we were assured, that the more meat and dairy and poultry we ate, the healthier we’d be.
This is a struggle of good and evil. And we’re the good.
Societies need to have one illness which becomes identified with evil, and attaches blame to its victims.
The more praying there is in the world, the better the world will be, the mightier the forces against evil everywhere.
Evil prospers when good men do nothing.
Evil changes everybody!
It always baffles me how people can lift you up so high and make it seem like they love you then you do one thing wrong and it’s all of a sudden you the devil and you evil and everything you do from then on isn’t right.
Atheists have not produced so much evil as hypocrites have produced, or even simply those who preached God without being prepared for Him, daring to pronounce His name with unsanctified lips.
Good and evil do not exist for me any more. The fear of evil is merely a mass projection here and on Earth.
He knew the lie of silence to be as evil as the lie of speech.
We all agree that we’ve got to bring these terrorists to justice and to make sure that they’re never allowed to perpetrate such an evil act as they did. And so all of us are dealing with that. We know that the President has the authority to go to war under the War Powers Act.
The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing.
Evil is relative – and what I mean by that is that our villains are as complex, as deep and as compelling as any of our heroes. Every antagonist in the DC Universe has a unique darkness, desire and drive. And the reason for being of ‘Forever Evil’ is to explore that darkness.
I am perhaps a late follower of Zoroaster and I believe that the foundation of life is built upon the struggle between the two opposing forces of Good and Evil.
Evil comes in many forms, and whether you are male or female, that doesn’t matter as much as what lurks in your mind.
However, without considering this connection, there is no doubt but that more good than evil, more delight than sorrow, arises from compassion itself; there being so many things which balance the sorrow of it.
For me the root of evil today is the policy of President Bush. It is a fascist policy. I cannot understand how is it that the Jewish people, who have been the victims of Nazism, can support such a fascist policy. No other people in the world support those policies but Israel! This situation saddens me.
Evil, when we are in its power, is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, even a duty.
Nation should be rest assured Pakistan is a safe atomic power. No one can cast an evil eye on it.
My kitchen witch hangs above the sink in my kitchen. Some people think it’s specifically so that you don’t burn food when you cook, but I like to think that it’s warding off evil spirits and bad things in general.
The line between good and evil is permeable and almost anyone can be induced to cross it when pressured by situational forces.
Any time you stop looking at evil as a black and white thing, it’s helpful. So the fact that there won’t be any obligatory Islamic terrorist stereotypes in movies any more, that’d be helpful.
It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.
We live in a world that is filled with filth and sleaze, a world that reeks of evil. You cannot afford that filthy poison to touch you. Stay away from it. Avoid it.
For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.
God knows I detest slavery but it is an existing evil, and we must endure it and give it such protection as is guaranteed by the Constitution.
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 way I understand it, the Russians are sort of a combination of evil and incompetence… sort of like the Post Office with tanks.
It is a governing principle of nature, that the agency which can produce most good, when perverted from its proper aim, is most productive of evil.
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.
On the choice of friends, Our good or evil name depends.
Back in the mid ’90s, I went to a film festival, and they were airing ‘Central Park West’ at the same time as this cute little romantic comedy movie called ‘French Exit,’ and I got to go from one theater where I was goofy, falling over myself, to this kind of evil vixen kind of character.
I happen to believe there is evil in the world.
I’d like to write a series that, in an adventurous and fun way, teaches kids a way to discern between good and evil, to establish a foundation on moral absolutes.
It is not true that good can only follow from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true.
I will begin with this confession: whatever I have done in the course of my life, whether it be good or evil, has been done freely; I am a free agent.
‘Evil men have no songs.’ How is it that the Russians have songs?
Evil is a miscellaneous collection of nasty things that nasty people do.
To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.
A good villain exudes charisma and power. He has principles, though; that just gives him a level of dimension. It makes him seem to be a bit unpredictable, because he’s usually deemed as some type of evil, ruthless person, and then he shows you his principles, and you don’t know what to think of it.
Man produces evil as a bee produces honey.
Be good to others, that will protect you against evil.
I’ll shout it if they want: Down with isms! Up with a Left that is capable of thinking outside the box! In other words, I am more than completely cured of simplifications, of dividing the world into good and evil, of thinking in black and white. I have repented!
The great epochs of our life are the occasions when we gain the courage to rebaptize our evil qualities as our best qualities.
I can not think of any circumstances in which advertising would not be an evil.
The human mind has infinite capacity to rationalize, and evil characters just push that boundary a bit. Whatever they’re doing, they think it makes sense to do it, and they think they have a good reason to do it. In short, they feel justified.
Evil exists. Evil is real. One of the hallmarks of evil is that it seeks to convince its victims that it exists ‘out there.’
There are heroes in evil as well as in good.
The PhD system is the real root of the evil of academic snobbery. People who have PhDs consider themselves a priesthood, and inventors generally don’t have PhDs.
It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
What happens when good people are put into an evil place? Do they triumph or does the situation dominate their past history and morality?
The conscience of children is formed by the influences that surround them; their notions of good and evil are the result of the moral atmosphere they breathe.
War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.
For those whose wit becomes the mother of villainy, those it educates to be evil in all things.
The 20th century taught us how far unbridled evil can and will go when the world fails to confront it. It is time that we heed the lessons of the 20th century and stand up to these murderers. It is time that we end genocide in the 21st century.
Abortion is the most vile evil committed in America.
Oh yes, there’s lots of great food in America. But the fast food is about as destructive and evil as it gets. It celebrates a mentality of sloth, convenience, and a cheerful embrace of food we know is hurting us.
The living werewolves have genuine needs and desires, which, though they may oppose ours, are valid. Even if they want to eat humans, you can’t really call them evil, any more than mice can call cats evil, or chickens can call humans evil. It’s all just a matter of where you’re standing.
Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good.
The world is not dialectical – it is sworn to extremes, not to equilibrium, sworn to radical antagonism, not to reconciliation or synthesis. This is also the principle of evil.
No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.
Abortion isn’t a lesser evil, it’s a crime. Taking one life to save another, that’s what the Mafia does. It’s a crime. It’s an absolute evil.
America has shown its evil intentions, and the proud Iraqi people cannot accept it. They must defend their rights by any means they see fit.
When evil acts in the world it always manages to find instruments who believe that what they do is not evil but honorable.
I do not consider divorce an evil by any means. It is just as much a refuge for women married to brutal men as Canada was to the slaves of brutal masters.
What I have learned from my work up to now, is to try to be open, but also protect myself by not letting the good and the evil get too much importance.
In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution is a moral & political evil in any country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages.
We have tried to define precisely what it means to be a force for good – always do the right, ethical thing. Ultimately, ‘Don’t be evil’ seems the easiest way to summarize it.
God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.
The case of Afghanistan vs. the Soviet Union is the clearest case of good against evil that I’ve seen in my lifetime. I thought it was terrific the way they got their country back.
May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.
I venture to prophesy that there lies before us a bitter and an evil time.
We’re living in a fearful time. Since 9/11 people have become more afraid than before, because of terrorism. There’s a lot of confusion about evil, where it’s all coming from.
When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil.
The most rabidly religious people are the most rabidly evil.
The fundamental evil of the world arose from the fact that the good Lord has not created money enough.
The quality of the Lord’s church on earth, cannot be seen by any man, so long as he lives in the world, still less how the church in process of time has turned aside from good to evil.
The evil influence of Satan would destroy any hope we have in overcoming our mistakes. He would have us feel that we are lost and that there is no hope. In contrast, Jesus reaches down to us to lift us up.
No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.
Is there anything science should not try to explain? Science is knowledge and knowledge is power – power to do good or evil. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.
Mankind fears an evil man but heaven does not.
It’s not that Good doesn’t triumph over Evil, it’s that the point spread is too small.
A national evil requires a national remedy; let not this any longer be delayed: let your minds expand, free from every narrow principle, and let the public good become the sole object of your united Christian efforts.
Idleness among children, as among men, is the root of all evil, and leads to no other evil more certain than ill temper.
There is no greater evil than anarchy.
It’s much more likely that an asteroid will strike the Earth and annihilate life as we know it than AI will turn evil.
Violence isn’t always evil. What’s evil is the infatuation with violence.
He that is kind is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.
The tree of knowledge is not the tree of life! And yet can we cast out of our spirits all the good or evil poured into them by so many learned generations? Ignorance cannot be learned.
There surely is in human nature an inherent propensity to extract all the good out of all the evil.
Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
People in the Middle East may consider the U.S. an evil hegemony that has tainted their culture, but when I look at the growth of racial and ethnic tolerance and understanding in my generation in the U.S., and see those sentiments make it around the world, it makes me feel proud.
We have an incredible warrior class in this country – people in law enforcement, intelligence – and I thank God every night we have them standing fast to protect us from the tremendous amount of evil that exists in the world.
It has been rightly said that nothing is unimportant, nothing powerless in the universe; a single atom can dissolve everything, and save everything! What terror! There lies the eternal distinction between good and evil.
My good works, however wretched and imperfect, have been made better and perfected by Him Who is my Lord: He has rendered them meritorious. As to my evil deeds and my sins, He hid them at once. The eyes of those who saw them, He made even blind; and He has blotted them out of their memory.
We can overcome evil with greater good.
Women are the root of all evil. I ought to know. I’m Evel.
Dawn was written well before 9/11. People speak a lot today about the banality of evil, but not all evil is banal. Some of it is carefully structured and well-thought-out. That’s where the real danger lies.
I know why we can’t have a frank discussion with our policymakers – if you’re in the government or in law enforcement you cannot acknowledge that drugs are anything but inherently evil and morally wrong.
Madam Walker’s name gets thrown out as either the savior of black women’s hair or she’s the evil devil.
Abortion and racism are evil twins, born of the same lie. Where racism now hides its face in public, abortion is accomplishing the goals of which racism only once dreamed. Together, abortionists are destroying humanity at large and the black community in particular.
Wilde is the greatest force for evil that has appeared in Europe during the last 350 years.
Where destruction is the motive, unity is dangerous. For example, if I have evil intent and I galvanize that evil intent with many others, the capacity to destroy is immense. Where goodness is the motive, unity is phenomenal and actually has some good issues to it.
I don’t buy into any of that hogwash. They put that out to sell tickets. It’s just a classic horror movie, with the Greek drama formula of good versus evil, and lots of fear.
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.
In the hip-hop world, Eazy-E was the personification of evil. He paid my hospital bill, about $60,000, but he made me pay him back, which is cool, except that I later found out that he paid the bill out of my share of a publishing deal he made for me.
I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.
The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.
You know George M. Steinbrenner III is the center of all evil in the universe.
It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.
The majority of comic book villains are pure evil, but Curt Connors is an exception. Curt Connors is a good man who initially wants to save the world, but he gets hungry and greedy and reckless, and he pays the price for that.
Death is not evil, for it frees man from all ills and takes away his desires along with desire’s rewards.
Above all we should not forget that government is an evil, a usurpation upon the private judgement and individual conscience of mankind.
Every book has some real life in it. I was never pursued by an evil twin clone, but everything else in MR. MURDER was pretty much out of my own life.
If power made one evil, then God would be the Devil.
In a certain sense, this guy – who is one of the most evil people in the book – he’s not really that bad at running the show, because he knows what he’s doing, he’s smart and he’s got the big picture in mind. He’s like the Godfather.
