209 Evil Quotes

A callous disregard for the claims of innocent human life is the heart and soul of the evil of terrorism.

Lucifer also has died with God, and from his ashes has arisen a spiteful demon who does not even understand the object of his venture.

People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don't know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.

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

Delacroix, Wagner, Baudelaire - all great theorists, bent on dominating other minds by sensuous means. Their one dream was to create the irresistible effect - to intoxicate, or overwhelm. They looked to analysis to provide them with the keyboard on which to play, with certainty, on man's emotions, and they sought in abstract meditation they key to sure and certain action upon their subject - man's nervous and psychic being.

When are we going to stop making excuses for the terrorists and saying that somebody is making them do it? No, these are simply evil people who want to kill.

Whoever originated the cliche that money is the root of all evil knew hardly anything about the nature of evil and very little about human beings.

The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil. The animal wrests the whip from its master and whips itself in order to become master, not knowing that this is only a fantasy produced by a new knot in the master's whiplash.

There can be knowledge of the diabolical, but no belief in it, for more of the diabolical than there is does not exist.

We have become too civilized to grasp the obvious. For the truth is very simple. To survive you often have to fight, and to fight you have to dirty yourself. War is evil, and it is often the lesser evil. Those who take the sword perish by the sword, and those who don't take the sword perish by smelly diseases.

Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat.

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.

Even in art, there is no light without shadows, and no shadows are cast without some light. Even the shadow of Adolf Hitler is accompanied by some light.

Imagine that leader of all the enemy, in that great plain of Babylon, sitting on a sort of throne of smoking flame, a horrible and terrifying sight. Watch him calling together countless devils, to despatch them into different cities till the whole world is covered, forgetting no province or locality, no class or single individual.

It seems we are capable of immense love and loyalty, and as capable of deceit and atrocity. It's probably this shocking ambivalence that makes us unique.

How well I have learned that there is no fence to sit on between heaven and hell. There is a deep, wide gulf, a chasm, and in that chasm is no place for any man.

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.

Nothing helps you sleep at night so much as being absolutely certain that you're right, and everyone else is evil.

No evil can result from its inhibition more pernicious than its toleration.

The evils which sapped the nation's strength had all been wrought in the name of religion.

Alas for him who seeks salvation in good only! Balanced on God's strong shoulders, Good and Evil flap together like two mighty wings and lift him high.

It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them.

It is the downfall of evil, that it never sees far enough ahead.

All things may corrupt when minds are prone to evil.

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

God is not the author of all things, but of good only.

Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil.

The question why there is evil in existence is the same as why there is imperfection... But this is the real question we ought to ask: Is this imperfection the final truth, is evil absolute and ultimate?

Truth cannot afford to be tolerant where it faces positive evil.

The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape our history.

The oppressive weight of disaster and tragedy in our lives does not arise from a high percentage of evil among the summed total of all acts, but from the extraordinary power of exceedingly rare incidents of depravity to inflict catastrophic damage, especially in our technological age when airplanes can become powerful bombs. (An even more evil man, armed only with a longbow, could not have wreaked such havoc at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.)

Every action that helps us manifest our divine nature more and more is good; every action that retards it is evil.

I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of 'Admin.' The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.

Of course a war is entertaining. The immediate fear and suffering of the humans is a legitimate and pleasing refreshment for our myriads of toiling workers. But what permanent good does it do us unless we make use of it for bringing souls to Our Father Below? When I see the temporal suffering of humans who finally escape us, I feel as if I had been allowed to taste the first course of a rich banquet and then denied all the rest. It is worse than not to have tasted it at all. The Enemy, true to His barbarous methods of warfare, allows us to see the short misery of His favourites only to tantalize and torment us - to mock the incessant hunger, which, during this present phase of great conflict, His blockade is admittedly imposing.

Badness is only spoiled goodness.

The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.

For me, the scariest thing about a serial killer is that there's somebody who lives next door to you, running power tools late into the night, and you don't know he has a refrigerator full of penises.

God's power is infinite. Whatever he wills is executed. But neither man, nor any other animal, is happy. Therefore he does not will their happiness. Epicurus' old questions are yet unanswered. Is God willing to prevent evil, but unable? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?

A person who knows all that is good and all that is true---as much as can be known---but does not resist evils, knows nothing.

Und nichts Boses wachst mehr furderhin aus dir, es sei denn das Bose, das aus dem Kampfe deiner Tugenden wachst. Mein Bruder, wenn du Gluck hast, so hast du Eine Tugend und nicht mehr: so gehst du leichter uber die Brucke.

