Quotations about:
    evil


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Have no fear of robbers or murderers. They are external dangers, petty dangers. We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murderers. The great dangers are within us. Why worry about what threatens our heads or our purses? Let us think instead of what threatens our souls.

[Ne craignons jamais les voleurs ni les meurtriers. Ce sont là les dangers du dehors, les petits dangers. Craignons-nous nous-mêmes. Les préjugés, voilà les voleurs; les vices, voilà les meurtriers. Les grands dangers sont au dedans de nous. Qu’importe ce qui menace notre tête ou notre bourse! Ne songeons qu’à ce qui menace notre âme.]

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French writer
Les Misérables, Part 1 “Fantine,” Book 1 “An Upright Man,” ch. 7 (1.1.7) [Bp. Myriel] (1862) [tr. Wilbour/Fahnestock/MacAfee (1987)]
    (Source)

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

Have no fear of robbers or murderers. Such dangers are without, and are but petty. We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are teh real robbers; vices the real murderers. The great dangers are within us. What mater it what threatens our heads or our purses? Let us think only of what threatens our souls.
[tr. Wilbour (1862)]

Never let us fear robbers or murderers. These are external and small dangers; let us fear ourselves; prejudices are the real robbers, vices the true murderers. The great dangers are within ourselves. Let us not trouble about what threatens our head or purse, and only think of what threatens our soul.
[tr. Wraxall (1862)]

Let us never fear robbers nor murderers. Those are dangers from without, petty dangers. Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves. What matters it what threatens our head or our purse! Let us think only of that which threatens our soul.
[tr. Hapgood (1887)]

We must never fear robbers or murderers. They are dangers from outside, small dangers. It is ourselves we have to fear. Prejudice is the real robber, and vice the real murderer. Why should we be troubled by a threat to our person or our pocket? What we have to beware of is the threat to our souls.
[tr. Denny (1976)]

Never fear robbers or murderers. Thiose are dangers that come from without. Small dangers. Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers. Vices are the real murderers. The great dangers are within us. Never mind what endangers our life or our purse! Let's be mindful only of what endangers our soul.
[tr. Donougher (2013)]

 
Added on 9-Dec-24 | Last updated 9-Dec-24
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MALCOLM: Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.
Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,
Yet grace must still look so.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Macbeth, Act 4, sc. 3, l. 27ff (4.3.27-30) (1606)
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ALCESTE: Some men I hate for being rogues; the others
I hate because they treat the rogues like brothers,
And, lacking a virtuous scorn for what is vile,
Receive the villain with a complaisant smile.

 
[Je hais tous les hommes:
Les uns, parce qu’ils sont méchants et malfaisants,
Et les autres, pour être aux méchants complaisants,
Et n’avoir pas pour eux ces haines vigoureuses
Que doit donner le vice aux âmes vertueuses.]

Molière (1622-1673) French playwright, actor [stage name for Jean-Baptiste Poquelin]
Le Misanthrope, Act 1, sc. 1 (1666) [tr. Wilbur (1954)]
    (Source)

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

I hate all men: some, because they are wicked and mischievous; others because they lend themselves to the wicked, and have not that healthy contempt with which vice ought to inspire all virtuous minds.
[tr. Van Laun (1878)]

I hate all men -- some because they are wicked and mischievous, and others for being complaisant to -- the wicked, and not having that vigorous hatred for them which vice ought to excite in all virtuous minds.
[tr. Mathew (1890)]

I hate all men: some because they are wicked and evil-doers; others because they fawn upon the wicked, and dare not show that vigorous hatred which virtuous souls should feel to vice.
[tr. Wormeley (1894)]

I hate all men: some, because they are wicked and mischievous; others, because they are lenient towards the wicked, and have not that healthy contempt for them with which vice ought to inspire all honest souls.
[tr. Waller (1903)]

I hate all men:
A part, because they’re wicked and do evil;
The rest, because they fawn upon the wicked,
And fail to feel for them that healthy hatred
Which vice should always rouse in virtuous hearts.
[tr. Page (1913)]

I detest all men;
Some because they are wicked and do evil,
Others because they tolerate the wicked,
Refusing them the active, vigorous scorn
Which vice should stimulate in virtuous minds.
[tr. Bishop (1957)]

I hate all men:
For some are wholly bad in thought and deed;
The others, seeing this, pay little heed;
For they are too indulgent and too nice
To share the hate that virtue has for vice.
[tr. Frame (1967)]

 
Added on 5-Dec-24 | Last updated 5-Dec-24
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If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.
 
[Cette âme est pleine d’ombre, le péché s’y commet. Le coupable n’est pas celui qui y fait le péché, mais celui qui y a fait l’ombre.]

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French writer
Les Misérables, Part 1 “Fantine,” Book 1 “An Upright Man,” ch. 4 (1.1.4) [Bishop Myriel] (1862) [tr. Wilbour (1862)]
    (Source)

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

This soul is full of darkness, and sin is committed, but the guilty person is not the man who commits the sin, but he who produces the darkness.
[tr. Wraxall (1862)]

This soul is full of shadow; sin is therein committed. The guilty one is not the person who has committed the sin, but the person who has created the shadow.
[tr. Hapgood (1887)]

The soul in darkness sins, but the real sinner is he who caused the darkness.
[tr. Denny (1976)]

If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.
[tr. Wilbour/Fahnestock/MacAfee (1987)]

In any benighted soul -- that's where sin will be committed. It's not he who commits the sin that's to blame, but he who causes the darkness to prevail.
[tr. Donougher (2013)]

 
Added on 2-Dec-24 | Last updated 2-Dec-24
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ALCESTE: Finding on every hand base flattery,
Injustice, fraud, self-interest, treachery …
Ah, it’s too much; mankind has grown so base,
I mean to break with the whole human race.

[Je ne trouve partout que lâche flatterie,
Qu’injustice, intérêt, trahison, fourberie;
Je n’y puis plus tenir, j’enrage, et mon dessein
Est de rompre en visière à tout le genre humain.]

Molière (1622-1673) French playwright, actor [stage name for Jean-Baptiste Poquelin]
Le Misanthrope, Act 1, sc. 1 (1666) [tr. Wilbur (1954)]
    (Source)

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

Everywhere I find nothing but base flattery, in justice, self-interest, deceit, roguery. I cannot bear it any longer; I am furious; and my intention is to break with all mankind.
[tr. Van Laun (1878)]

I find nothing anywhere but base flattery, injustice, interest, treachery, and knavery. I can contain myself no longer; I am. in a rage, and my purpose is to break off all intercourse with all mankind.
[tr. Mathew (1890)]

Everywhere I find base flattery, injustice, self-interest, treachery, deceit. I cannot bear it any longer; I am enraged; and my intention is to tell the truth, henceforth, to all the human race.
[tr. Wormeley (1894)]

Nothing is to be seen anywhere but base flattery, injustice, self-interest, deceit, roguery. I cannot bear it any longer: I am furious: and it is my intention to break a lance with all mankind.
[tr. Waller (1903)]

There's nowhere aught but dastard flattery,
Injustice, treachery, selfishness, deceit;
I can't endure it, I go mad -- and mean
Squarely to break with all the human race.
[tr. Page (1913)]

All I see everywhere is flattery,
Injustice, treason, selfishness, deceit.
It makes me furious; I cannot stand it;
I will defy the entire human race.
[tr. Bishop (1957)]

Cowardly flattery is all I see,
Injustice, selfishness, fraud, treachery;
I've had my fill; it makes me mad; I plan
To clash head-on with the whole race of man.
[tr. Frame (1967)]

 
Added on 26-Nov-24 | Last updated 26-Nov-24
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Courage, intellect, all the masterful qualities, serve but to make a man more evil if they are used merely for that man’s own advancement, with brutal indifference to the rights of others. It speaks ill for the community if the community worships these qualities and treats their possessors as heroes regardless of whether the qualities are used rightly or wrongly.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Speech (1910-04-23), “Citizenship in a Republic [The Man in the Arena],” Sorbonne, Paris
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SECOND WITCH: By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Macbeth, Act 4, sc. 1, l. 44ff (4.1.44-45) (1606)
    (Source)

Often misquoted as "prickling."
 
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If the man works for evil, then the more successful he is the more he should be despised and condemned by all upright and farseeing men. To judge a man merely by success is an abhorrent wrong; and if the people at large habitually so judge men, if they grow to condone wickedness because the wicked man triumphs, they show their inability to understand that in the last analysis free institutions rest upon the character of citizenship, and that by such admiration of evil they prove themselves unfit for liberty.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Speech (1910-04-23), “Citizenship in a Republic [The Man in the Arena],” Sorbonne, Paris
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Added on 24-Oct-24 | Last updated 24-Oct-24
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MACBETH:Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Macbeth, Act 1, sc. 4, l. 57ff (1.4.57-58) (1606)
 
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Play not about the utmost Limits of Good; thou’lt be apt to skip over into Evil.

Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Introductio ad Prudentiam, Vol. 1, # 390 (1725)
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BANQUO: And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray ’s
In deepest consequence.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Macbeth, Act 1, sc. 3, l. 135ff (1.3.135-138) (1606)
    (Source)

Speaking to Macbeth of the Weïrd Sisters (witches).
 
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Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.

The Bible (The Old Testament) (14th - 2nd C BC) Judeo-Christian sacred scripture [Tanakh, Hebrew Bible], incl. the Apocrypha (Deuterocanonicals)
Daniel 12:4 [KJV (1611)]
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The Old Greek version of the Septuagint uses a word that translated out to "evil" or "wickedness" or "injustice". Later versions, particularly Theodotian's favored translation, used "knowledge" (Hebrew הַדָּֽעַת or Greek γνῶσις) [notes 1, 2, 3, 4].

Quoted by Francis Bacon as an epigraph on the frontispiece of his Instauratio Magna [The Great Instauration] (1620), in both English (as the King James Version) and Latin: "Multi pertransibunt & augebitur scientia."

Alternate translations:

Many will wander this way and that, and wickedness will go on increasing.
[JB (1966)]

Meanwhile, many people will waste their efforts trying to understand what is happening.
[GNT (1976)]

Many will roam about, this way and that, and wickedness will continue to increase.
[NJB (1985)]

Many will stray far, but knowledge will increase.
[CEB (2011)]

Many shall be running back and forth, and evil shall increase.
[NRSV (2021 ed.)]

Many will range far and wide and knowledge will increase.
[RJPS (2023 ed.)]

 
Added on 25-Jul-24 | Last updated 25-Jul-24
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There are depths in man that go the length of lowest Hell, as there are heights that reach highest Heaven; — for are not both Heaven and Hell made out of him, made by him, everlasting Miracle and Mystery as he is?

Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
The French Revolution: A History, Part 3, Book 1, ch. 4 (3.1.4) (1837)
    (Source)

Regarding the events of 2 September 1792, and the Commune-ordered massacres of prisoners in the Paris prisons.

This passage was popularized in a slightly paraphrased form in Tryon Edwards, ed., A Dictionary of Thoughts (1891):

There are depths in man that go to the lowest hell, and heights that reach the highest heaven, for are not both heaven and hell made out of him, everlasting miracle and mystery that he is.

The Edwards version was, in turn, quoted by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Detroit sermon "The Christian Doctrine of Man" (1958-02-12).
 
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Much less evil would be done on earth if evil could not be done in the name of good.

[Es würde sehr wenig Böses auf Erden getan werden, wenn das Böse niemals im Namen des Guten getan werden könnte.]

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916) Austrian writer
Aphorisms [Aphorismen], No. 97 (1880) [tr. Scrase/Mieder (1994)]
    (Source)

(Source (German)). Alternate translation:

But little evil would be done in the world if evil could never be done in the name of good.
[tr. Wister (1883)]

 
Added on 11-Jul-24 | Last updated 11-Jul-24
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I said to God, “What are they doing?”
God said, “Making pitfalls into which their fellows may sink.”
I said to God, “Why do they do it?”
God said, “Because each thinks that when his brother falls he will rise.”

olive schreiner
Olive Schreiner (1855-1920) South African author, political activist, intellectual, freethinker
“The Sunlight Lay Across My Bed,” Dreams (1890)
    (Source)

Describing Hell.
 
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“Just once more” is the Devil’s best argument.

helen rowland
Helen Rowland (1875-1950) American journalist and humorist
Reflections of a Bachelor Girl (1909)
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The true rule, in determining to embrace, or reject any thing, is not whether it have any evil in it; but whether it have more of evil, than of good. There are few things wholly evil, or wholly good. Almost every thing, especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Speech (1848-06-20), On Internal Improvements, US House of Representatives
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What pleasures habitual wrongdoing provides for men without principle or sense of shame, when they have escaped punishment and found themselves given a free hand!

[O consuetudo peccandi, quantam habes iucunditatem improbis et audacibus, cum poena afuit et licentia consecuta est!]