The omission of good is no less reprehensible than the commission of evil.
Our cautious ancestors, when yawning, blocked the way to the entrance of evil spirits by putting their hands before their mouths. We find a reason for the gesture in the delicacy of manner which forbids an indecent exposure.
I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul.
There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.
We study the injustices of history for the same reason that we study genocide, and for the same reason that psychologists study the minds of murderers and rapists… to understand how those evil things came about.
I always end up being the evil one, and I wouldn’t hurt a fly.
I got involved in improv comedy. It settled me down when I was getting wild. I was sort of an evil teenager smashing up my cars and drinking and driving, let’s just say, a lot.
Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over those who feel it least and allow its evil effects to go on.
So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds.
Government is an unnecessary evil. Human beings, when accustomed to taking responsibility for their own behavior, can cooperate on a basis of mutual trust and helpfulness.
We will fight evil, but we will do it from above 15,000 feet.
No matter how daring or cautious you may choose to be, in the course of your life, you are bound to come into direct physical contact with what’s known as Evil. I mean here not a property of the gothic novel but, to say the least, a palpable social reality that you in no way can control.
If I were to give advice, I would say to parents that they ought to be very careful whom they allow to mix with their children when young; for much mischief thence ensues, and our natural inclinations are unto evil rather than unto good.
Basting is evil. Basting does nothing for the meat. Why? Skin. Skin is designed to keep stuff out of the bird, so basting just lets heat out of the oven. That means the turkey will take longer to cook… so don’t touch that door!
What twelve year old wouldn’t want to play an evil wizard?
Because parents have power over children. They feel they have to do what their parents say. But the love of money is the root of all evil. And this is a sweet child. And to see him turn like this, this isn’t him. This is not him.
I think it’s been hard for people to understand how Islam can be a good religion, and yet the Islamists are evil. Those of us who have had experience with Islam understand this, just as we understand the difference between snake handlers and people going to church on Sunday morning.
I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.
The moment you introduce the element of IT, which is an interdimensional evil entity, the presence of the turtle comes with it, as a counterbalance.
Every year of my life I grow more convinced that it is wisest and best to fix our attention on the beautiful and the good, and dwell as little as possible on the evil and the false.
Human nature is evil, and goodness is caused by intentional activity.
We have seen the evil of the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors in our midst; let us try prohibition and see what this will do for us.
If I play a villain, I try to find his lightness and his good side. And if I play a hero or a good guy, I’ll try to find his darkness or his flaws. Because I don’t believe in good and evil. I believe in grays.
We are coming out of a century that was taught that one way of looking at the world, that one form of behavior, is as valid as another. The idea of true evil has been blown away.
Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.
The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.
If religion cannot restrain evil, it cannot claim effective power for good.
I don’t believe in evil, I believe only in horror. In nature there is no evil, only an abundance of horror: the plagues and the blights and the ants and the maggots.
All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.
Only among people who think no evil can Evil monstrously flourish.
I do not concern myself with gods and spirits either good or evil nor do I serve any.
Everyone spends their lives trying to balance their world between good and evil.
There are evil people, and I don’t even want to hear those guys speak.
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.
One concept corrupts and confuses the others. I am not speaking of the Evil whose limited sphere is ethics; I am speaking of the infinite.
When good befalls a man he calls it Providence, when evil fate.
Desire is poverty. Desire is the greatest impurity of the mind. Desire is the motive force for action. Desire in the mind is the real impurity. Even a spark of desire is a very great evil.
Yes, of course it’s fun to play evil, but it’s simply fun to play any different characters.
Envy, my son, wears herself away, and droops like a lamb under the influence of the evil eye.
It is a proof of our natural bias to evil, that gain is slower and harder than loss in all things good; but in all things bad getting is quicker and easier than getting rid of.
Black frost. The ground is hard, the air tastes bitter. Your stars cluster in evil signs.
Good can exist without evil, whereas evil cannot exist without good.
We’re never going to be able to get rid of terrorism, because there is always going to be evil in the world.
This part of Brazil offered the curious spectacle of a great evil, which has been long suffered to exist and is now advancing, gradually yet surely, to that state which must entail inevitable destruction on the existing Government of the country.
Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil.
If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.
I like evil people.
If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.
To me, evil comes when you have a choice between that and good, and you choose the wrong way.
There is no evil in the world without a remedy.
When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that.
Anti-capitalism is nothing new in Hollywood. From ‘Wall-E’ to ‘Avatar,’ corporations are routinely depicted as evil. The contradiction of corporate-funded films denouncing corporations is an irony capitalism cannot just absorb, but thrive on. Yet this anti-capitalism is only allowed within limits.
A great philosopher has stated that the worst evil of poverty is, that it makes folks ridiculous; by which, I hope, he only means that, as in the above case, it places them in incongruous positions.
Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit.
The disease of an evil conscience is beyond the practice of all the physicians of all the countries in the would.
Nothing is so contagious as example; and we never do any great good or evil which does not produce its like.
Evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance.
More than anything, there are more images in evil. Evil is based far more on the visual, whereas good has no good images at all.
Fantasy is an area where it is possible to talk about right and wrong, good and evil, with a straight face. In mainstream fiction and even in a good deal of mystery, these things are presented as simply two sides of the same coin. Never really more than a matter of where you happen to be standing.
Man must vanquish himself, must do himself violence, in order to perform the slightest action untainted by evil.
The unique and supreme voluptuousness of love lies in the certainty of committing evil. And men and women know from birth that in evil is found all sensual delight.
When I was young, I asked my priest how you could get to Heaven and still protect yourself from all the evil in the world. He told me what God said to his children. You are sheep among wolves. Be wise as serpents, yet innocent as doves.
My style is confrontational: when I see evil, I want to remove it right away.
What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists, is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.
