Evil

"Man needs a certain moral sense of right and wrong. There is such a thing called evil, and it is not the result of being a victim of society. You are just an evil man, prone to do evil things, and you have to be stopped from doing them."

"There was an evil in Pandora's box Beyond all other ones, yet it came forth In guise so lovely, that men crowded round And sought it as the dearest of all treasure."

"He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done."

"It is the evil that lies in ourselves that is ever least tolerant of the evil that lies in others."

"Evil has nothing in common with life; it cannot create, since its power is purely negative. Evil is the schism of being; it is not true."

"He thought of the jungle, already regrowing around him to cover the scars they had created. He thought of the tiger, killing to eat. Was that evil? And ants? They killed. No, the jungle wasn't evil. It was indifferent. So, too, was the world. Evil, then, must be the negation of something man had added to the world. Ultimately, it was caring about something that made the world liable to evil. Caring. And then the caring gets torn asunder. Everybody dies, but not everybody cares.It occurred to Mellas that he could create the possibility of good or evil through caring. He could nullify the indifferent world. But in so doing he opened himself up to the pain of watching it get blown away. His killing that day would not have been evil if the dead soldiers hadn't been loved by mothers, sisters, friends, wives. Mellas understood that in destroying the fabric that linked those people, he had participated in evil, but this evil had hurt him as well. He also understood that his participation in evil, was a result of being human. Being human was the best he could do. Without man there would be no evil. But there was also no good, nothing moral built over the world of fact. Humans were responsible for it all. He laughed at the cosmic joke, but he felt heartsick."

"The ultimate error is the refusal to look evil in the face."

"EVIL. That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake."

"The whole Christian system, like every other similar system, goes to pieces upon the problem of evil. Its most adept theologians, attempting to reconcile the Heavenly Father of their theory with the dreadful agonies of man in His world, can only retreat behind Chrysostom's despairing maxim that "a comprehended God is no God.""

"He that has light within his own cleer brest May sit i'th center, and enjoy bright day, But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts Benighted walks under the mid-day Sun; Himself is his own dungeon."

"Because we have sought to cover up past evil, though it still persists, we have been powerless to check the new evil of today. Evil unchecked grows, Evil tolerated poisons the whole system. And because we have tolerated our past and present evils, international affairs are poisoned and law and justice have disappeared from them."

"Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein."

"Jamais on ne fait le mal si pleinement et si gaiement que quand on le fait par conscience."

"Of two evils I have chosen the least."

"I spent, I probably spent my whole life to understand what evil was, and more importantly, what can be done about it. It is strange pursuit in some ways for an academic, because academics talk about academic things. One thing you can say about evil is that whatever it is, it is not bloody well academic. It is not an intellectual issue, it is an existential issue. And, it is not an theoretical issue, it is an issue that deals with absolute nature of reality. And I guess sometimes I think that people would go in academia to shield themselves from having to ask questions about absolute nature of reality."

"We are fascinated by evil. We watch dramatic representations of serial killers, psychopaths, and the kings of organized crime, gang members, rapists, contract killers, and spies. We voluntarily frighten and disgust ourselves with thrillers and horror films—and it is more than prurient curiosity."

"It will not be in accordance with your vain desires nor the vain desires of the People of the Book. Whoever does evil, will be requited for it and will not find for himself besides God a guardian nor a savior."

"And I do not acquit myself. Indeed, the soul is a persistent enjoiner of evil, except those upon which my Lord has mercy. Indeed, my Lord is Forgiving and Merciful.""

"The long run evil in the extreme will be the End of those who do evil; for that they rejected the Signs of God, and held them up to ridicule."

"And whatever (evil) misfortune befalls you, it is on account of what your hands have wrought and He pardons much. And you cannot escape in the earth, and besides God you have no protector nor helper."

"Is then he who has a clear argument from his Lord similar to him to whom his evil conduct is made fair-seeming; and they follow their low desires."

"Responding to evil A superior being does not render evil for evil, this is the maxim one should observe; the ornament of virtuous persons is their conduct. (...) A noble soul will ever exercise compassion even towards those who enjoy injuring others."

"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."