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
In Verrem [Against Verres; Verrine Orations], Action 2, Book 3, ch. 76 / sec. 176 (2.3.76.176) (70 BC) [tr. Greenwood (1928)]
    (Source)

(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:

O you habit of sinning, what delight you afford to the wicked and the audacious, when chastisement is afar off, and when impunity attends you!
[tr. Yonge (1903)]

Alas, the habit of evil-doing! what pleasure it affords to the depraved and the shameless, when punishment is in abeyance, and has been replaced by license.
[Source (1906)]

 
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So, yes, Raymond, I do believe in evil. But the only evil I’ve seen, the only evil I believe in, wears a human face. I don’t know whether or not there’s a hell somewhere else, but I have seen an awful lot of people trying to create a homemade version right here.

J. Michael (Joe) Straczynski (b. 1954) American screenwriter, producer, author [a/k/a "JMS"]
Tribulations, “A Quiet Guy” [Susan Randall] (2005)
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Added on 27-May-24 | Last updated 13-May-24
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Men can be unjust, because it is in their interest to act so, and they prefer their own satisfaction to that of others. They always act with themselves in mind. No one is gratuitously wicked; there must be a determining cause, and it is always one of self-interest.

[Les hommes peuvent faire des injustices, parce qu’ils ont intérêt de les commettre et qu’ils préfèrent leur propre satisfaction à celle des autres. C’est toujours par un retour sur eux-mêmes qu’ils agissent: nul n’est mauvais gratuitement; il faut qu’il y ait une raison qui détermine, et cette raison est toujours une raison d’intérêt.]

Charles-Lewis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) French political philosopher
Persian Letters [Lettres Persanes], Letter 84, Usbek to Rhédi (1721) [tr. Healy (1964), # 83]

Montesquieu's argues that an omnipotent God must be just, because God has no interest that cannot be satisfied through injustice.

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

Men may commit injustice, because it is in their interest to do it, and they chuse rather to satisfy themselves and others. It is always with an eye to themselves that they act: no body is wicked gratis: he will have some reason to sway him; and that reason is always a reason of interest.
[tr. Ozell (1760 ed.)]

Men may do injustice, because it is in their interest to commit it, and because they prefer their own private satisfaction to that of others. It is always with a view to themselves that they act: nobody is wicked for nothing: he must have some reason that determines himl and this reason is always a reason of interest.
[tr. Floyd (1762), # 83]

Men act unjustly, because it is their interest to do so, and because they prefer their own satisfaction to that of others. They act always to secure some advantage to themselves: no one is a villain gratis; there is always a determining motive, and that motive is always an interested one.
[tr. Davidson (1891)]

Men act unjustly, because it is their interest to do so, and they prefer their own satisfaction to that of others. In acting they always have in view the effect their action will have on themselves: no one is bad for nothing; every one must have a determining motive, and that motive is self-interest.
[tr. Betts (1897)]

Men can commit injustices, because it is in their interest to do so, and they would rather satisfy themselves than others. It is always through thinking of themselves that they act unjustly; no one is gratuitously bad, there must be a reason which determines the act, and that reason is invariably one of self-interest.
[tr. Mauldon (2008)]

Men are capable of injustice, because their self-interest leads them toward it, and because they prefer their own satisfaction to that of others. Everything always revolves around themselves. No evil is ever done gratuitously, for there is always a reason behind it, and that reason is always one of self-interest.
[tr. MacKenzie (2014), # 83]

 
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CLAUDIO: O, what authority and show of truth
Can cunning sin cover itself withal!

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Much Ado About Nothing, Act 4, sc. 1, l. 35ff (4.1.35-36) (1598)
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This man through all his new life, fresh and young,
in virtual power was one who might have proved,
in all of his behaviour, wonderful.
Yet there, on earth, the richer soil may be,
the more — untilled or sown with evil seed —
its vigour turns to wilderness and bane.

[Questi fu tal ne la sua vita nova
virtüalmente, ch’ogne abito destro
fatto averebbe in lui mirabil prova.
Ma tanto più maligno e più silvestro
si fa ’l terren col mal seme e non cólto,
quant’elli ha più di buon vigor terrestro.]

Dante Alighieri the poet
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) Italian poet
The Divine Comedy [Divina Commedia], Book 2 “Purgatorio,” Canto 30, l. 115ff (3.115-120) [Beatrice] (1314) [tr. Kirkpatrick (2007)]
    (Source)

Beatrice, speaking of Dante.

(Source (Italian)). Alternate translations:

Such genuine worth adorn'd his early days,
That each prolific stem of heav'nly Grace
In that rich Mould a genuine footing found:
But, oh! the rankest soil but serves to feed
The plant of juice malign, and noxious weed.
If Culture's hand neglect the hapless ground.
[tr. Boyd (1802), st. 26]

This man
Was in the freshness of his being, such,
So gifted virtually, that in him
All better habits wond’rously had thriv’d.
The more of kindly strength is in the soil,
So much doth evil seed and lack of culture
Mar it the more, and make it run to wildness.
[tr. Cary (1814)]

This man was such, in his new being found,
Of virtuous kind, that every nobler way
In him gave proof of wonderful essay;
So much the more malignant, wild the soil
Of earth with evil seed, untilled with toil,
The more good vigour and terrestrial oil.
[tr. Bannerman (1850)]

Such had this man become in his new life
Potentially, that every righteous habit
Would have made admirable proof in him;
But so much more malignant and more savage
Becomes the land untilled and with bad seed,
The more good earthly vigour it possesses.
[tr. Longfellow (1867)]

This man was such in his new life, potentially, that every right habit would have wrought in him a wondrous result. But all the more malign and the more wild becomes the ground with bad seed and uncultivated, in proportion as it has from the soil more of good force.
[tr. Butler (1885)]

This one was such in new life's opening hour
Fitted for good, that every virtuous growth
Had made in him miraculous proof of power.
But so much more malign and tangled groweth,
With poisonous wilding seeds, the uncultured sward,
As of terrestrial strength the more it show.
[tr. Minchin (1885)]

This man was such in his new life, virtually, that every right habit would have made admirable proof in him. But so much the more malign and more savage becomes the land ill-sown and untilled, as it has more of good terrestrial vigor.
[tr. Norton (1892)]

This man was such in his new life potentially, that every good talent would have made wondrous increase in him.
But so much the more rank and wild the ground becomes with evil seed and untilled, the more it hath of good strength of soil.
[tr. Okey (1901)]

This man in his early life was such potentially that every right disposition would have come to marvelous proof in him; but so much the more noxious and wild the ground becomes, with bad seed and untilled, as it has more good strength of soil.
[tr. Sinclair (1939)]

This man was such in natural potency,
In his new life, that all the ingrained good
Looked in him to have fruited wonderously.
But so much groweth the more rank and rude
The soil with bad seed and unhusbanded,
The more it hath from earth of hardihood.
[tr. Binyon (1943)]

[...] had so endowed this man, potentially,
In his new life, that from such gifts as those
A wondrous harvest would have come to be.
But so much ranker, weedier, and more gross
Runs the untended field where wild tares seed,
As the good soil is rich and vigorous.
[tr. Sayers (1955)]

This man, potentially, was so endowed
from early youth that marvelous increase
should have come from every good he sowed.
But richest soil the soonest will grow wild
with bad seed and neglect.
[tr. Ciardi (1961)]

This man was such in his new life, virtually, that every right disposition would have made marvelous proof in him. But so much the more rank and wild becomes the land, ill-sown and untilled, as it has more of good strength of soil.
[tr. Singleton (1973)]

[...] was this man so endowed, potentially,
in early youth -- had he allowed his gifts
to bloom, he would have reaped abundantly.
But the more vigorous and rich the soil,
the wilder and weedier it grows
when left untilled, its bad seeds flourishing.
[tr. Musa (1981)]

This man, in his youthful years, had such
Possibilities, that every propitious tendency
Would have produced some marvelous result in him.
But ground sown with bad seed and not cultivated
Becomes the more malignant and overgrown
The more wholesome vigour there is in the soil.
[tr. Sisson (1981)]

He
when young, was such -- potentially -- that any
propensity innate in him would have
prodigiously succeeded, had he acted.
But where the soil has finer vigor, there
precisely -- when untilled or badly seeded --
will that terrain grow wilder and more noxious.
[tr. Mandelbaum (1982)]

This man, potentially, was such in his vita nuova, his new life, that every true skill would have grown miraculously in him. But the more good qualities the earth’s soil has, the more wild and coarse it becomes with evil seed, and lack of cultivation.
[tr. Kline (2002)]

He was such in his new life, potentially, that every good habit would have produced a marvelous result in him.
But all the more malignant and wild becomes the soil with bad seed and without cultivation, the more it has in it of good earthly vigor.
[tr. Durling (2003)]

This man in his new life potentially was such
that each good disposition in him
would have come to marvelous conclusion,
but the richer and more vigorous the soil,
when planted ill and left to go to seed,
the wilder and more noxious it becomes.
[tr. Hollander/Hollander (2007)]

And one such was this man's new life on earth,
So all good inclinations, all predictions,
Should wonderfully be proved in the life he lives.
Yet land improperly sown, and never tilled,
But blessed with soil of enormous power and strength,
Will turn itself more terribly rank and foul.
[tr. Raffel (2010)]

 
Added on 22-Mar-24 | Last updated 22-Mar-24
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If there is an all-powerful and loving God in this world, why is there so much excruciating pain and unspeakable suffering? The problem of suffering has haunted me for a very long time. It was what made me begin to think about religion when I was young, and it was what led me to question my faith when I was older. Ultimately, it was the reason I lost my faith.

Bart Ehrman
Bart D. Ehrman (b. 1955) American Biblical scholar, author
God’s Problem, ch. 1 “Suffering and a Crisis of Faith” (2008)
    (Source)
 
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Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.

[Quod bonum Dei quidem donum est; sed propterea id largitur etiam malis, ne magnum bonum uideatur bonis.]

Augustine of Hippo (354-430) Christian church father, philosopher, saint [b. Aurelius Augustinus]
City of God [De Civitate Dei], Book 15, ch. 22 (15.22) (AD 412-416) [tr. Dods (1871)]
    (Source)

Referencing Genesis 6:1-4, and of the "sons of God" who fell in love with the physical beauty of the women of the earthly city.

(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:

Bodily beauty [...] is indeed a gift of God, but given to the evil also, lest the good should imagine it of any such great worth.
[tr. Healey (1610)]

Their beauty, in itself, was a gift of God, but it is the kind of gift which God gives even to the wicked so that good men may realize how slight a good it is.
[tr. Walsh/Monahan (1952)]

This beauty is indeed a good given by God, but he bestows it also on the wicked lest the good should regard it as a great good.
[tr. Levine (Loeb) (1966)]

Such beauty is certainly a good, a gift of God; but he bestows it on the evil as well as on the good for this reason, for fear that the good may consider it an important good.
[tr. Bettenson (1972)]

Such beauty is certainly a good, a gift from God; but He grants it to the evil also, lest it should come to seem too great a good to the good.
[tr. Dyson (1998)]

This good of beauty is indeed God's gift, but it is bestowed also on the wicked, so that it may not appear as a great blessing to those who are good.
[tr. Babcock (2012)]

 
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To an embalmer there are no good men and bad men. There are only dead men and live men.

H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]
A Little Book in C Major, ch. 4, § 15 (1916)
    (Source)
 
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It is not worth living,
when we see bad men unjustly honored.
 
[ου γαρ άξιον λεύσσειν φάος κακούς ορώντας εκδίκως τιμωμένους.]

Euripides (485?-406? BC) Greek tragic dramatist
Bellerophon [Βελλεροφῶν], frag. 293 (c. 430 BC) [tr. Collard (1997)]
    (Source)

Nauck (TGF) frag. 293, Barnes frag. 129, Musgrave frag. 23. (Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:

For life's not worth retaining when we see
The wicked crown'd with undeserv'd applause.
[tr. Wodhull (1809)]

It is not worth living, if people see bad men unjustly honored.
[tr. Collard, Hargreaves, Cropp (1995)]

Life has no value when the bad are seen to thrive unjustly.
[tr. Stevens (2012)]

 
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It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.

[C’est la certitude qu’ils tiennent la vérité qui rend les hommes cruels.]

Anatole France (1844-1924) French poet, journalist, novelist, Nobel Laureate [pseud. of Jaques-Anatole-François Thibault]
(Misquotation)

Widely attributed (in French and English) to Anatole France, but not found in his works, including the one location it is sometimes cited from, Les Dieux Ont Soif [The Gods Are Thirsty, The Gods Are Athirst, The Gods Will Have Blood] (1912), in either English translation or, more importantly, in the original French.

While thematically keeping in the novel's depiction of the French Revolution and the Terror, the closest match to the quote I can find is this portion of ch. 22, talking about the expediting of the trials of those charged with counter-revolutionary crimes, eliminating the need to prove a misdeed by simply inquiring as to the accused's beliefs.