Corruption is… the result of a decadent political regime. We are absolutely convinced that this evil is the main cause of social and economic inequality, and also that corruption is to blame for the violence in our country.
As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities.
Ambition is not in itself an evil; nor is he to be condemned whose spirit prompts him to seek fame by worthy and honourable ways.
I was looking to explore the theme of good and evil, so what better inspiration than the comics? I’d developed a relationship with DC and Warner Bros. when I donated a sculpture of Catwoman to the ‘We Can Be Heroes’ campaign a few years ago. That’s what started it.
In times such as these, people should recognize that evil knows no borders, knows no limits and knows no compassion. Those around the globe that value freedom must continue to persevere even in the darkest of times.
A mark of stupidity is a belief that one party is totally virtuous and correct on the issues while the other is evil and always wrong.
Any film is about heroism: the triumph of good over evil. If you look back at my films, you will see that as a recurring theme.
If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.
Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.
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.
Let us never forget that terrorism at its heart, at its evil heart, is a psychological war. It endeavors to break the spirit and the resolve of those it attacks by creating a lose-lose situation.
How easy it is to judge rightly after one sees what evil comes from judging wrongly!
Evil gains work their punishment.
Art is built on the deepest themes of human meaning: good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death, love and hate. No other story has incarnated those themes more than the story of Jesus.
Scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man’s struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.
The idea of evil is always subject to denial as a coping mechanism.
The greatest error of a man is to think that he is weak by nature, evil by nature. Every man is divine and strong in his real nature. What are weak and evil are his habits, his desires and thoughts, but not himself.
A good End cannot sanctify evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it.
The first idea the child must acquire is that of the difference between good and evil.
The worst evil is – and that’s the product of censorship – is the self-censorship, because that twists spines, that destroys my character because I have to think something else and say something else, I have to always control myself.
I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.
History will see advertising as one of the real evil things of our time. It is stimulating people constantly to want things, want this, want that.
There is nothing good or evil save in the will.
Everything understood by the term co-operation is in some sense an evil.
Never let a man imagine that he can pursue a good end by evil means, without sinning against his own soul. The evil effect on himself is certain.
The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.
George Bush is not stupid. He’s evil. OK? There’s a huge difference between stupid and evil.
Bigotry or prejudice in any form is more than a problem; it is a deep-seated evil within our society.
The words spoken by the leader of the free world can expand the frontiers of freedom or shrink them. When Ronald Reagan called on Gorbachev to ‘tear down this wall’, a surge of confidence rose that would ultimately breach the bounds of the evil empire.
I do not believe a good player is capable of having an evil thought during the game.
Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness.
‘Climb Every Mountain’ is a beautiful statement of philosophy. Critics may think ‘The Sound of Music’ is saccharine, but I think it’s profound. The message, that we can’t accommodate evil, is just as important today.
The only way to defeat evil is by taking advantage of our freedoms.
Evil. Mistrust those who rejoice at it even more than those who do it.
In revolt against this new and very evil thing came the republicanism of the eighteenth century, inspired and directed in large measure by members of the fast perishing aristocracy of race, character and tradition.
I live in a high-rise apartment building, so I just have two cats. They’re both pound kitties. One of them, Dick, is an evil, foot-biting cat. When I write a tiger morph, I’m always imagining Dick.
Evil is not something superhuman, it’s something less than human.
If men were basically evil, who would bother to improve the world instead of giving it up as a bad job at the outset?
A man can look upon his life and accept it as good or evil; it is far, far harder for him to confess that it has been unimportant in the sum of things.
Bullies may be the perpetrators of evil, but it is the evil of passivity of all those who know what is happening and never intervene that perpetuates such abuse.
You may be educated abroad, you may be a great scientist, politician, but you always have a sneaking fear that if you don’t go to temples or do the ordinary things that you have been told to do, something evil might happen, so you conform. What happens to the mind that conforms? Investigate it, please.
Christ has conquered death, not only by suppressing its evil effects, but by reversing its sting. By virtue of Christ’s rising again, nothing any longer kills inevitably, but everything is capable of becoming the blessed touch of the divine hands, the blessed influence of the will of God upon our lives.
One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.
Sarah Corvus in ‘Bionic Woman’ was one of my favorite characters I’ve ever played, ever, for reasons that are very similar to Nikki in ‘Sexy Evil Genius.’ I felt that that show was taken away from me too soon, and I really wanted to dive back into that mind frame again.
We can only write well about our sins because it is too difficult to recall a virtuous act or even whether it was the result of good or evil motives.
When you think of the sort of things that happen when a genocide happens, it’s again not people who are intrinsically evil.
They that know no evil will suspect none.
God dislikes evil, and no happiness can be built on hate. Love one another as brothers.
We are all born marked for evil.
Some creative writing programs seem evil, but my experience at Irvine was totally the opposite, where I feel like they were really good at focusing in on each writers voice and setting. When I felt like I was obligated to write a story that was more typical, no one really liked it.
Savage, despicable evil. That’s what we were fighting in Iraq. That’s why a lot of people, myself included, called the enemy ‘savages.’ There really was no other way to describe what we encountered there.
How far the existence of the Academy has influenced French literature, either for good or for evil, is an extremely dubious question.
I’d like to do more Shakespeare. I’d like to do Iago in Othello. I look so benign. It would be interesting to see that black evil come out of my soul.
God will not damn a lunatic’s soul. He knows that the powers of evil are too great for those of us with weak minds.
We may draw good out of evil; we must not do evil, that good may come.
Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.
I find myself evil. I believe in the devil as much as God. You can use either one to get things done.
But other vampire stories? Well, no, I really haven’t read too many, and I can’t say I’m crazy about romantic vampires anyway – to me the vampire is simply an evil monster.