Was aus Liebe getan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von Gut und Bose.

A murderer is regarded by the conventional world as something almost monstrous, but a murderer to himself is only an ordinary man.... It is only if the murderer is a good man that he can be regarded as monstrous.

The fundamental evil of the world arose from the fact that the good Lord has not created money enough.

He worked anonymously, and he has left hardly a trace behind. We find his signature on orders authorising the most atrocious deeds. We glimpse him once or twice in action, and are surprised to discover that this man without a shadow, this office bureaucrat, could walk about and use a gun. But we know nothing about him, neither where he came from nor where he went. Even his subordinate, Eichmann, the murderer of the Jews, who never on any account put his signature to a document, left behind friends and acquaintances who have given us vivid glimpses of the man. Mueller left nobody. We see him lunching at the Adlon Hotel with Heydrich, Nebe, Schellenberg, later with Kaltenbrunner. They are all dead. Even Willy Hoettl, who has things to say about most people, can tell us nothing about Mueller.

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.

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.

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.

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.

The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason.

One shouldn't be afraid of the humans. Well, I am not afraid of the humans, but of what is inhuman in them.

For where God built a church, there the Devil would also build a chapel...Thus is the Devil ever God's ape.

Calling someone a monster does not make him more guilty; it makes him less so by classing him with beasts and devils.

We are much beholden to Machiavelli and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do . For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with the columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent; his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil. For without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced. Nay, an honest man can do no good upon those that are wicked, to reclaim them, without the help of the knowledge of evil.

The vilest deeds like poison weeds Bloom well in prison air; It is only what is good in man That wastes and withers there; Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate And the Warder is Despair.

I would have left all the Jews in Germany, but put them on an alien status, under alien law, and naturally closed them out of jobs like doctor or lawyer. But why execute them? In that way, strong Jewish influence would have been cast aside and there would be no need for atrocities. Whenever we would have discussions in our own circle, I would mention my solution, whereupon Himmler would say to me, 'Pohl, you are too soft.' Therefore, I did my best to keep out of the whole final solution of the Jewish problem.

Bubbles! Oh come on Sharon! I'm fucking Ozzy Osbourne, I'm the Prince of fucking Darkness. Evil! Evil! What's fucking evil about a shitload of bubbles!?

When good people in any country cease their vigilance and struggle, then evil men prevail.

He who is bent on doing evil can never want occasion.

Without religion you have good people doing good things, and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion. (Quoting Steven Weinberg)

He is called an optimist; but the word suggests a calculated contentment which was not in the least one of his vices. What he really was was a romantic. He offered the cosmos as an adventure rather than a scheme. He did not explain evil, far less explain it away: he enjoyed defying it. He was a troubadour even in theology and metaphysics: like the Jongleurs de Dieu of St. Francis. He may be said to have serenaded heaven with a guitar, and even, so to speak, tried to climb there with a rope ladder.

The snake stood up for evil in the Garden.

He was a man Who stole the livery of the court of Heaven To serve the Devil in.

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.

The devil's voice is sweet to hear.

I think it's relatively easy for people to accept something like telepathy or precognition or teleplasm because their willingness to believe doesn't cost them anything. It doesn't keep them awake nights. But the idea that the evil that men do lives after them is unsettling.

He felt as if Stillson might have taken the game of the Laughing Tiger a step further: inside the beast-skin, a man, yes. But inside the man-skin, a beast.

Something inhuman has come to Tarker's Mills, as unseen as the full moon riding the night sky high above. It is the Werewolf, and there is no more reason for its coming now than there would be for the arrival of cancer, or a psychotic with murder on his mind, or a killer tornado. Its time is now, its place is here, in this little Maine town where baked bean church suppers are a weekly event, where small boys and girls still bring apples to their teachers, where the Nature Outings of the Senior Citizen's Club are religiously reported in the weekly paper. Next week there will be news of a darker variety. Outside, its tracks begin to fill up with snow, and the shriek of the wind seems savage with pleasure. There is nothing of God or Light in that heartless sound-it is all black winter and dark ice. The cycle of the Werewolf has begun.

It's better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a terrific cost.

Dieu s'est fait homme; soit. Le diable s'est fait femme!

In order to enjoy the inestimable benefits that the liberty of the press ensures, it is necessary to submit to the inevitable evils it creates:

...no bloody or unbloody change of society can eradicate the evil in man: as long as there will be men, there will be malice, envy and hatred, and hence there cannot be a society which does not have to employ coercive restraint.