Justice thus abbreviated satisfied them; the pace was quickened, and no obstacles were left to fret them. They limited themselves to an inquiry into the opinions of the accused, not conceiving it possible that anyone could think differently from themselves except in pure perversity. Believing themselves the exclusive possessors of truth, wisdom, the quintessence of good, they attributed to their opponents noting but error and evil. They felt themselves all-powerful; they envisaged God.
[tr. Allinson (1913), Jackson (1921)]

Justice, thus curtailed, satisfied them; the pace was quickened and no obstacles were left to confuse them. They confined themselves to inquiring into the opinions of the accused, not conceiving it possible that anyone, except from pure perversity, could think differently from themselves. Believing themselves to possess a monopoly of truth, wisdom and goodness, they attributed to their opponents all error, stupidity and evil. They felt themselves omnipotent: their eyes had seen God.
[tr. Davies (1979)]

La justice abrégée les contentait. Rien, dans sa marche accélérée, ne les troublait plus. Ils s’enquéraient seulement des opinions des accusés, ne concevant pas qu’on pût sans méchanceté penser autrement qu’eux. Comme ils croyaient posséder la vérité, la sagesse, le souverain bien, ils attribuaient à leurs adversaires l’erreur et le mal. Ils se sentaient forts : ils voyaient Dieu.
[Original]

 
Added on 9-Nov-23 | Last updated 9-Nov-23
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How deep is evil rooted in the breasts
Of all men! tho’ our pardon we extend not
To him, who, grasping at some great reward,
Becomes a sinner: yet since, in proportion
As he grows boldly profligate, he reaps
Greater advantages, he with more ease
The world’s reproachful language may sustain.

[ὡς ἔμφυτος μὲν πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις κάκη”
ὅστις δὲ πλεῖστον μισϑὸν εἰς χεῖρας λαβὼν
κακὸς γένηται, τῷδε συγγνώμη μὲν οὔ,
πλείω δὲ μισϑὸν μείζονος τόλμης ἔχων
τὸν τῶν λεγόντων ῥᾷον ἂν φέροι Ῥόγον.]

Euripides (485?-406? BC) Greek tragic dramatist
Bellerophon [Βελλεροφῶν], frag. 297 (TGF) (c. 430 BC) [tr. Wodhull (1809)]
    (Source)

Nauck frag. 299. Barnes frag. 44, Musgrave frag. 9. (Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:

All men have badness in their natures! The one who takes most pay into his hands, and proves bad, gets no pardon; but if he has more pay for greater audacity, he'll endure censorious talk more easily.
[tr. Collard, Hargreaves, Cropp (1995)]

There is evil in all men. Whoever gets his hands on good money and is seen to be wicked, he is roundly condemned. But if he were yet more daring, gaining even greater reward, he would have less of a problem enduring being criticized by others.
[tr. Stevens (2012)]

 
Added on 31-Oct-23 | Last updated 31-Oct-23
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Everything beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation. Crime, of which the human animal has learned the taste in his mother’s womb, is natural by origin. Virtue, on the other hand, is artificial, supernatural, since at all times and in all places gods and prophets have been needed to teach it to animalized humanity, man being powerless to discover it by himself. Evil happens without effort, naturally, fatally; Good is always the product of some art.

[Tout ce qui est beau et noble est le résultat de la raison et du calcul. Le crime, dont l’animal humain a puisé le goût dans le ventre de sa mère, est originellement naturel. La vertu, au contraire, est artificielle, surnaturelle, puisqu’il a fallu, dans tous les temps et chez toutes les nations, des dieux et des prophètes pour l’enseigner à l’humanité animalisée, et que l’homme, seul, eût été impuissant à la découvrir. Le mal se fait sans effort, naturellement, par fatalité ; le bien est toujours le produit d’un art.]

Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) French poet, essayist, art critic
“Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne [The Painter of Modern Life],” sec. 11 (1863) [tr. Mayne (1964)]
    (Source)

(Source (French)). Alternate translation:

Everything beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation. Crime, for which the human creature has acquired a taste in its mother’s womb, is natural in origin. Virtue, on the contrary, is artificial, unnatural since, at all times and among all nations, gods and prophets were necessary to teach virtue to animalistic humanity, which humanity alone was unable to discover. Evil occurs without effort, naturally, through fatality; good is always the product of artifice.
[tr. Kline (2020)]

 
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The prosperous fortunes, and the haughty wealth
Of an unrighteous man, we never ought
To deem establish’d on a solid base,
Or that the children of th’ unjust can prosper:
For Time, who from no Father springs, applies
His levell’d line, and shews man’s foul misdeeds.
 
[οὐδέποτ᾽ εὐτυχίαν κακοῦ ἀνδρὸς ὑπέρφρονά τ᾽ ὄλβον
βέβαιον εἰκάσαι χρεών,
οὐδ᾽ ἀδίκων γενεάν” ὁ γὰρ οὐδενὸς ἐχφὺς
χρόνος δικαίους ἐπάγων κανόνας
δείκνυσιν ἀνθρώπων καχότητας ἐμοί.]

Euripides (485?-406? BC) Greek tragic dramatist
Bellerophon [Βελλεροφῶν], frag. 303 (c. 430 BC) [tr. Wodhull (1809)]
    (Source)

Nauck (TGF) frag. 305, Barnes frag. 33, Musgrave frag. 6.

(Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:

Think not that the prosperity and riches of the wicked can endure, nor yet the generation of the bad; for Time, sprung from eternity, having a just rule in his hand, shows the wickedness of men.
[Source (1878)]

One ought never to imagine the success of a bad man, and his proud wealth, as secure, nor the lineage of unjust men; for time, which was born from nothing, adduces standards which are just and shows the wickedness of men in spite of all.
[tr. Collard, Hargreaves, Cropp (1995)]

It must not be believed
that the wicked thrive securely
though puffed-up-proud in their prosperity
nor the long line of injustices go on and on
uninterrupted -- Self-generating Time
(slowly -- slowly) lays
the yardstick of justice --
into the open (at least) brings
all iniquities of men.
For all that. For all that.
[tr. Stevens (2012)]
 
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Doth any man assert that there are Gods
In Heaven? I answer there are none: let him
Who contradicts me like a fool, no longer
Quote ancient fables; but observe the fact,
Nor to my words give credence. Kings, I say.
Kill many, but rob more of their possessions.
And violating every sacred oath,
Lay waste whole cities; yet, tho’ they act thus,
Are more successful far than they who lead
In constant piety a tranquil life.

[φησίν τις εἶναι δῆτ’ ἐν οὐρανῷ θεούς;
οὐκ εἰσίν, οὐκ εἴσ’, εἴ τις ἀνθρώπων θέλει
μὴ τῷ παλαιῷ μῶρος ὢν χρῆσθαι λόγῳ.
σκέψασθε δ’ αὐτοί, μὴ ἐπὶ τοῖς ἐμοῖς λόγοις
γνώμην ἔχοντες. φήμ’ ἐγὼ τυραννίδα
κτείνειν τε πλείστους κτημάτων τ’ ἀποστερεῖν
ὅρκους τε παραβαίνοντας ἐκπορθεῖν πόλεις·
καὶ ταῦτα δρῶντες μᾶλλόν εἰσ’ εὐδαίμονες
τῶν εὐσεβούντων ἡσυχῇ καθ’ ἡμέραν]

Euripides (485?-406? BC) Greek tragic dramatist
Bellerophon [Βελλεροφῶν], frag. 286 (TGF) (c. 430 BC) [tr. Wodhull (1809)]
    (Source)

Nauck (TGF) frag. 286, Barnes frag. 8, Musgrave frag. 25. (Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:

Doth some one say that there be gods above?
There are not; no, there are not. Let no fool,
Led by the old false fable, thus deceive you.
Look at the facts themselves, yielding my words
No undue credence: for I say that kings
Kill, rob, break oaths, lay cities waste by fraud,
And doing thus are happier than those
Who live calm pious lives day after day. All divinity
Is built-up from our good and evil luck.
[tr. Symonds (1876)]

Does someone say there are indeed gods in heaven? There are not, there are not, if a man is willing not to rely foolishly on the antiquated reasoning. Consider for yourselves, do not base your opinion on words of mine. I say myself that tyranny kills very many men and dprives them of their possessions; and that tyrants break their oaths to ransack cities, and in doing this they are more prosperous under heaven than men who live quietly in reverence.
[tr. Collard, Hargreaves, Cropp (1995)]

Does anyone assert that there are gods in heaven? There are not, no, there are not, if a man is ready not to swallow whole the old tales. Think it through yourselves, do not make my words the foundation of your opinion. I declare that tyranny kills many, robs them, that tyrants break their oaths to plunder cities, yet in this they prosper more than those whose unassuming habit is true piety.
[tr. Stevens (2012)]

Does anyone say there are gods in heaven? There are not, there are not, unless one wishes to follow ancient wisdom like a fool. [...] I say that tyranny kills many people, deprives possessions, circumvents oaths, and plunders cities. And even though they do these things, they are more fortunate than those living piously day to day in peace.
[tr. Dixon (2014)]

Is there anyone who thinks there are gods in heaven?
There are not. There are not, for any man who wishes
Not to be a fool and trust some ancient story.
Look at it yourselves, don’t make up your mind
Because of my words. I think that tyranny
Kills so many men and steals their possessions
And that men break their oaths by sacking cities.
But the men who do such things are more fortunate
Than those who live each day piously, at peace.
[tr. @sentantiq (2015)]

People ask: Do gods really exist in heaven? No, they do not exist, they really don’t; if any of mankind wishes to avoid being the sort of fool who follows the ancient story. Consider it for yourselves, don’t take my word for it. I say that tyranny destroys multitudes and confiscates their possessions; oath-breakers sack cities; and yet, those who do such things are far more prosperous than those who, day by day, live devoutly and in peace.
[tr. Emerson]

 
Added on 19-Sep-23 | Last updated 19-Sep-23
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There are a number of things that science can’t deal with. All questions of values. for example. Science won’t tell you what is good and what is bad — what is good or bad as an end, not just as a means.

Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Interview by Woodrow Wyatt, BBC TV (1959)
    (Source)

Collected in Bertrand Russell's BBC Interviews (1959) [UK] and Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind (1960) [US]. Reprinted (abridged) in The Humanist (1982-11/12), and in Russell Society News, #37 (1983-02).
 
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Dore Divine Comedy Inferno 34-034 Lucifer
Gustave Dore – Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto 34 l.034 Lucifer (1857)

If he was fair as he is hideous now,
and raised his brow in scorn of his creator,
he is fit to be the source of every sorrow.

[S’el fu sì bel com’elli è ora brutto,
e contra ’l suo fattore alzò le ciglia,
ben dee da lui procedere ogne lutto.]

Dante Alighieri the poet
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) Italian poet
The Divine Comedy [Divina Commedia], Book 1 “Inferno,” Canto 34, l. 34ff (34.34) (1309) [tr. Hollander/Hollander (2007)]
    (Source)

Describing Satan. As Lucifer he was the most beautiful and powerful of the angels; Dante suggests his rebellious ingratitude against God is a fit cause for all the sin and sorrow of the world.