The one thing that offends me the most is when I walk by a bank and see ads trying to convince people to take out second mortgages on their home so they can go on vacation. That’s approaching evil.
Temptation coaxes us toward sin, and sin leads to sickness and death, and ultimately confinement in the realm of the evil one.
What is their potential for evil; what is their potential for wickedness? That’s the only time that those characters become interesting to watch.
We know that segregation is evil. We know that the sickest children should not go to the worst hospitals.
You’re trying your best to make people laugh; then if you fail, they hate you. But your intent’s the same. It’s not like you’re trying to do evil to them.
I don’t hate anyone. I just see the evil some pretend doesn’t exist.
For a man, the soul of a woman is a preserving talisman, guarding him from moral infections; it is a power holding him to the straight path, a guide leading him back from the crooked to the straight. On the other hand, the soul of a woman can be his evil and ruin him forever.
All evil comes from the old. They grow fat on ideas and young men die of them.
Money is the fruit of evil, as often as the root of it.
Larger deficits are necessary and proper means to mitigate unemployment as the far greater evil in terms of human welfare.
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.
For a nation which has an almost evil reputation for bustle, bustle, bustle, and rush, rush, rush, we spend an enormous amount of time standing around in line in front of windows, just waiting.
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.
Transportation made sublimation literal. It conveyed evil to another world.
No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.
While time lasts there will always be a future, and that future will hold both good and evil, since the world is made to that mingled pattern.
As is well known, ‘McCarthyism’ was an alleged focus of political evil in the 1950s: Accusations of Communist taint, without factual basis; bogus lists of supposed Communists who never existed; failure in the end to produce even one provable Communist or Soviet agent, despite his myriad charges of subversion.
Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil. Our great hope lies in developing what is good.
Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honored by the name of ‘speculation’; but which ought to be called Gambling.
The young are in great danger. Much evil results from their light and trifling reading. Much time is lost which should be spent in useful employment. Some would even deprive themselves of sleep that they might finish some ridiculous love story.
Knavery seems to be so much a the striking feature of its inhabitants that it may not in the end be an evil that they will become aliens to this kingdom.
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
He who speaks evil only differs from his who does evil in that he lacks opportunity.
We all have a common enemy, and it is evil.
I think chalking up human behavior to evil lets us all off the hook too easily.
Democracy is not static. It is a living force. Every new idea, every new invention offers opportunity for both good and evil.
To do nothing evil is good; to wish nothing evil is better.
In the myopic world of the liberals, guns are responsible for evil instead of the perpetrator of evil. But criminals are not bound by our laws. That’s what makes them criminals.
Much that we call evil is really good in disguises; and we should not quarrel rashly with adversities not yet understood, nor overlook the mercies often bound up in them.
All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.
‘God’s plan’ is often a front for men’s plans and a cover for inadequacy, ignorance, and evil.
Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.
Evil borders upon good, and vices are confounded with virtues; as the report of good qualities is delightful to a well-disposed mind, so the relation of the contrary should not be offensive.
But when we place God on our side of things, that we are now ridding the world of evil – that’s very dangerous, that one nation has this role to rid the world of evil. What about the evil we have committed, that we are complicit in?
Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.
We had better dispense with the personification of evil, because it leads, all too easily, to the most dangerous kind of war: religious war.
You must recognize that the way to get the good out of your brother and your sister is not to return evil for evil.
So certainly, if we can tell evil stories to make people sick, we can also tell good myths that make them well.
The bad man desires arbitrary power. What moves the evil man is the love of injustice.
May we be saved from evil thoughts and deed of enemies of world peace who find pleasure in creating havoc and perpetrating all forms of carnage.
Apart altogether from our own vital interests, we cannot and must not desert those other nations who have already gone through so much tragedy and suffering to defeat the evil designs of the Axis powers.
I have asked myself once or twice lately what was my natural bent. I have no doubt at all: It is to look at each day for the evil of that day and have a go at it, and that is why I have never failed to have an acute interest in each morning’s letters.
Neither gods nor men can foresee when an evil deed will bear its fruit.
Passion is the evil in adultery. If a man has no opportunity of living with another man’s wife, but if it is obvious for some reason that he would like to do so, and would do so if he could, he is no less guilty than if he was caught in the act.
Right now, my favorite game is Resident Evil 2.
Johnny Depp is like a brother to me. We have matching tattoos on our backs – Charles Baudelaire, the flowers of evil, this giant skeleton thing. It’s kind of a secret. People say to us, ‘Why did you get that?’ And we say, ‘No reason.’
What we call ‘evil’ doesn’t necessarily deserve any kind of respect or understanding, by any means; it just deserves an acknowledgement of its complexity so we can better understand it – so we can help prevent it.
You can best fight any existing evil from the inside.
We have to bring out the truth about how dark and dangerous and evil the taxi side is.
I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.
It’s much less interesting as an actor playing someone who’s purely good or purely evil.
I originally passed on ‘Girls’ because I thought TV was evil.
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.
War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.
There is something mean in human nature that prefers to think evil, that gives a willing ear and a ready welcome to calumny, a sort of jealousy of goodness and greatness and things of good report.
Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.
Where evil habits are once settled, they are more easily broken than mended.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
It is a great evil, as well as a misfortune, to be unable to utter a prompt and decided ‘no’.
I wrote an essay about leaf blowers and the evil they do.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil – or else an absolute ignorance.
Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art.
Certainly it is wrong to be cruel to animals and the destruction of a whole species can be a great evil. The capacity for feelings of pleasure and pain and for the form of life of which animals are capable clearly impose duties of compassion and humanity in their case.
Keep what you have; the known evil is best.
This persistence as private firms continued because it ensured the maximum of anonymity and secrecy to persons of tremendous public power who dreaded public knowledge of their activities as an evil almost as great as inflation.
Every Christian will allow that sin is an evil, and that it is our duty not to commit sin.