"...there is a perpetual struggle between manifested chaos and the unmanifested. It is the struggle of the Forces of Light with the dark forces. Christ Himself actively resisted evil... he drove the merchants from the Temple, and all his severe accusations against the scribes and Pharisees... If we try to read objectively the words... attributed to Christ, we shall see a Teaching which is severe in its mercy. Therefore, the words "resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek turn to him the other also... If this law of Karma, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," is inevitable and exact justice, it by no means follows that we ourselves, personally, should attempt to fulfil it in this way. If we do so, we shall never emerge from the magic circle of karma. Indeed, we must forgive our personal enemies, as who knows but that the blow one receives is a return blow, well-deserved under the law of Karma? By returning such a blow with another and with a feeling of revenge in our heart, we do not outlive this karma, but we continue and even intensify it in the worst way for ourselves. Moreover, by forgiving our enemies we decrease the amount of evil in space and become immune against many blows. Similarly, let us understand the words "Love thine enemies." However, with all this, we must resist evil, if we do not want to be entirely overwhelmed by it. (26 May 1934)"

"Now let us imagine the situation of Moses if he had not resisted evil and had allowed the worst and crudest elements to destroy the best—the one which was able to assimilate the ideas of morality and order. What would have happened to his task? His duty as a leader and an earthly lawgiver was to protect his people and to maintain order. Therefore, the resistance to evil was basically necessary. All teachings of antiquity declare active resistance to evil. Thus, the well-known sage and lawgiver of China, Confucius, used to say, "God for good, but for evil—justice.""

"Evil is not a political or scientific category. But, after Auschwitz, who could doubt that it exists, and that it manifested itself in the hate-driven genocide carried out by the Nazi regime? However, noting this fact does not permit us to circumvent our responsibility by blaming everything on a demonic Hitler. The evil manifested in the Nazi ideology was not without its precursors. There was a tradition behind the rise of this brutal ideology and the accompanying loss of moral inhibition. Above all, it needs to be said that the Nazi ideology was something that people supported at the time and that they took part in putting into effect."

"I happen to think that the singular evil of our time is prejudice. It is from this evil that all other evils grow and multiply. In almost everything I've written there is a thread of this: a man's seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself."

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows."

"False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil."

"The seeds of evil usually germinated in the footprints of people who knew how everybody else ought to behave and felt the need to tell them so."

"I believe in evil. It is the property of all those who are certain of truth. Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil."

"Evil comes from unchecked power."

"God’s permission of evil in the things governed by Him is not inconsistent with the divine goodness. For, in the first place, the function of providence is not to destroy but to save the nature of the beings governed. The perfection of the universe requires the existence of some beings that are not subject to evil, and of other beings that can suffer the defect of evil in keeping with their nature. If evil were completely eliminated from things, they would not be governed by divine providence in accord with their nature; and this would be a greater defect than the particular defects eradicted."

"(見ざる, 聞かざる, 言わざる?)"

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve."

"We don't want apartheid liberalized. We want it dismantled. You can't improve something that is intrinsically evil."

"When the Devil is too busy, and Death's a bit too much, they call on me by name you see, for my special touch."

"Between two evils, I generally like to pick the one I never tried before."

"By that which you call evil do you define yourself - and by that which you call good. The biggest evil would therefore be to declare nothing evil at all."

"In the mirrors of the many judgments, my hands are the color of blood. I sometimes fancy myself an evil which exists to oppose other evils; and on that great Day of which the prophets speak but in which they do not truly believe, on the day the world is utterly cleansed of evil, then I too will go down into darkness, swallowing curses. Until then, I will not wash my hands nor let them hang useless."

"The usual devastating put-downs imply that a person is basically bad, rather than that he is a person who sometimes does bad things. Obviously, there is a vast difference between a "bad" person and a person who does something bad. Besides, failure is an event, it is not a person — yesterday ended last night."

"Evil events from evil causes spring."

"Souvent la peur d'un mal nous conduit dans un pire."

"From envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness."

"The world, the flesh, and the devil."

"I have wrought great use out of evil tools."

"The authors of great evils know best how to remove them."

"Como el hacer mal viene de natural cosecha, fácilmente se aprende el hacerle."

"Ex malis eligere minima oportere."

"Omne malum nascens facile opprimitur; inveteratum fit pleurumque robustius."