(Source (Italian)). Alternate translations:

As ugly now, if he as handsome was,
And 'gainst his Maker rais'd his haughty brow;
'Tis right all wailings should from him proceed.
[tr. Rogers (1782)]

If his meridian glories, ere he fell,
Equal'd his horrible eclipse in Hell,
No brighter Seraph led the heav'nly host:
And now, a tenant of the frozen tide,
The Rebel justly merits to preside
O'er all the horrors of the Stygian coast.
[tr. Boyd (1802), st. 8]

If he were beautiful
As he is hideous now, and yet did dare
To scowl upon his Maker, well from him
May all our mis’ry flow.
[tr. Cary (1814)]

If he, once fair as he is foul of mien,
Against his Maker arrogantly raised
The brow, from him might well proceed, I ween,
All things disastrous.
[tr. Dayman (1843)]

If he was once as beautiful as he is ugly now, and lifted up his brows against his Maker, well may all affliction come from him.
[tr. Carlyle (1849)]

If he were beauteous once as ugly now,
And 'gainst his Maker dared to lift his brow,
From him well might we have proceeding woe.
[tr. Bannerman (1850)]

If first in beauty once as hideous now,
And to his Maker lifting his proud eye,
Well might he be the source of ev'ry grief.
[tr. Johnston (1867)]

Were he as fair once, as he now is foul,
⁠And lifted up his brow against his Maker,
⁠Well may proceed from him all tribulation.
[tr. Longfellow (1867)]

If he was as fair as he is now foul, and raised his brows against his Maker, rightly should all sorrow come forth from him.
[tr. Butler (1885)]

If he was once as fair as hideous now,
And 'gainst his Maker raised his impious eyes,
Full well from him would all contention flow.
[tr. Minchin (1885)]

If he was as fair as he now is foul, and against his Maker lifted up his brow, surely may all tribulation proceed from him.
[tr. Norton (1892)]

If once he was as fair as he is loathly,
And raised his brows even against his Maker,
Well may it be from him proceeds all mourning.
[tr. Griffith (1908)]

If he was as fair as he is now foul and lifted up his brows against his Maker, well may all sorrow come from him.
[tr. Sinclair (1939)]

If he was once fair as he is now foul,
And 'gainst his Maker dared his brows to raise,
Fitly from him all streams of sorrow roll.
[tr. Binyon (1943)]

If he was once as fair as now he's foul,
And dared outface his Maker in rebellion,
Well may he be the fount of all our dole.
[tr. Sayers (1949)]

If he was once as beautiful as now
he is hideous, and still turned on his Maker,
well may he be the source of every woe!
[tr. Ciardi (1954)]

If he was once as beautiful as he is ugly now, and lifted up his brows against his Maker, well may all sorrow proceed from him.
[tr. Singleton (1970)]

If once he was as fair as now he's foul
and dared to raise his brows against his Maker,
it is fitting that all grief should spring from him.
[tr. Musa (1971)]

If he was once as handsome as he now
is ugly and, despite that, raised his brows
against his Maker, one can understand
how every sorrow has its source in him!
[tr. Mandelbaum (1980)]

If he was as beautiful as he now is ugly,
And yet dared to rebel against his maker,
Well may he be the source of all mourning.
[tr. Sisson (1981)]

If he was truly once as beautiful
As he is ugly now, and raised his brows
Against his Maker -- then all sorrow may well
Come out of him.
[tr. Pinsky (1994)]

If he was as beautiful then as now he is ugly, when he lifted his brow against his Maker, well must all grieving proceed from him.
[tr. Durling (1996)]

If he was once as fair, as he is now ugly, and lifted up his forehead against his Maker, well may all evil flow from him.
[tr. Kline (2002)]

If, once, he was as lovely as now vile,
when first he raised his brow against his maker,
then truly grief must all proceed from him.
[tr. Kirkpatrick (2006)]

If ever his beauty could match the ugliness
I saw, and he lifted arrogant brows at his Maker,
I understand how sorrow was born that day.
[tr. Raffel (2010)]

If his beauty was
a match for all the foulness he has now,
We see that all our sorrow came because
He set his face against his Maker.
[tr. James (2013), l. 40ff]
 
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“One must do as others do”: a suspect maxim, which nearly always means: “one must do wrong” as soon as it is applied to anything beyond those purely external matters which are of no consequence, but depend on custom, fashion or convention.

[«Il faut faire comme les autres»: maxime suspecte, qui signifie presque toujours: «il faut mal faire» dès qu’on l’étend au delà de ces choses purement extérieures, qui n’ont point de suite, qui dépendent de l’usage, de la mode ou des bienséances.]

Jean de La Bruyere
Jean de La Bruyère (1645-1696) French essayist, moralist
The Characters [Les Caractères], ch. 12 “Of Opinions [Des Jugements],” § 10 (12.10) (1688) [tr. Stewart (1970)]
    (Source)

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

We must do like other men; a dangerous Maxim, and for the most part signifies we must do ill; if you speak not of things purely exteriour, and of no consequence, but what depends on Custome, Fashion, or Decency.
[Bullord ed. (1696)]

We must do as others do; a dangerous Maxim, which for the most part signifies we must do ill, if extended beyond things purely exterior, and of no consequence, things depending on Custom, Fashion, or Decency.
[Curll ed. (1713)]

We must do like other Men: a dangerous Maxim, for the most Part signifying we must do ill, if you carry it beyond things external, and of no consequence, but depending on Custom, Fashion, or Ceremony.
[Browne ed. (1752)]

“We must do as others do” is a dangerous maxim, which nearly always means “we must do wrong” if it is applied to any but external things of no consequence, and depending on custom, fashion, or decency.
[tr. Van Laun (1885)]

 
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The malevolent at times commit good actions, as though they wanted to see whether in fact they afford as much pleasure as good people pretend.

[Les méchans font quelquefois de bonnes actions. On dirait qu’ils veulent voir s’il est vrai que cela fasse autant de plaisir que le prétendent les honnêtes gens.]

Nicolas Chamfort
Nicolas Chamfort (1741-1794) French writer, epigrammist (b. Nicolas-Sébastien Roch)
Products of Perfected Civilization [Produits de la Civilisation Perfectionée], Part 1 “Maxims and Thoughts [Maximes et Pensées],” ch. 2, ¶ 122 (1795) [tr. Merwin (1969)]
    (Source)

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

Wicked people sometimes perform good actions. I suppose they wish to see if this gives as great a feeling of pleasure as the virtuous claim for it.
[tr. Mathers (1926)]

The wicked sometimes perform good actions. One might say they wish to see whether it is true that they engender as much pleasure as respectable folk maintain they do.
[tr. Pearson (1973)]

 
Added on 7-Aug-23 | Last updated 7-Aug-23
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For when the faculty of intellect
is joined with brute force and with evil will,
no man can win against such an alliance.

[Ché dove l’argomento de la mente
s’aggiugne al mal volere e a la possa,
nessun riparo vi può far la gente.]

Dante Alighieri the poet
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) Italian poet
The Divine Comedy [Divina Commedia], Book 1 “Inferno,” Canto 31, l. 55ff (31.55) (1309) [tr. Musa (1971)]
    (Source)

Why Nature no longer allows human-like giants, while still producing whales and elephants.

(Source (Italian)). Alternate translations:

For where the mind to bad Intention's join'd,
And with a Pow'r what's ill design'd to act,
None can himself from such a force defend.
[tr. Rogers (1782), l. 49ff]

But not the forest tribes, nor finny race,
With equal rage their native walks deface,
As he whose deadly arm by Reason's light
Directed falls, and mocks the warding hand;
Conspiring realms in vain his pow'r withstand,
In vain embattled hosts defend their right.
[tr. Boyd (1802), st. 9]

For when brute force
And evil will are back’d with subtlety,
Resistance none avails.
[tr. Cary (1814)]

For discourse of mind,
Wedded with power and inbred lust of wrong,
Had left nor help nor rescue for mankind.
[tr. Dayman (1843)]

For where [the instrument] of [the] mind is joined to evil will and potency, men can make no defence against it.
[tr. Carlyle (1849)]

For when a reasoning and a subtle mind
Is joined, besides, to evil will and power,
Who can resist? -- for all defence must cower.
[tr. Bannerman (1850)]

For when the reasoning faculty combines
With evil will and with destructive pow'r,
Then there remains no more defence for man.
[tr. Johnston (1867)]

For where the argument of intellect ⁠
⁠Is added unto evil will and power,
⁠No rampart can the people make against it.
[tr. Longfellow (1867)]

For where the equipment of the mind is joined to illwill and to power, folk can make no rampart against it.
[tr. Butler (1885)]

For where the assistance of the intellect
Is added unto evil will and power,
'Gainst it no refuge could mankind erect.
[tr. Minchin (1885)]

For where the faculty of the mind is added to evil will and to power, the human race can make no defense against it.
[tr. Norton (1892)]

For where the force of intellect is joined to evil will, and power to do such will, mankind is helpless to find resource against it.
[tr. Sullivan (1893)]

For, where the equipment and the use of reason
Are joined to ill intent and power of action,
No sort of refuge can folk make against it.
[tr. Griffith (1908)]

For where the equipment of the mind is joined to evil will and to power men can make no defence against it.
[tr. Sinclair (1939)]

For if with the mind's instrument unite
Power and an evil purpose both at once,
Men have no means against such force to fight.
[tr. Binyon (1943)]

For where the instrument of thinking mind
Is joined to strength and malice, man’s defence
Cannot avail to meet those powers combined.
[tr. Sayers (1949)]

For where the instrument of intelligence
is added to brute power and evil will,
mankind is powerless in its own defense.
[tr. Ciardi (1954)]

For where the instrument of the mind is added to an evil will and to great power, men can make no defense against it.
[tr. Singleton (1970)]

For where the mind’s acutest reasoning
is joined to evil will and evil power,
there human beings can’t defend themselves.
[tr. Mandelbaum (1980)]

For, where the argument of reason is
Joined with an evil will and potency,
There is no possible defence for man.
[tr. Sisson (1981)]

The power of the mind, along with that
Of immense strength, upon an evil will
Then people will have no defense from it.
[tr. Pinsky (1994), l. 52ff]

For where sharpness of mind is joined to evil will and power, there is no defence people can make against them.
[tr. Durling (1996)]

Where the instrument of mind is joined to ill will and power, men have no defence against it.
[tr. Kline (2002)]

For when the powers of working intellect
are wed to strength and absolute illwill,
then humans cannot find a place to hide.
[tr. Kirkpatrick (2006)]

For when the power of thought
is coupled with ill will and naked force
there is no refuge from it for mankind.
[tr. Hollander/Hollander (2007)]

For when the thinking powers of human brains
Are tools of malicious will and enormous strength,
Smaller creatures like men have no defense.
[tr. Raffel (2010)]

For only when ill will and massive strength
Are joined with mental power does it arise
That the invincible is born.
[tr. James (2013), l. 58ff]

 
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More quotes by Dante Alighieri

A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) English novelist, poet
Far from the Madding Crowd, ch. 18 (1874)
    (Source)
 
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In my humble opinion, noncooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.

Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) Indian philosopher and nationalist [Mahatma Gandhi]
Statement at his sedition trial (1922-03-18)
    (Source)

Following the riots in Chauri Chaura, India, on 5 February 1922, which killed 22 police officers, Gandhi was arrested for sedition for articles he'd written against the British government in India, in what is called the "Great Trial of 1922." After this statement he was sentenced to six years (serving two).

Gandhi had previously used the same phrase in "The Poet's Anxiety," Young India (1921-06-01), reprinted in Gandhi's Satyagraha, ch. 69 (1961).

(Note: searching out this quotation is complicated by the varied and evolving spellings of non-co-operation, non-cooperation, and noncooperation.)
 
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People couldn’t become truly holy, he said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked.

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Good Omens, 2. “Eleven Years Ago” (1990) [with Neil Gaiman]
    (Source)
 
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Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.

Simone Weil (1909-1943) French philosopher
Gravity and Grace [La Pesanteur et la Grâce], “Evil” (1947) [ed. Thibon] [tr. Crawford/von der Ruhr (1952)]
    (Source)

Speaking of the portrayal of good and evil in literature.
 
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Being against evil doesn’t make you good.

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) American writer
Islands in the Stream, Part 1 “Bimini,” ch. 4 [Roger] (1970)
    (Source)
 
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In the theater, as in life, we prefer a villain with a sense of humor to a hero without one.

Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 7 (1963)
    (Source)
 
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He that falls into sin is a man; that grieves at it, is a saint; that boasteth of it, is a devil.

Thomas Fuller
Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) English churchman, historian
The Holy State and the Profane State, Book 3, ch. 3 “Of Self-Praising” (1642)
    (Source)
 
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In the throat
Of Hell, before the very vestibule
Of opening Orcus, sit Remorse and Grief,
And pale Disease, and sad Old Age, and Fear,
And Hunger that persuades to crime, and Want,
Forms terrible to see. Suffering and Death
Inhabit here, and Death’s own brother, Sleep;
And the mind’s evil Lusts, and deadly War
Lie at the threshold, and the iron beds
Of the Eumenides; and Discord wild,
Her viper-locks with bloody fillets bound.

[Vestibulum ante ipsum, primisque in faucibus Orci
Luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae;
pallentesque habitant Morbi, tristisque Senectus,
et Metus, et malesuada Fames, ac turpis Egestas,
terribiles visu formae: Letumque, Labosque;
tum consanguineus Leti Sopor, et mala mentis
Gaudia, mortiferumque adverso in limine Bellum,
ferreique Eumenidum thalami, et Discordia demens,
vipereum crinem vittis innexa cruentis.]

Virgil the Poet
Virgil (70-19 BC) Roman poet [b. Publius Vergilius Maro; also Vergil]
The Aeneid [Ænē̆is], Book 6, l. 274ff (6.274-282) (29-19 BC) [tr. Cranch (1872), l. 336ff]
    (Source)

The gates of the Underworld, as Aeneas enters.