In every man sleeps a prophet, and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world.
I’ve never doubted that apartheid – because it was of itself fundamentally, intrinsically evil – was going to bite the dust eventually.
The difference being that in films, unlike in life, good does always win over evil in the end.
I have been primarily interested in how and why ordinary people do unusual things, things that seem alien to their natures. Why do good people sometimes act evil? Why do smart people sometimes do dumb or irrational things?
The public has been told repeatedly that terrorism is ‘evil,’ which it undoubtedly is, and that ‘evildoers’ are responsible for it, which doubtless they are. But beyond these justifiable condemnations, there is a historical void.
Lack of money is the root of all evil.
Evil is not to be traced back to the individual but to the collective behavior of humanity.
The ‘Axis of Evil’ was – and is – very real, as the tyrants of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea knew full well.
When we forgive evil we do not excuse it, we do not tolerate it, we do not smother it. We look the evil full in the face, call it what it is, let its horror shock and stun and enrage us, and only then do we forgive it.
Of what use is the memory of facts, if not to serve as an example of good or of evil?
Money is the root of all evil, and yet it is such a useful root that we cannot get on without it any more than we can without potatoes.
‘Master of Reality’ rules; it’s one of my favorite records of all time. It has some of the most evil riffs on it – and some of the sexiest riffs as well.
‘Evil Dead 1’ was never supposed to have a sequel.
All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.
Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.
I see in Communism the focus of the concentrated evil of our time.
The winged words uttered in this House have gone forth to the world, on their mission of good or of evil.
Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.
You’ve got to use your celebrity for good stuff, not evil. I think it’s lame when people act as if they’re better than everyone!
Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.
Every journalist owes tribute to the evil one.
Most of us grew up with video games in the household, either the original Nintendo in the living room or hoarding quarters for that trip to the arcade. And as time moves on, that line of nostalgia will keep moving forward where ‘Frogger’ gets replaced with ‘Street Fighter 2’ or ‘Resident Evil 4.’
All things can corrupt when minds are prone to evil.
When good people in any country cease their vigilance and struggle, then evil men prevail.
Evil report carries further than any applause.
If you vote for evil, you are evil yourself.
As one whose husband and mother-in-law have died the victims of murder and assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses… An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation.
Be assured those will be thy worst enemies, not to whom thou hast done evil, but who have done evil to thee. And those will be thy best friends, not to whom thou hast done good, but who have done good to thee.
Riches cannot be gathered without sin and evil means.
Poverty is the root of all evil.
It is very necessary to have markers of beauty left in a world seemingly bent on making the most evil ugliness.
Willing or preferring is the same with respect to good and evil, that judging is with respect to truth or falsehood.
I’ve often said in the past that I thought MTV was sort of evil incarnate and signified the beginning of the end. And I don’t know if I’m entirely wrong about that, but they did sign my paychecks a year ago, so I guess I’m part of the problem.
As Faulkner says, all of us have the capacity in us for great good and for great evil, for love but also for hate. I wanted to write those kinds of complex character in a fantasy, and not just have all the good people get together to fight the bad guy.
The principle of evil in Europe is the enervating spirit of Russian absolutism.
Evil is only good perverted.
There is a soul of truth in error; there is a soul of good in evil.
Magazines and advertising are flogging the idea that you have to keep changing things and get something new. I think that’s balls – evil. But obviously that’s your livelihood.
The world has fundamentally changed. It fundamentally changed when the Berlin Wall came down and the ‘evil empire’ ceased to exist. We are engaged around the world whether we like it or not.
The best form of government is that which is most likely to prevent the greatest sum of evil.
Both mind and heart when given up to reveries and dreaminess, have a thousand avenues open for the entrance of evil.
I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.
In movies and in television the robots are always evil. I guess I am not into the whole brooding cyberpunk dystopia thing.
The evil of slavery and colonialism was that these oppressions kept their victims out of history, disconnected them from the evolutionary struggle.
Now and then, someone would accuse me of being evil – of letting people destroy themselves while I watched, just so I could film them and tape-record them. But I didn’t think of myself as evil – just realistic.
Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.
The Word of fire burns today On the lips of our prophets in an evil age.
Many baseball fans look upon an umpire as a sort of necessary evil to the luxury of baseball, like the odor that follows an automobile.
It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.
The dead play a very prominent part in the experience of the wanderer abroad. The houses in which they were born, the tombs in which they lie, the localities they made famous by their good or evil deeds, and the works their genius left behind them are necessarily the chief shrines of his pilgrimage.
I started realizing how the condition of our hearts affects the way we see. If your heart is full of bitterness, anger, and resentment, you’re going to look at this world as a very evil place.
An institution or reform movement that is not selfish, must originate in the recognition of some evil that is adding to the sum of human suffering, or diminishing the sum of happiness.
The war is coming to the streets of America and if you are not keeping and bearing and practicing with your arms then you will be helpless and you will be the victim of evil.
The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul still in its grip.
Our bodies must always be wherever that struggle and the moment we forget that, the moment we become lazy, the moment we sit back, then then the evil ones do their ordained tasks to us.
At some point we must make a decision not to allow the mere threat of charges of cultural or religious insensitivity to stop us from dealing with this evil.
Like gods, we have created a new universe called cyberspace that contains great good and ominous evil. We do not know yet if this new dimension will produce more monsters than marvels, but it is too late to go back.
I struggle with insecurities. I struggle with forgiveness. I struggle with letting someone go that did me dirty without vengeance, which is an evil thing.
I really don’t want to portray the Islamists as simply evil, the way it’s often done in the west.
Art is an attempt to integrate evil.
Each time a new war is disclosed in the name of the fight of the good against evil, those who are killed are all poor. It’s always the same story repeating once and again and again.
