Evil Quotes

“Because the horror of Communism, Stalinism, is not that bad people do bad things — they always do. It's that good people do horrible things thinking they are doing something great."

[Six Questions for Slavoj Žižek, Harper's Magazine, November 11, 2011]”
― Slavoj Žižek

“I am so tired of waiting.
Aren’t you,
for the world to become good
and beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
and cut the world in two—
and see what worms are eating
at the rind.”
― Langston Hughes, Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings

“A lie doesn't become truth, wrong doesn't become right, and evil doesn't become good, just because it's accepted by a majority.”
― Booker T. Washington

“Lucifer spoke thus. Pride took him from heaven, though he sat at God's right hand.' Her voice grew faint, the hint of a whisper. 'In the end pride is the only evil, the root of all sins.'
'Pride is all I have.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“There is no father,’ he said eventually, ‘And I believe you’re running away from something. You’re a lovely woman trying to hold it all together but it’s too much for you. You think I’m a stupid old man who doesn’t care what he looks like and sits here day after day with nothing to do. And doesn’t notice anything. But you don’t know what’s here inside …’ he laid his arm across his chest, ‘My soul and my heart and my mind. There is so much in here it’s bursting and roving around the world like a lost soul with no home, endlessly looking and searching. I feel the mystery, I sense the mysteries – and the endless joy and the wonder and incredible beauty of the world and the pain and the cruelty. You feel all this too Sarah, but you pretend you’re a shallow woman with some sort of story, and underneath you think about … many things. Which of my books are you itching to get your hands on, huh? And you’re carrying the pain around with you, and something has just happened, and you are worried and, something has happened in the last few minutes and it’s all more than you can bear, and you need to tell me, yes me, Samuel. I am so much more than you think I am, and I can understand, and I can help.’ Ruby looked up startled and their eyes met. ‘I am so tired,’ she said, ‘Yes, you are right. I am so very tired of it all.' ”
― Elizabeth Tebby Germaine, A MAN WHO SEEMED REAL: A story of love, lies, fear and kindness

“There are only two forces at work in this world- black and white. Only people are grey.”
― Chris Heimerdinger, Gadiantons and the Silver Sword

“The tyrant is a child of Pride
Who drinks from his sickening cup
Recklessness and vanity,
Until from his high crest headlong
He plummets to the dust of hope.”
― Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

“All evil is good become cancerous.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Playing the victim role: Manipulator portrays him- or herself as a victim of circumstance or of someone else's behavior in order to gain pity, sympathy or evoke compassion and thereby get something from another. Caring and conscientious people cannot stand to see anyone suffering and the manipulator often finds it easy to play on sympathy to get cooperation.”
― George K. Simon Jr., In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing With Manipulative People

“I think it is our nature to believe evil always has an ugly face,” he said, ignoring my question. “Beauty is supposed to be good and kind, and to discover it otherwise is like a betrayal of trust. A violation of the nature of things.”
― Danielle L. Jensen , Stolen Songbird

“Humanity is not perfect in any fashion; no more in the case of evil than in that of good. The criminal has his virtues, just as the honest man has his weaknesses.”
― Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses

“There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.”
― Ayn Rand

“Hope always comes after evil has done its work. We cannot keep living on hope, though. (Box of Pandora)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“It is your karma to fight evil. It doesn't matter if the people that evil is being committed against don't fight back. It doesn't matter if the entire world chooses to look the other way. Always remember this. You don't live with the consequences of other people's karma. You live with the consequences of your own”
― Amish Tripathi, The Secret of the Nagas

“Dan, I'm not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago.”
― Alan Moore, Watchmen

“How often the priest had heard the same confession--Man was so limited: he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died: the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater the glory lay around the death; it was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or civilization--it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.”
― Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory

“When you start with a necessary evil, and then over time the necessity passes away, what's left?”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“Was I starting to feel evil? Yes, now I was worrying I'd be turned to the dark side by too much crochet.”
― Naomi Novik, A Deadly Education

“There's only one great evil in the world today. Despair.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies

“I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught - in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too - in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“We must not be frightened nor cajoled
into accepting evil as deliverance from evil.
We must go on struggling to be human,
though monsters of abstraction
police and threaten us.

Reclaim now, now renew the vision of
a human world where godliness
is possible and man
is neither gook nigger honkey wop nor kike

but man

permitted to be man.”
― Robert Hayden, Collected Poems

“...In books there's always somebody standing by ready to say hey, the world's in danger, evil's on the rise, but if you're really quick and take this ring and put it in that volcano over there everything will be fine.

"But in real life that guy never turns up. He's never there. He's busy handing out advice in the next universe over. In our world no one ever knows what to do, and everyone's just as clueless and full of crap as everyone else, and you have to figure it all out by yourself. And even after you've figured it out and done it, you'll never know whether you were right or wrong. You'll never know if you put the ring in the right volcano, or if things might have gone better if you hadn't. There's no answers in the back of the book.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land

“Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“The addiction to our mobiles may insidiously unlock evil actions by helplessly surrendering to the plague of blatant indifference, arrogant inattention, and flighty bee-lining and sophisticated acts of revenge. Smartphones may unstitch positive points in our lives and incidentally enchant us by instant selfies but, with some, they might inexorably trigger off shabby and despicable practices. ("Even if the world goes down, my mobile will save me" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Monsters don’t exist. It’s men you should be afraid of, not monsters.”
― Niccolò Ammaniti, I'm Not Scared

“Evil is the moment when I lack the strength to be true to the Good that compels me.”
― Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil

“I believe in good and evil," said Jem. "And I believe the soul is eternal. But I don't believe in the fiery pit, the pitchforks, or endless torment. I do not believe you can threaten people into goodness.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

“You or I might think that at least one would show courage and put up a fight. But neither you nor I have suffered as they, and even we have born witness in silence to lesser ills under less dire threat. Yet, in the face of evil, to sit silent is an even greater evil. Complacency is ever the enabler of darkest deeds;”
― Robert Fanney

“Everytime you do a Good Deed with true intention, your soul grows purer.”
― Soman Chainani, The School for Good and Evil

“Crooked Warden, I will fear no darkness for the night is yours," muttered Locke, pointing the first two fingers of his left hand into the darkness. The Dagger of the Thirteenth, a thief's gesture against evil. "Your night is my cloak, my shield, my escape from those who hunt to feed the noose. I will fear no evil, for you have made the night my friend."

"Bless the Benefactor," said Jean, squeezing Locke's left forearm. "Peace and profit to his children.”
― Scott Lynch, Red Seas Under Red Skies