(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:

Just at the door, before the gates of hell,
Sorrow repos'd, with her revenging Rage,
Pale sicknesses and discontented age,
Fear, with dire Famine, and base Povertie,
Labour and death, shapes terrible to see.
Then sleep allied to Death, and fond joys are
Plac'd on the other side, with deadly War,
On iron beds, Furies and Discord sit,
Their viperous hair with bloody fillets knit.
[tr. Ogilby (1649)]

Just in the gate and in the jaws of hell,
Revengeful Cares and sullen Sorrows dwell,
And pale Diseases, and repining Age,
Want, Fear, and Famine's unresisted rage;
Here Toils, and Death, and Death's half-brother, Sleep,
Forms terrible to view, their sentry keep;
With anxious Pleasures of a guilty mind,
Deep Frauds before, and open Force behind;
The Furies' iron beds; and Strife, that shakes
Her hissing tresses and unfolds her snakes.
[tr. Dryden (1697)]

Before the vestibule itself, and in the first jaws of hell, Grief and vengeful Cares have placed their couches, and pale Diseases dwell, and disconsolate Old Age, and Fear, and the evil counsellor Famine, and vile deformed Indigence, forms ghastly to the sight! and Death, and Toil; then Sleep, akin to Death, and criminal Joys of the mind; and in the opposite threshold murderous War, and the iron bed-chambers of the Furies, and frantic Discord, having her viperous locks bound with bloody fillets.
[tr. Davidson/Buckley (1854)]

At Orcus' portals hold their lair
Wild Sorrow and avenging Care;
And pale Diseases cluster there,
And pleasureless Decay,
Foul Penury, and Fears that kill,
And Hunger, counsellor of ill,
A ghastly presence they:
Suffering and Death the threshold keep,
And with them Death's blood-brother, Sleep:
Ill Joys with their seducing spells
And deadly War are at the door;
The Furies couch in iron cells,
And Discord maddens and rebels;
Her snake-locks hiss, her wreaths drip gore.
[tr. Conington (1866)]

Right in front of the doorway and in the entry of the jaws of hell Grief and avenging Cares have made their bed; there dwell wan Sicknesses and gloomy Eld, and Fear, and ill-counselling Hunger, and loathly Want, shapes terrible to see; and Death and Travail, and thereby Sleep, Death's kinsman, and the Soul's guilty Joys, and death-dealing War full in the gateway, and the Furies in their iron cells, and mad Discord with bloodstained fillets enwreathing her serpent locks.
[tr. Mackail (1885)]

Lo, in the first of Orcus' jaws, close to the doorway side,
The Sorrows and Avenging Griefs have set their beds to bide;
There the pale kin of Sickness dwells, and Eld, the woeful thing,
And Fear, and squalid-fashioned Lack, and witless Hungering,
Shapes terrible to see with eye; and Toil of Men, and Death,
And Sleep, Death's brother, and the Lust of Soul that sickeneth:
And War, the death-bearer, was set full in the threshold's way,
And those Well-willers' iron beds: there heartless Discord lay,
Whose viper-breeding hair about was bloody-filleted.
[tr. Morris (1900), l. 272ff]

Before the threshold, in the jaws of Hell,
Grief spreads her pillow, with remorseful Care.
There sad Old Age and pale Diseases dwell,
And misconceiving Famine, Want and Fear,
Terrific shapes, and Death and Toil appear.
Death's kinsman, Sleep, and Joys of sinful kind,
And deadly War crouch opposite, and here
The Furies' iron chamber, Discord blind
And Strife, her viperous locks with gory fillets twined.
[tr. Taylor (1907), st. 38, l. 334]

In the first courts and entrances of Hell
Sorrows and vengeful Cares on couches lie:
There sad Old Age abides, Diseases pale,
And Fear, and Hunger, temptress to all crime;
Want, base and vile, and, two dread shapes to see,
Bondage and Death : then Sleep, Death's next of kin;
And dreams of guilty joy. Death-dealing War
Is ever at the doors, and hard thereby
The Furies' beds of steel, where wild-eyed Strife
Her snaky hair with blood-stained fillet binds.
[tr. Williams (1910)]

Just before the entrance, even within the very jaws of Hell, Grief and avenging Cares have made their bed; there pale Diseases dwell, and sad Age, and Fear, and ill-counselling Famine, and loathly Want, shapes terrible to view; and Death and Distress; next, Death's own brother Sleep, and the soul's Guilty Joys, and, on the threshold opposite, the death-bearer War, and the Furies' iron cells, and savage Strife, her snaky locks entwined with bloody fillets.
[tr. Fairclough (1916)]

At the first threshold, on the jaws of Orcus,
Grief and avenging Cares have set their couches,
And pale Diseases dwell, and sad Old Age,
Fear, evil-counselling Hunger, wretched Need,
Forms terrible to see, and Death, and Toil,
And Death’s own brother, Sleep, and evil Joys,
Fantasies of the mind, and deadly War,
The Furies’ iron chambers, Discord, raving,
Her snaky hair entwined in bloody bands.
[tr. Humphries (1951)]

See! At the very porch and entrance way to Orcus
Grief and ever-haunting Anxiety make their bed:
Here dwell pallid Diseases, here morose Old Age,
With Fear, ill-prompting Hunger, and squalid Indigence,
Shapes horrible to look at, Death and Agony;
Sleep, too, which is the cousin of Death; and Guilty Joys,
And there, against the threshold, War, the bringer of Death:
Here are the iron cells of the Furies, and lunatic Strife
Whose viperine hair is caught up with a headband soaked in blood.
[tr. Day-Lewis (1952)]

Before the entrance, at the jaws of Orcus,
both Grief and goading Cares have set their couches;
there pale Diseases dwell, and sad Old Age,
and Fear and Hunger, that worst counselor,
and ugly Poverty -- shapes terrible
to see -- and Death and Trials; Death's brother, Sleep,
and all the evil Pleasures of the mind;
and War, whose fruits are death; and facing these,
the Furies' iron chambers; and mad Strife,
her serpent hair bound up with bloody garlands.
[tr. Mandelbaum (1971), l. 363ff]

Before the entrance, in the jaws of Orcus,
Grief and avenging Cares have made their beds,
And pale Diseases and sad Age are there,
And Dread, and Hunger that sways men to crime,
And sordid Want -- in shapes to affright the eyes --
And Death and Toil and Deaths;s own brother, Sleep,
And the mind's evil joys; on the door sill
Death-bringing War, and iron cubicles
Of the Eumenidës, and raving Discord,
Viperish hair bound up in gory bands.
[tr. Fitzgerald (1981)]

Before the entrance hall of Orcus, in the very throat of hell, Grief and Revenge have made their beds and Old age lives there in despair, with white faced Diseases and Fear and Hunger, corrupter of men, and squalid Poverty, things dreadful to look upon, and Death and Drudgery besides. Then there were Sleep, Death's sister, perverted Pleasures, murderous War astride the threshold, the iron chambers of the Furies and raving Discord with blood-soaked ribbons binding her viperous hair.
[tr. West (1990)]

Right before the entrance, in the very jaws of Orcus,
Grief and vengeful Care have made their beds,
and pallid Sickness lives there, and sad Old Age,
and Fear, and persuasive Hunger, and vile Need,
forms terrible to look on, and Death and Pain:
then Death’s brother Sleep, and Evil Pleasure of the mind,
and, on the threshold opposite, death-dealing War,
and the steel chambers of the Furies, and mad Discord,
her snaky hair entwined with blood-wet ribbons.
[tr. Kline (2002)]

Just before the entrance, in the very jaws
Of Orcus, Grief and avenging Cares
Have set their beds. Pale Diseases
Dwell there, sad Old Age, Fear, Hunger --
The tempter -- and foul Poverty,
All fearful shapes, and Death and Toil,
And Death's brother Sleep, Guilty Joys,
And on the threshold opposite, lethal War,
The Furies in iron cells, and mad Strife,
Her snaky hair entwined with bloody bands.
[tr. Lombardo (2005)]

There in the entryway, the gorge of hell itself,
Grief and the pangs of Conscience make their beds,
and fatal pale Disease lives there, and bleak Old Age,
Dread and Hunger, seductress to crime, and grinding Poverty,
all, terrible shapes to see -- and Death and deadly Struggle
and Sleep, twin brother of Death, and twisted, wicked Joys
and facing them at the threshold, War, rife with death,
and the Furies’ iron chambers, and mad, raging Strife
whose blood-stained headbands knot her snaky locks.
[tr. Fagles (2006), l. 312ff]

At the entrance, in Orcus' very jaws, Grief and vengeful Sorrow made their beds, and Pale Diseases, sad Old Age, and Fear and ill-advising Hunger and shameful Poverty, forms horrible to see, and Death and Suffering, then Death's brother Slumber, and the Joys of evil men. Facing them were murderous War and the Furies' iron chambers and mad Discord, her serpent hair bound up with bloody ribbons.
[tr. Bartsch (2021)]

 
Added on 27-Oct-22 | Last updated 21-Jun-23
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More quotes by Virgil

I happen to think 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: man’s seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself.

Rod Serling (1924-1975) American screenwriter, playwright, television producer, narrator
“Serling in Creative Mainstream,” interview by Ellen Cameron May, Los Angeles Times (1967-06-25)
    (Source)

Quoted in Anne Serling, As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling, ch. 8 (2013).
 
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SALISBURY: It is great sin to swear unto a sin,
But greater sin to keep a sinful oath.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Henry VI, Part 2, Act 5, sc. 1, l. 186ff (5.1.186-187) (1591)
    (Source)
 
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It’s dated, called a fable; men are clever,
But they are just as badly off as ever:
The Evil One is gone, the evil ones remain.

[Er ist schon lang in Fabelbuch geschrieben;
Allein die Menschen sind nichts besser dran,
Den Bösen sind sie los, die Bösen sind geblieben.]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, statesman, scientist
Faust: a Tragedy [eine Tragödie], Part 1, sc. 9 “Witches’ Kitchen,” l. 2557ff [Mephistopheles] (1808-1829) [tr. Kaufmann (1961)]
    (Source)

On humanity no longer believing in "Satan."

Some translations (and this site) include the Declaration, Prelude on the Stage, and Prologue in Heaven as individual scenes; others do not, leading to their Part 1 scenes being numbered three lower.

(Source (German)). Alternate translations:

This many a day 'tis written down a fable;
Yet men are nowise winners in the game.
They're rid of the Evil One, the Evil still are able.
[tr. Latham (1790)]

That's been known as a fable many a season;
But men have things no better for that reason.
Free are they from the Evil One; the evil are still here.
[tr. Priest (1808)]

It has been long written in story books; but men are not the better for that; they are rid of the wicked one, the wicked have remained.
[tr. Hayward (1831)]

To fable-books it now doth appertain;
But people from the change have nothing won.
Rid of the evil one, the evil ones remain.
[tr. Swanwick (1850)]

It has long since to fable-books been banished;
But men are none the better for it; true,
The wicked one, but not the wicked ones, has vanished.
[tr. Brooks (1868)]

It's long been written in the Book of Fable;
Yet, therefore, no whit better men we see:
The Evil One has left, the evil ones are stable.
[tr. Taylor (1870)]

That name has had its station long assigned
With Mother Bunch; and yet I cannot see
Men are much better for the want of me.
The wicked one is gone, the wicked stay behind.
[tr. Blackie (1880)]

It's now a name for fairy tales and fables;
the people are as miserable as ever --
the Evil One is gone, the evil ones remain.
[tr. Salm (1962)]

It's been consigned to storybooks for youngsters;
Mind you, men are no better off for that.
The Fiend is gone, the fiends are still amongst us.
[tr. Arndt (1976)]

The name has been a myth too long.
Not that man's any better off -- the Evil One
They're rid of, evil is still going strong.
[tr. Luke (1987)]

Since God knows when it belongs to mythology,
But that's hardly improved the temper of humanity.
The Evil One's no more, evil ones more than ever.
[tr. Greenberg (1992)]

It only comes in fairy stories nowadays.
But even so, humanity's no better off --
The Evil One has gone, they've kept their evil ways.
[tr. Williams (1999)]

It’s written in story books, always:
Men are no better for it, though:
The Evil One’s gone: the evil stays.
[tr. Kline (2003)]

 
Added on 17-Oct-22 | Last updated 17-Oct-22
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Timely advis’d, the coming Evil shun:
Better not do the Deed, than weep it done.

Matthew Prior
Matthew Prior (1664-1721) English poet and diplomat
“Henry and Emma,” l. 310ff [Henry] (1709)
    (Source)
 
Added on 11-Oct-22 | Last updated 11-Oct-22
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Things look different when seen in a different light. So look at them in the light of happiness. Don’t confuse good and bad.

[Hace muy diferentes visos una misma cosa si se mira a diferentes luces: mírese por la de la felicidad. No se han de trocar los frenos al bien y al mal.]

Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601-1658) Spanish Jesuit priest, writer, philosopher
The Art of Worldly Wisdom [Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia], § 224 (1647) [tr. Maurer (1992)]
    (Source)

(Source (Spanish)). Alternate translations:

One and the same thing, hath its good day, and its bad. Examine it on the fairest side. We must not give the contrary reines to good and evil.
[Flesher ed. (1685)]

The same thing looks quite different in another light; look at it therefore on its best side and do not exchange good for evil.
[tr. Jacobs (1892)]

For one and the same thing has very different faces, as seen in different lights; look upon it in its happiest light, and do not get the controls mixed, as to what is good and what is bad.
[tr. Fischer (1937)]

 
Added on 10-Oct-22 | Last updated 9-Jan-23
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I am the spirit, ever, that denies!
And rightly so: since everything created,
In turn deserves to be annihilated:
Better if nothing came to be.
So all that you call Sin, you see,
Destruction, in short, what you’ve meant
By Evil is my true element.

[Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint!
Und das mit Recht; denn alles, was entsteht,
Ist wert, daß es zugrunde geht;
Drum besser wär’s, daß nichts entstünde.
So ist denn alles, was ihr Sünde,
Zerstörung, kurz, das Böse nennt,
Mein eigentliches Element.]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, statesman, scientist
Faust: a Tragedy [eine Tragödie], Part 1, sc. 6 “The Study,” l. 1337ff [Mephistopheles] (1808-1829) [tr. Kline (2003)]
    (Source)

Some translations (and this site) include the Declaration, Prelude on the Stage, and Prologue in Heaven as individual scenes; others do not, leading to their Part 1 scenes being numbered three lower.

(Source (German)). Alternate translations:

I am the Spirit that Denies!
And rightly so, for all that from the Void
Wins into life, deserves to be destroyed;
Thus it were better nothing life should win.
And so is all that you as Sin,
Destruction, in a word, as Evil represent,
My own peculiar element.
[tr. Latham (1790)]

I am the Spirit that denies!
And rightly too; for all that doth begin
Should rightly to destruction run;
'Twere better then that nothing were begun.
Thus everything that you call Sin,
Destruction -- in a word, as Evil represent --
That is my own, real element.
[tr. Priest (1808)]

I am the spirit who says "nay" to all,
And rightly so; for all that have existence
Deserve that they should perish; so 'twere better
That nothing earthly should enjoy existence.
All, therefore, that you mortals mean by Sin,
Destruction, in a word, what you call Evil,
Is my peculiar element.
[tr. Coleridge (1821)]

I am the spirit which constantly denies, and that rightly; for everything that has originated, deserves to be annihilated. Therefore better were it that nothing should originate. Thus, all that you call sin, destruction, in a word. Evil, is my proper element.
[tr. Hayward (1831)]

The spirit I, which evermore denies!
And justly; for whate'er to light is brought
Deserves again to be reduced to naught;
Then better 'twere that naught should be.
Thus all the elements which ye
Destruction, Sin, or briefly, Evil, name,
As my peculiar element I claim.
[tr. Swanwick (1850)]

I am the spirit that denies!
And justly so; for all that time creates,
He does well who annihilates!
Better, it ne'er had had beginning;
And so, then, all that you call sinning,
Destruction, -- all you pronounce ill-meant, --
Is my original element.
[tr. Brooks (1868)]

I am the Spirit that Denies!
And justly so: for all things, from the Void
Called forth, deserve to be destroyed:
'Twere better, then, were naught created.
Thus, all which you as Sin have rated, --
Destruction, -- aught with Evil blent, --
That is my proper element.
[tr. Taylor (1870)]

I am the Spirit of Negation:
And justly so; for all that is created
Deserves to be annihilated.
’Twere better, thus, that there were no creation.
Thus everything that you call evil,
Destruction, ruin, death, the devil,
Is my pure element and sphere.
[tr. Blackie (1880)]

I am the spirit that negates.
And rightly so, for all that comes to be
Deserves to perish wretchedly;
'Twere better nothing would begin.
Thus everything that your terms, sin,
Destruction, evil represent --
That is my proper element.
[tr. Kaufmann (1961)]

I am the spirit that denies forever!
And rightly so! What has arisen from the void
deserves to be annihilated. It would be best if
nothing ever would arise. And thus what you call
havoc, deadly sin, or briefly stated: Evil,
that is my proper element.
[tr. Salm (1962)]

The spirit which eternally denies!
And justly so; for all that which is wrought
Deserves that it should come to naught;
Hence it were best if nothing were engendered.
Which is why all things you have rendered
By terms like sin, destruction -- evil, in brief --
Are my true element-in-chief.
[tr. Arndt (1976)]

I am the spirit of perpetual negation;
And rightly so, for all things that exist
Deserve to perish, and would not be missed.
Much better it would be if nothing were
Brought into being, Thus, what you men call
Destruction, sin, evil in short, is all
My sphere, the element I most prefer.
[tr. Luke (1987)]

I am the spirit that says no, no,
Always! And how right I am! For surely
It's right that everything that comes to be
Should cease to be. And so they do. Still better
Would be nothing ever was. Hence sin
And havoc and ruin -- all you call evil, in sum --
For me's the element in which I swim.
[tr. Greenberg (1992)]

I am the spirit of perpetual negation.
And that is only right; for all
That's made is fit to be destroyed.
Far better if it were an empty void!
So -- everything that you would call
Destruction, sin, and all that's meant
By evil, is my proper element.
[tr. Williams (1999)]

 
Added on 20-Sep-22 | Last updated 20-Sep-22
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But evil is wrought by want of Thought,
As well as want of Heart!

Thomas Hood (1799-1845) British humorist and poet
“The Lady’s Dream,” st. 16 (1844)
    (Source)

First printed in Hood’s Magazine.
 
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I have wrought great use out of evil tools.

Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) English novelist and politician
Richelieu, Act 3, sc. 1, ll. 49-50 [Richelieu] (1839)
    (Source)
 
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In the mirrors of the many judgments, my hands are the color of blood. I am part of the evil that exists in the world and in Shadow. 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. Perhaps even sooner than that, I now judge. But whatever … Until then, I will not wash my hands nor let them hang useless.

Roger Zelazny (1937-1995) American writer
The Guns of Avalon, ch. 3 (1972)
    (Source)
 
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“Neither does this please me, nothing in excess;” for we ought to hate in excess those that are bad to excess.

[οὐδὲ τὸ μηδὲν ἄγαν· δεῖ γὰρ τούς γε κακοὺς ἄγαν μισεῖν.]

Aristotle (384-322 BC) Greek philosopher
Rhetoric [Ῥητορική; Ars Rhetorica], Book 2, ch. 21, sec. 14 (2.21.14) / 1395a.33 (350 BC) [Source (1847)]
    (Source)

On developing one's own maxims and proverbs, and how to present them. (Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:

Nor again [does this please me], that we ought to carry nothing to excess; since 'tis our duty to hate the wicked at least to the very extreme.
[tr. Buckley (1850)]

No do I like the saying, Do nothing excessively. Bad men should be hated excessively.
[tr. Jebb (1873)]

Nor do I approve of the saying "nothing in excess": we are bound to hate bad men excessively.
[tr. Rhys Roberts (1924)]

Nor do I approve the maxim "Nothing in excess," for one cannot hate the wicked too much."
[tr. Freese (1926)]

Neither is "nothing in excess" [satisfying to me]. For one must tate to excess at least those who are evil.
[tr. Bartlett (2019)]

[I do not] commend the saying “nothing in excess” because one must hate evil men to the extreme.
[tr. @sentantiq (2019)]

 
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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.

Edward Teller (1908-2003) Hungarian-American theoretical physicist
(Attributed)
    (Source)

Attributed in a personal communication from Judith Shoolery, in Istvan Hargittai, The Martians of Science: Five Physicists Who Changed the Twentieth Century (2006).
 
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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.

Charles "Charlie" Stross (b. 1964) British writer
Iron Sunrise, ch. 18 (2004)
    (Source)
 
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A maxim for the twenty-first century might well be to start not by fighting evil in the name of good, but by attacking the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found. We should struggle not against the devil himself but what allows the devil to live — Manichaean thinking itself.

Tzvetan Todorov
Tzvetan Todorov (1939-2017) Bulgarian-French historian, philosopher, literary critic, sociologist
Hope and Memory: Reflections on the Twentieth Century, ch. 5 “The Past in the Present” (2003)
    (Source)

Paraphrased variant:

We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found.
 
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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.

Gerhard Schroeder
Gerhard "Gerd" Schröder (b. 1944) German politician, Chancellor (1998-2005), lobbyist
Speech, Sixtieth Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz, Berlin (25 Jan 2005)
    (Source)
 
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To me, good works are more important than theology. We all know that religion has been historically, and still is today, a cause of great evil as well as great good in human affairs. We have seen terrible wars and terrible persecutions conducted in the name of religion. We have also seen large numbers of people inspired by religion to lives of heroic virtue, bringing education and medical care to the poor, helping to abolish slavery and spread peace among nations. Religion amplifies the good and evil tendencies of individual souls. Religion will always remain a powerful force in the history of our species. To me, the meaning of progress in religion is simply this, that as we move from the past to the future the good works inspired by religion should more and more prevail over the evil.

Freeman Dyson
Freeman Dyson (1923-2020) English-American theoretical physicist, mathematician, futurist
“Progress in Religion,” speech accepting the Templeton Prize, Washington National Cathedral (9 May 2000)
    (Source)
 
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Hear now the treachery of the Greeks and from one learn the wickedness of all.

[Accipe nunc Danaum insidias, et crimine ab uno
Disce omnes.]

Virgil the Poet
Virgil (70-19 BC) Roman poet [b. Publius Vergilius Maro; also Vergil]
The Aeneid [Ænē̆is], Book 2, l. 65ff (2.65-66) [Aeneas] (29-19 BC) [tr. Fairclough (1916)]
    (Source)

Regarding Sinon, who posed as a Greek refugee and persuaded the Trojans that the Trojan Horse was harmless. (Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:

Receive Greeks treacheries now; and from one crime
Learn all.
[tr. Ogilby (1649)]

Now hear how well the Greeks their wiles disguis'd;
Behold a nation in a man compris'd.
[tr. Dryden (1697)]

Now learn the treachery of the Greeks, and from one crime take a specimen of the whole nation.
[tr. Davidson/Buckley (1854), "Literally, 'from one of their tricks learn what they all are.'"]

Now listen while my tongue declares
The tale you ask of Danaan snares,
And gather from a single charge
Their catalogue of crimes at large.
[tr. Conington (1866)]

Now
Hear what the treachery of the Grecians was,
And from one crime learn all.
[tr. Cranch (1872), l. 89ff]

Know now the treachery of the Grecians, and from a single crime learn all.
[tr. Mackail (1885)]

Lo now, behold the Danaan guile, and from one wrong they wrought
Learn ye what all are like to be.
[tr. Morris (1900)]

Mark now the Danaans' cunning; from one wrong
Learn all.
[tr. Taylor (1907), st. 10, ll. 82-83]

Hear now what Greek deception is, and learn
from one dark wickedness the whole.
[tr. Williams (1910)]

Listen, and learn Greek trickiness; learn all
Their crimes from one.
[tr. Humphries (1951)]

Now hear how the Greeks tricked us; learn from one case of their wickedness
What every Greek is like.
[tr. Day Lewis (1952)]

Now listen to the treachery of the Danaans
and learn from one the wickedness of all.
[tr. Mandelbaum (1971), ll. 92-93]

Be instructed now
In Greek deceptive arts: one barefaced deed
Can tell you of them all.
[tr. Fitzgerald (1981), l.91ff]

Listen now to this story of Greek treachery, and from this one indictment, learn the ways of a whole people.
[tr. West (1990)]

Listen now to Greek treachery, and learn of all their crimes
from just this one.
[tr. Kline (2002)]

Hear now
The treachery of the Greeks, and from one offense
Learn all their evil.
[tr. Lombardo (2005)]

Now, hear the treachery of the Greeks and learn
from a single crime the nature of the beast.
[tr. Fagles (2006)]

Now hear how the Greeks baited their trap, and from one act of treachery, understand them all!
[tr. Bartsch (2021)]

 
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But I have learned from philosophers that among evils one ought not only to choose the least, but also to extract even from these any element of good that they may contain.

[Sed quia sic ab hominibus doctis accepimus, non solum ex malis eligere minima oportere, sed etiam excerpere ex his ipsis, si quid inesset boni ….]

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
De Officiis [On Duties; On Moral Duty; The Offices], Book 3, ch. 1 (3.1) / sec. 3 (44 BC) [tr. Miller (1913)]
    (Source)

(Source (Latin)). Alternate translation:

This is given us for a rule by the learned, that when several evils are threatening us at once, we should not only choose to undergo the least, but extract some advantage out of them, if it be possible.
[tr. Cockman (1699)]

We have been taught by learned men, not only that we ought to choose the least of evils, but also to extract from them, whatever good they contain.
[tr. McCartney (1798)]

We have bene taught by learned men, that out of evils it is fit not only to choose the least, but also from those very evils to gather whatever good is in them.
[tr. Edmonds (1865)]

Philosophers say that one ought not only of evils to choose the least, but from even these least evils to extract whatever of good there may be in them.
[tr. Peabody (1883)]

Having been taught by philosophers not only to choose the lesser evil but even to extract whatever good is in it.
[tr. Gardiner (1899)]

Learned men have taught us that not only with a choice of evils we should choose the least, but that from the evil we should endeavor to extract some good.
[Harbottle, Dictionary of Quotations (Classical) (1906 ed.)]

Philosophers have taught me not only that one ought to choose the lesser evils but also that even from them one ought to gather whatever good they might contain.
[tr. Edinger (1974)]

See also Thomas à Kempis.
 