If evil is inevitable, how are the wicked accountable? Nay, why do we call men wicked at all? Evil is inevitable, but is also remediable.
It’s just this little comedy about this group of guys, and their local hangout is a pool hall, and it’s starting to get taken over by this big corporate, evil kind of guy. And it’s just about them trying to save the day and their little pool hall in the process of it all. It’s called ‘Think Tank.’
Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.
The man who does evil to another does evil to himself, and the evil counsel is most evil for him who counsels it.
I know I always look like the evil one bossing the band around in ‘Scrubs’ – well, I’m the same in real life too.
He incurs a fearful amount of guilt who in the least promotes the aim of the Evil One by trampling upon a tender conscience in a child.
I have been afraid of guns, I have sworn I would never use a gun on another person and so did not need one, and I have wanted to deny the existence of evil.
If you really love stuffing, wait until the turkey comes out of the oven, add some of the pan drippings to the stuffing, and bake it in a dish. That’s called dressing, and that’s not evil – stuffing is, though.
In the movie ‘Star Trek 3: The Return of Spock,’ I’m a really bad Klingon, and I really enjoyed playing that – somebody who’s totally unscrupulous. It’s like he was not genetically equipped to feel compassion or sensitivity. Just outright evil without apology.
Those that set in motion the forces of evil cannot always control them afterwards.
Destroy the seed of evil, or it will grow up to your ruin.
For about 125 years, give or take, the Canadian government has acted extremely badly – even in a way which should be called evil – breaking treaties, breaking agreements.
Marriage, if one will face the truth, is an evil, but a necessary evil.
Richard Nixon was an evil man – evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency.
Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to choose between the two.
Sometimes evil is in the form of a malignant clown, and sometimes evil is in the form of policy and legislators, and sometimes it’s a grinning death mask and it has something more viscerally terrifying about it.
An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.
The values by which we are to survive are not rules for just and unjust conduct, but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline.
It is dangerous when you start calling people from one part of the world terrorists or fanatic, and you reduce them to some abstract notion. If evil has a geographical place, and if the evil has a name, that is the beginning of fascism. Real life is not this way. You have fanatics and narrow-minded people everywhere.
To fight against the infidels is Jihad; but to fight against your evil self is greater Jihad.
Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.
For centuries the leaders of Christian thought spoke of women as a necessary evil, and the greatest saints of the Church are those who despise women the most.
Religion as a human phenomenon is as riddled through with potential for both good and evil as any other phenomenon.
However things may seem, no evil thing is success and no good thing is failure.
I’ve learned a lot about good and evil. They are not always what they appear to be.
There is a good principle which created order, light, and man, and an evil principle which created chaos, darkness, and woman.
It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.
Dr. Evil got shortchanged in the first one. The family dynamic between Scott and Dr. Evil – the adventures of being an evil single parent – needed to be explored.
The people who live lives that are the most dangerous don’t usually come in twirling a mustache rubbing their hands menacingly saying ‘I’m an evil genius.’ They’re people who are charismatic, charming and appealing, who speak to some part of us that makes us want to follow them, that makes us attracted to them.
Evil, by definition, is that which endangers the good, and the good is what we perceive as a value.
Getting back to the point, a guy like Jerry, he deals with the business, and he doesn’t see it as being evil or ugly, it’s what you have to do, and I mean I know there’s some really ugly parts to it and parts which drive me nuts, but not in the same way as music business.
It’s the dualistic ways of looking at things that produces the evil.
Some people turn from God because they cannot understand how a good God can permit evil in the world.
I tend to think of action movies as exuberant morality plays in which good triumphs over evil.
God made a mistake when he gave to humans, infected as they are with evil, jurisdiction over Earth. He should have given jurisdiction to animals.
To do no evil is good, to intend none better.
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.
I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one knows the truth.
Let us believe neither half of the good people tell us of ourselves, nor half the evil they say of others.
Old age is the supreme evil, for it deprives man of all pleasures while allowing his appetites to remain, and it brings with it every possible sorrow. Yet men fear death and desire old age.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
Unions are the result of profit seekers. Unions are the way the average guy gets even with evil corporateers. The unions are godsends. The unions have a special status, because they represent the rising up of the average man against the evil corporateers and profiteers.
Behind the man is the Tree of Life, bearing twelve fruits, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is behind the woman; the serpent is twining round it.
Many have puzzled themselves about the origin of evil. I am content to observe that there is evil, and that there is a way to escape from it, and with this I begin and end.
The problem was the journalists who also did not understand much of my music, but they wrote about it. I think you fell into the usual trap laid out by parts of the press and other writers: that the poor musician has always to fight the evil companies and managers.
Krishna children were taught that in the spiritual world there were no parents, only souls and hence this justified their being kept out of view from others, cloistered in separate buildings and sheltered from the evil material world.
I didn’t have evil intentions, but I guess I did have power.
Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.
I don’t think Obama’s a socialist or evil, I just think he’s wrong and I disagree with him, he’s a leftist, that’s what they are in France and in Great Britain and in Canada.
The act of exploring what the men are, and moreover the separation of the good from the evil, is visitation; and the good are then removed, and the evil are left behind.
I think that generally music should be a positive thing, I like Bob Marley’s attitude: he said that his goal in life was to single handedly fight all the evil in the world with nothing but music, and when he went to a place he didn’t go to play, he went to conquer.
Evil is whatever distracts.
There are things I take sides about, like capital punishment, which it seems to me there is only one side about: it is evil. But there are two or three sides to sexual harassment, and the moment you get into particular cases, there is injustice in every conceivable direction. It’s a mess.
When men don’t fear God, they give themselves to evil.
He who busies himself with things other than improvement of his own self becomes perplexed in darkness and entangled in ruin. His evil spirits immerse him deep in vices and make his bad actions seem handsome.