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While then the worst man is he who displays vice both in his own affairs and in his dealings with his friends, the best man is not he who displays virtue in his own affairs merely, but he who displays virtue towards others; for this is the hard thing to do.

[κάκιστος μὲν οὖν ὁ καὶ πρὸς αὑτὸν καὶ πρὸς τοὺς φίλους χρώμενος τῇ μοχθηρίᾳ, ἄριστος δ᾽ οὐχ ὁ πρὸς αὑτὸν τῇ ἀρετῇ ἀλλὰ πρὸς ἕτερον: τοῦτο γὰρ ἔργον χαλεπόν.]

Aristotle (384-322 BC) Greek philosopher
Nicomachean Ethics [Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια], Book 5, ch. 1 (5.1.18) / 1130a.5-8 (c. 325 BC) [tr. Peters (1893)]
    (Source)

(Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:

Now he is the basest of men who practises vice not only in his own person, but towards his friends also; but he the best who practises virtue not merely in his own person but towards his neighbour, for this is a matter of some difficulty.
tr. Chase (1847), ch. 2]

Worst of men is he whose wickedness affects not himself alone but his fellow with him; best of men is he whose virtue affects not himself alone but his fellow with him; for such a one has in all sooth a hard task.
[tr. Williams (1869)]

As then the worst of men is he who exhibits his depravity both in his own life and in relation to his friends, the best of men is he who exhibits his virtue not in his own life only but in relation to others; for this is a difficult task.
[tr. Welldon (1892)]

Now the worst man is he who exercises his wickedness both towards himself and towards his friends, and the best man is not he who exercises his virtue towards himself but he who exercises it towards another; for this is a difficult task.
[tr. Ross (1908)]

As then the worst man is he who practises vice towards his friends as well as in regard to himself, so the best is not he who practises virtue in regard to himself but he who practises it towards others; for that is a difficult task.
[tr. Rackham (1934)]

The worst sort of person, then, is the one who uses his depravity both in relation to himself and in relation to his friends, whereas the best sort is not the one who uses his virtue in relationship to himself but the one who uses it in relation to another person, since that is difficult work.
[tr. Reeve (1948)]

The worst man, then, is the one whose evil habit affects both himself and his friends, while the best man is one whose virtue is directed not to himself, but to others, for this is a difficult task.
[tr. Apostle (1975)]

So the worst person is the one who exercises his wickedness towards both himself and his friends, and the best is not the one who exercises his virtue towards himself but the one who exercises it towards another; because this is a difficult task.
[tr. Thomson/Tredennick (1976)]

So the worst person is the one who exercises wickedness in relation to himself and in relation to his friends, and the best is not he who exercises his virtue in relation to himself but the one who exercises it in relation to others, since this is a difficult thing to do.
[tr. Crisp (2000)]

Worst, then, is he who treats both himself and his friends in a corrupt way, but best is he who makes use of virtue not in relation to himself but in relation to another. For this is a difficult task.
[tr. Bartlett/Collins (2011)]

 
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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.

Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) Indian nationalist leader, politician, statesman, author
“The Bombing of Open Towns,” speech, International Peace Campaign Conference, Paris (24 Jul 1938)
    (Source)

Nehru was comparing rising fascism to colonial imperialism, and the bombings of cities in Spain and China to ongoing British bombing of villages in the North-West Frontier of India. Collected in The Unity of India : Collected Writings, 1937-1940 (1942).
 
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The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.

J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) English writer, fabulist, philologist, academic [John Ronald Reuel Tolkien]
The Lord of the Rings, Vol. 1: The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, ch. 6 “Lothlórien” [Haldir] (1954)
    (Source)
 
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He that has light within his own clear breast
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.

John Milton (1608-1674) English poet
A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle, ll. 380-84 (1634)
    (Source)

The title was changed to Comus for the 1737 stage version.
 
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When we think of evil, we think of something violent or demonic, something filled with hatred and wretchedly hungry to devour the good. But what if evil eats a salad at lunch and is polite, speaking rationally with nice table manners?

John Kass
John Kass (b. 1956) American journalist, columnist
“Evil with salad and a nice red,” Chicago Tribune (19 Jul 2015)
    (Source)
 
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The problem of drugs, of divorce, of race prejudice, of unmarried pregnancy, and so on — as if evil were a problem, something that an be solved, that has an answer, like a problem in fifth grade arithmetic. If you want the answer, you just look in the back of the book. That is escapism, that posing evil as a “problem,” instead of what it is: all the pain and suffering and waste and loss and injustice we will meet our loves long, and must face and cope with over and over and over, and admit, and live with, in order to live human lives at all.

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) American writer
“The Child and the Shadow,” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress (Apr 1975)
    (Source)

On the difficulty of "realistic fiction" for children to teach morality. First delivered as a speech; later reprinted in The Language of the Night (1979).
 
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This is what the prophets discovered. History is a nightmare. There are more scandals, more acts of corruption, than are dreamed of in philosophy. It would be blasphemous to believe that what we witness is the end of God’s creation. It is an act of evil to accept the state of evil as either inevitable or final. Others may be satisfied with improvement, the prophets insist upon redemption. The way man acts is a disgrace, and it must not go on forever.

Abraham Joshua Heschel
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) Polish-American rabbi, theologian, philosopher
The Prophets, Vol. 1 (1962)
 
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Every man knows there are evils in this world which need setting right. Every man has pretty definite ideas as what these evils are. But to most men one in particular stands out vividly. To some, in fact, this stands out with such startling vividness that they lose sight of other evils, or look upon them as the natural consequence of their own particular evil-in-chief.

Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993) American business and economics journalist
Thinking As A Science, ch. 1, opening words (1916)
    (Source)
 
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There is always a certain glamour about the idea of a nation rising up to crush an evil simply because it is wrong. Unfortunately, this can seldom be realized in real life; for the very existence of the evil usually argues a moral weakness in the very place where extraordinary moral strength is called for.

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) American writer, historian, social reformer [William Edward Burghardt Du Bois]
The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, ch. 12, sec. 93 (1896)
    (Source)
 
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I had discovered what one man could do to another. I am not talking about one man killing another with a gun, or dropping a bomb on him or blowing him up or torpedoing him. I am thinking of the vileness beyond all words that went on, year after year, in the totalitarian states. It is bad enough to say that so many Jews were exterminated in this way and that, so many people liquidated — lovely, elegant word — but there were things done during that period from which I still have to avert my mind lest I should be physically sick. They were not done by the headhunters of New Guinea, or by some primitive tribe in the Amazon. They were done, skilfully, coldly, by educated men, doctors, lawyers, by men with a tradition of civilization behind them, to beings of their own kind. I must say that anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey must have been blind or wrong in the head.

William Golding
William Golding (1911-1983) British novelist, playwright, poet
Lord of the Flies as Fable,” Lecture, UCLA (1962)
    (Source)

Reprinted in The Hot Gates (1965).
 
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Destroy the seed of evil, or it will grow up to your ruin.

Aesop (620?-560? BC) Legendary Greek storyteller
Fables [Aesopica], “The Swallow and the Other Birds” (6th C BC) [tr. Jacobs (1894)]
    (Source)
 
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Vile deeds are vile, no matter whether we know or do not know what, after death, will be the fate of the doer. We know, at least, what his fate is now, namely to be wedded to the vileness.

Felix Adler
Felix Adler (1851-1933) German-American educator
Life and Destiny, Lecture 9 “Ethical Outlook” (1903)
    (Source)
 
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When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil. You may have to make the choice, but do not fool yourself into thinking it is therefore a good.

Maxwell "Max" Lerner (1902-1992) American journalist, columnist, educator
Actions and Passions (1949)
 
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Contumely always falls upon those who break through some custom or convention. Such men, in fact, are called criminals. Everyone who overthrows an existing law is, at the start, regarded as a wicket man. Long afterward, when it is found that this law was bad and so cannot be re-established, the epithet is changed. All history treats almost exclusively of wicked men who, in the course of time, have come to be looked upon as good men. All progress is the result of successful crimes.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) German philosopher and poet
The Dawn [Morgenröte], sec. 20 (1881) [Mencken (1907)]
    (Source)

Alternate translations:

We have to make good a great deal of the contumely which has fallen on all those who, by their actions, have broken through the conventionality of some custom -- such people generally have been called criminals. Everybody who overthrew the existing moral law has hitherto, at least in the beginning, been considered a wicked man; but when afterwards, as sometimes happened, the old law could not be re-established and had to be abandoned, the epithet was gradually changed. History almost exclusively treats of such wicked men who, in the course of time, have been declared good men.
[tr. Volz (1903)]

One has to take back much of the defamation which people have cast upon all those who broke through the spell of a custom by means of a deed -- in general, they are called criminals. Whoever has overthrown an existing law of custom has hitherto always first been accounted a bad man: but when, as did happen the laws could not afterwards be reinstated and this fact was accepted, the predicate gradually changed -- history treats almost exclusively of these bad men who subsequently became good men!
[tr. Hollingdale (1997)]

 
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It may be confidently asserted that no man chooses evil, because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

Wollstonecraft - No man chooses evil because it is evil - wist.info quote

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) English social philosopher, feminist, writer
A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
    (Source)
 
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For he says that evils are neither diminished by time nor lightened by being premeditated; that meditation on evil to come, or, it may be, on that which will never come, is foolish; that every evil is sufficiently annoying when it comes; that to him who has always thought that something adverse may happen to him that very thought is a perpetual evil; that if the expected evil should not happen, he would have incurred voluntary misery in vain; that thus one would be always in distress, either in suffering evil or in thinking of it.

[Nam neque vetustate minui mala nec fieri praemeditata leviora, stultamque etiam esse meditationem futuri mali aut fortasse ne futuri quidem: satis esse odiosum malum omne, cum venisset; qui autem semper cogitavisset accidere posse aliquid adversi, ei fieri illud sempiternum malum; si vero ne futurum quidem sit, frustra suscipi miseriam voluntariam; ita semper angi aut accipiendo aut cogitando malo.]

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
Tusculan Disputations [Tusculanae Disputationes], Book 3, ch. 15 (3.15) / sec. 32 (45 BC) [tr. Peabody (1886)]
    (Source)

Discussing the teachings of Epicurus (fr. U444). Source (Latin). Alternate translations:

For that neither are Evils abated by long time, nor yet alleviated by foresight of them; and that the poring on Evils not yet come, and perhaps that never will come, is foolish. For that all Evil is Vexation enough, when it is come; but he that is always thinking that some Adversity may possibly befall him, to him it becometh an everlasting Evil; but if it shall never actually come upon him, a voluntary Disquiet is taken up on false grounds; so the mind is always vex'd, either with enduring, or expecting Evil.
[tr. Wase (1643)]

Evils are not the less by reason of their continuance, nor the oighter for having been foreseen; and it is folly to ruminate on evils to come, or that, perhaps, may never come; every evil is disagreeable enough when it doth come: but he who is constantly considering that some evil may befall him, charges himself with a perpetual evil, for should such eve never light on him, he voluntarily takes to himself unnecessary misery, so that he is under constant uneasiness, whether he meets any evil or only thinks of it.
[tr. Main (1824)]

For evil ls not diminished by time, nor alleviated by premeditation: that it is folly itself to brood upon evil that is future, or indeed, perhaps, is not to be at all: that evil is hateful enough when it comes: that, to the man, who is always musing upon that which is to come, his meditation itself becomes an eternal evil; and, should it prove that his apprehensions have been groundless, he burdens himself with a voluntary misery; and thus, between the encounter and contemplation of evil, he is always in trouble.
[tr. Otis (1839)]

Evils are not the less by reason of their continuance, nor the lighter for having been foreseen; and it is folly to ruminate on evils to come, or such as, perhaps, never may come; every evil is disagreeable enough when it does come; but he who is constantly considering that some evil may befall him, is loading himself with a perpetual evil, and even should such evil never light on him, he voluntarily takes upon himself unnecessary misery, so that he is under constant uneasiness, whether he actually suffers any evil, or only thinks of it.
[tr. Yonge (1853)]

Evils are not diminished by the passage of time, nor made easier by pre-rehearsal. In fact it is foolish to rehearse misfortunes which have not yet happened and which may not happen at all. Each of our misfortunes is distasteful enough, he says, when it is already here: those who have constantly been thinking about what disagreeable things are on the way simply make their evils perpetual. And those things may not happen at all, in which case all their voluntary misery goes for nothing. The result is that they are always in anxiety, either from the evils they undergo or from those they anticipate.
[tr. Graver (2002)]

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

Simone Weil (1909-1943) French philosopher
Notebooks [Cahiers] [tr. Wills (1956)]
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In all men is evil sleeping; the good man is he who will not awaken it, in himself or in other men.