All punishment is mischief; all punishment in itself is evil.
It’s better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a terrific cost.
The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil.
We’re at war against the ultimate evil in the world, and We’re going to win.
Most people think companies are basically evil. They get a bad rap. And I think that’s somewhat correct.
If you think only of evil, then you become pessimistic and hopeless like Freud. But if you think there is no evil, then you’re just one more deluded Pollyanna.
I believe you can make forces of good and evil work for you, to get what you want.
There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.
No intelligent man believes that anybody ever willingly errs or willingly does base and evil deeds; they are well aware that all who do base and evil things do them unwillingly.
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.
I spent my first three weeks there on a wing with 21 murderers. I met some very evil people there but also some men who’d had no upbringing, no chance in life.
He who gives away shall have real gain. He who subdues himself shall be free; he shall cease to be a slave of passions. The righteous man casts off evil, and by rooting out lust, bitterness, and illusion do we reach Nirvana.
Guns are evil! And very little good comes from the availability of a bullet designed to kill human beings!
I profess accurately to describe native Africa – Africa in those places where it has not received the slightest impulse, whether for good or evil, from European civilisation.
Property is not the sacred right. When a rich man becomes poor it is a misfortune, it is not a moral evil. When a poor man becomes destitute, it is a moral evil, teeming with consequences and injurious to society and morality.
Passivity is a tacit endorsement of evil we are too afraid to oppose actively.
I lift my voice of warning against praising or flattering your ministers. I have seen the evil, the dreadful evil, of praising ministers. Never, never speak a word in the praise of ministers to their faces. Exalt God.
Being a hooker does not mean being evil. The same with a pick-pocket, or even a thief. You do what you do out of necessity.
To be free from evil thoughts is God’s best gift.
At the same time we are aware that our various religions and ethical traditions often offer very different bases for what is helpful and what is unhelpful for men and women, what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil.
Wisdom is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to choose between the two.
A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.
It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.
To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.
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.
The state of Michigan going to Trump was an amazing thing. Of course the fake news media was shocked; they never considered that white working class residents of Michigan may not like being called evil racists clinging to guns and Bibles.
Whatever diminishes life is evil, and whatever enhances life is good.
This is the way of peace: Overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth, and hatred with love.
Evil is always devising more corrosive misery through man’s restless need to exact revenge out of his hate.
See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil… I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life.
I’m actually an evil bastard in real life. Fark allows me to vent weirdness. Thank god for that, too.
We often represent God to ourselves as being able to draw from non-being a world without sorrows, faults, dangers – a world in which there is no damage, no breakage. This is a conceptual fantasy and makes it impossible to solve the problem of evil.
I believe the root of all evil is abuse of power.
Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
But he is unworthy the name of a minister of the gospel of peace, who is unwilling, not only to have his name cast out as evil, but also to die for the truths of the Lord Jesus.
We take nothing to the grave with us, but a good or evil conscience… It is true, terrors of conscience cast us down; and yet without terrors of conscience we cannot be raised up again.
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.
Now that we have a democracy and you can go back and the airport air is not laden with evil any more, you can actually breathe oxygen when you land in Johannesburg.
Whatever evil a man may think of women, there is no woman but thinks more.
As the culture war is about irreconcilable beliefs about God and man, right and wrong, good and evil, and is at root a religious war, it will be with us so long as men are free to act on their beliefs.
No one who errs unwillingly is evil.
Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art.
We are victims of evil customs. It is a crime against humanity that our women are shut up within the four walls of the houses as prisoners. There is no sanction anywhere for the deplorable condition in which our women have to live.
When the soul, through its own fault… becomes rooted in a pool of pitch-black, evil smelling water, it produces nothing but misery and filth.
Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.
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.
Every form, not being the whole, must, of necessity, be imperfect; less than the whole, it cannot be identical with the whole, and being less than the whole and, therefore, imperfect by itself, it shows imperfection as evil, and only the totality of a universe can mirror the image of God.
January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer’s forehead.
There’s nothing wrong or evil about having a bad day. There’s everything wrong with making others have to have it… with you.
Religion and education are no match for evil without the grace of God.
Don’t speak evil of someone if you don’t know for certain, and if you do know ask yourself, why am I telling it?
All human beings are commingled out of good and evil.
I am a Christian; God sent me to fight evil for my people. Jesus was a revolutionist; so am I.
I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.
Faith makes all evil good to us, and all good better; unbelief makes all good evil, and all evil worse. Faith laughs at the shaking of the spear; unbelief trembles at the shaking of a leaf.
I fear no man, no beast or evil, brother.
Incendiary capitalism is carrying its out evil works more dangerously than ever, and is doing so in the increasingly dangerous neighborhood of the powder kegs that are the great European military powers.
In the early 1940s, as a young teenager, I was utterly appalled by the racist and jingoist hysteria of the anti-Japanese propaganda. The Germans were evil, but treated with some respect: They were, after all, blond Aryan types, just like our imaginary self-image. Japanese were mere vermin, to be crushed like ants.
A man prone to suspect evil is mostly looking in his neighbor for what he sees in himself.
The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual – for it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.
Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.
Bush sees the evil as out there in the wider world, residing in people who ‘hate freedom’. Look at his immediate response to the pictures of prisoner abuse; this is not what Americans do, these are not our values.
If there was no moral evil upon earth, there would be no physical evil.
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.
To understand the Left, one must understand that in its view the greatest evil is material inequality. The Left is more troubled by economic inequality than by evil as humanity has generally understood the term.
Verily, we know not what an evil it is to indulge ourselves, and to make an idol of our will.
You have to go to what the essence of what Pennywise is about – the dark power of adulthood. It’s not coincidence all the grown-ups in town are evil. This is not a story about a monster. It’s a story about the end of childhood.