Mary Renault
Mary Renault (1905-1983) English writer [b. Eileen Mary Challans]
The Praise Singer (1977)
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When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint meaningfully at their capacity for evil. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
The Passionate State of Mind, Aphorism 91 (1955)
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In the face of evil, detachment is a dubious virtue.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1934-2002) American journalist, essayist, memoirist
“Budapest, Winter 1989,” The Astonishing World (1992)
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No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.

George Eliot (1819-1880) English novelist [pseud. of Mary Ann Evans]
Daniel Deronda, Book 5, ch. 8 (1876)
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Men are willing to keep their evil characters if they can but get rid of their evil reputations. They are scrupulously studious of appearances.

Frank W. Boreham (1871-1959) Anglo-Australian preacher
“The Leopard’s Skin,” sec. 4, The Three Half-Moons (1929)
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Evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Eugenics and Other Evils, ch. 1 (1922)
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Nothing could be less worthy of you than to think anything worse than dishonor, infamous behavior, and wickedness. To escape these, any pain is not so much as to be avoided as to be sought voluntarily, undergone, and welcomed.

[Quid enim minus est dignum quam tibi peius quicquam videri dedecore flagitio turpitudine? Quae ut effugias, quis est non modo recusandus, sed non ultro adpetendus subeundus excipiendus dolor?]

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
Tusculan Disputations [Tusculanae Disputationes], Book 2, ch. 5 (2.5) / sec. 14 [Marcus] (45 BC) [tr. Douglas (1990)]
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Original Latin. Alternate translations:

For what is more unsuitable to that high Character, than for you to think any thing worse, than dishonour, scandal, baseness? to avoid which, what Pain would not only not be declin'd, but also be eagerly pursu'd, undergone, encounter'd?
[tr. Wase (1643)]

For what is so unbecoming? What can appear worse to you, than disgrace, wickedness, immorality? To avoid which, what pain should we not only not refuse, but willingly take on ourselves?
[tr. Main (1824)]

For what is less worthy than for anything to appear worse to you than disgrace, turpitude, wickedness? which to escape, what pain is to be refused, or rather not to be welcomed, sought for, embraced?
[tr. Otis (1839)]

For what is so unbecoming -- what can appear worse to you, than disgrace, wickedness, immorality? To avoid which, what pain is there which we ought not (I will not say to avoid shirking, but even) of our own accord to encounter, and undergo, and even to court?
[tr. Yonge (1853)]

For what is more unworthy than that anything should seem to you worse than disgrace, crime, baseness? To escape these what pain should be not only not shunned, but voluntarily sought, endured, welcomed?
[tr. Peabody (1886)]

There is nothing more unworthy than for you to think anything worse than disgrace, criminal behavior, and infamous conduct. In order to escape these, any pain is not so to be rejected, as to be actively sought out, undergone, welcomed.
[tr. Davie (2017)]

 
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Once we have labeled someone as “evil” there is often no limit to the cruelty and violence we can feel justified in administering to him ….

James Gilligan (b. c. 1936) American psychiatrist and author
Preventing Violence (2001)
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Some people think that evolutionary psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked. But they are flattering the researchers and anyone who would claim to have discovered the opposite. No one needs a scientist to measure whether humans are prone to knavery. The question has been answered in the history books, the newspapers, the ethnographic record, and the letters to Ann Landers. But people treat it like an open question, as if someday science might discover that it’s all a bad dream and we will wake up to find that it is human nature to love one another.

Steven Pinker (b. 1954) Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, author
How the Mind Works, ch. 7 (1997)
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Crowley had always known that he would be around when the world ended, because he was immortal and wouldn’t have any alternative. But he hoped it was a long way off.

Because he rather liked people.

It was major failing in a demon. Oh, he did his best to make their short lives miserable, because that was his job, but nothing he could think up was half as bad as the stuff they thought up themselves. They seemed to have a talent for it. It was built into the design, somehow. They were born into a world that was against them in a thousand little ways, and then devoted most of their energies to making it worse. Over the years Crowley had found it increasingly difficult to find anything demonic to do which showed up against the natural background of generalized nastiness. There had been times, over the past millennium, when he’d felt like sending a message back Below saying, Look we may as well give up right now, we might as well shut down Dis and Pandemonium and everywhere and move up here, there’s nothing we can do to them that they don’t do to themselves and they do things we’ve never even thought of, often involving electrodes. They’ve got what we lack. They’ve got imagination. And electricity, of course.

One of them had written it, hadn’t he … “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Good Omens, 2. “Eleven Years Ago” (1990) [with Neil Gaiman]
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The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine. I don’t want to do that. Right now, without any god, I don’t want to jump across this table and strangle you. I have no desire to strangle you. I have no desire to flip you over and rape you.

Penn Jillette (b. 1955) American stage magician, actor, musician, author
“Penn Jillette Rapes All the Women He Wants To,” Interview by Ron Bennington,Interrobang (30 Apr 2012)
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If the first blow hasn’t knocked all the wits out of the victim’s head, he may realize that turning the other cheek amounts to manipulation of the offender’s sense of guilt, not to speak of his karma. The moral victory itself may not be so moral after all, not only because suffering often has a narcissistic aspect to it, but also because it renders the victim superior, that is, better than his enemy. Yet no matter how evil your enemy is, the crucial thing is that he is human; and although incapable of loving another like ourselves, we nonetheless know that evil takes root when one man starts to think that he is better than another.

Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996) Russian-American poet, essayist, Nobel laureate, US Poet Laureate [Iosif Aleksandrovič Brodskij]
Commencement Address, Williams College (24 May 1984)
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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. No amount of good nature or cunning calculations will prevent this encounter. In fact, the more calculating, the more cautious you are, the greater is the likelihood of this rendezvous, the harder its impact. Such is the structure of life that what we regard as Evil is capable of a fairly ubiquitous presence if only because it tends to appear in the guise of good. You never see it crossing your threshold announcing itself: “Hi, I’m Evil!” That, of course, indicates its secondary nature, but the comfort one may derive from this observation gets dulled by its frequency.

Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996) Russian-American poet, essayist, Nobel laureate, US Poet Laureate [Iosif Aleksandrovič Brodskij]
Commencement Address, Williams College (24 May 1984)
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People in other cultures are generally thought to commit terrible acts for calculated reasons, underscored by some perverse morality that can be readily discounted, so that only the consequences of their actions should be judged, whereas for one’s own group motivation is, and what ought to, mostly count.

Scott Atran (b. 1952) American-French cultural anthropologist
“Good Guys Kill Better,” Huffington Post (17 Mar 2012)
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“And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”
“It’s a lot more complicated than that –”
“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes –”
“But they starts with thinking about people as things …”

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Carpe Jugulum [Granny Weatherwax, Rev. Mightily Oats] (1998)
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Man the master, ingenious past all measure,
past all dreams the skills within his grasp —
   he forges on, now to destruction,
now again to greatness. When he weaves in
the laws of the land, and the justice of the gods
that bind his oaths together
   he and his city rise high —
      but the city casts out
that man who weds himself to inhumanity
thanks to reckless daring. Never share my hearth,
never think my thoughts, whoever does such things.

[σοφόν τι τὸ μηχανόεν τέχνας ὑπὲρ ἐλπίδ᾽ ἔχων
τοτὲ μὲν κακόν, ἄλλοτ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἐσθλὸν ἕρπει,
νόμους γεραίρων χθονὸς θεῶν τ᾽ ἔνορκον δίκαν,
370ὑψίπολις: ἄπολις ὅτῳ τὸ μὴ καλὸν
ξύνεστι τόλμας χάριν. μήτ᾽ ἐμοὶ παρέστιος
γένοιτο μήτ᾽ ἴσον φρονῶν ὃς τάδ᾽ ἔρδει.]

Sophocles (496-406 BC) Greek tragic playwright
Antigone, l. 365ff, Stasimon 1, Antistrophe 2 [Chorus] (441 BC) [tr. Fagles (1982)]
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Original Greek. Alternate translations:

Wise in his craft of art
Beyond the bounds of expectation,
The while to good he goes, the while to evil.
Honouring his country's laws and heaven's oathbound right,
High is he in the state!
But cityless is he with whom inherent baseness dwells;
When boldness dares so much,
No seat by me at festive hearth,
No seat by me in sect or party,
For him that sinneth!
[tr. Donaldson (1848)]

Passing the wildest flight thought are the cunning and skill,
That guide man now to the light, but now to counsels of ill.
If he honors the laws of the land, and reveres the Gods of the State
Proudly his city shall stand; but a cityless outcast I rate
Whoso bold in his pride from the path of right doth depart;
Ne'er may I sit by his side, or share the thoughts of his heart.
[tr. Storr (1859)]

Inventive beyond wildest hope, endowed with boundless skill,
One while he moves toward evil, and one while toward good,
According as he loves his land and fears the Gods above.
Weaving the laws into his life and steadfast oath of Heaven,
High in the State he moves but outcast he,
Who hugs dishonour to his heart and follows paths of crime
Ne'er may he come beneath my roof, nor think like thoughts with me.v [tr. Campbell (1873)]

Possessing resourceful skill, a subtlety beyond expectation he moves now to evil, now to good. When he honors the laws of the land and the justice of the gods to which he is bound by oath, his city prospers. But banned from his city is he who, thanks to his rashness, couples with disgrace. Never may he share my home, never think my thoughts, who does these things!
[tr. Jebb (1891)]

Cunning beyond fancy's dream is the fertile skill which brings him, now to evil, now to good. When he honours the laws of the land, and that justice which he hath sworn by the gods to uphold, proudly stands his city: no city hath he who, for his rashness, dwells with sin. Never may he share my hearth, never think my thoughts, who doth these things!
[tr. Jebb (1917)]

O clear intelligence, force beyond all measure!
O fate of man, working both good and evil!
When the laws are kept, how proudly his city stands!
When the laws are broken, what of his city then?
Never may the anarchic man find rest at my hearth,
Never be it said that my thoughts are his thoughts.
[tr. Fitts/Fitzgerald (1939), l. 285ff]

O wondrous subtlety of man, that draws
To good or evil ways! Great honor is given
And power to him who upholdeth his country’s laws
And the justice of heaven.
But he that, too rashly daring, walks in sin
In solitary pride to his life’s end.
At door of mine shall never enter in
To call me friend.
[tr. Watling (1947)]

Clever beyond all dreams
the inventive crat that he has
which may drive him one time or another to well or ill.
When he honors the laws of the land and the gods' sworn right
high indeed is his city; but stateless is the man
who dares to dwell with dishonor. Not by my fire,
never to share my thoughts, who does these things.
[tr. Wyckoff (1954)]

Surpassing belief, the device and
Cunning that Man has attained,
And it bringeth him now to evil, now to good.
If he observe Law, and tread
The righteous path God ordained,
Honored is he; dishonored, the man whose reckless heart
Shall make him join hands with sin:
May I not think like him,
Nor may such an impious man
Dwell in my house.
[tr. Kitto (1962)]

He has cunning contrivance,
Skill surpassing hope,
And so he slithers into wickedness sometimes,
Other times into doing good.
If he honors the law of the land
And the oath-bound justice of the gods,
Then his city shall stand high.
But no city for him if he turns shameless out of daring.
He will be no guest of mine,
He will never share my thoughts,
If he goes wrong.
[tr. Woodruff (2001)]

Possessing a means of invention, a skillfulness beyond expectation,
now toward evil he moves, now toward good.
By integrating the laws of the earth
and justice under oath sworn to the gods,
he is lofty of city. Citiless is the man with whom ignobility
because of his daring dwells.
May he never reside at my hearth
or think like me,
whoever does such things.
[tr. Tyrell/Bennett (2002)]

And though his wisdom is great in discovery -- wisdom beyond all imaginings!
Yet one minute it turns to ill the next again to good.
But whoever honours the laws of his land and his sworn oaths to the gods, he’ll bring glory to his city.
The arrogant man, on the other hand, the man who strays from the righteous path is lost to his city. Let that man never stay under the same roof as me or even be acquainted by me!
[tr. Theodoridis (2004)]

The qualities of his inventive skills
bring arts beyond his dreams and lead him on,
sometimes to evil and sometimes to good.
If he treats his country’s laws with due respect
and honours justice by swearing on the gods,
he wins high honours in his city.
But when he grows bold and turns to evil,
then he has no city. A man like that --
let him not share my home or know my mind.
[tr. Johnston (2005), l. 415ff]

With clever creativity beyond expectation, he moves now to evil, now to good. The one who observes the laws of the land and justice, our compat with the gods, is honored in the city, but there is no city for one who participates in what is wrong for the sake of daring. Let him not share my hearth, nor let me share his ideas who had done these things.
[tr. Thomas (2005)]

 
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Throughout our nervous history, we have constructed pyramidic towers of evil, ofttimes in the name of good. Our greed, fear and lasciviousness have enabled us to murder our poets, who are ourselves, to castigate our priests, who are ourselves. The lists of our subversions of the good stretch from before recorded history to this moment. We drop our eyes at the mention of the bloody, torturous Inquisition. Our shoulders sag at the thoughts of African slaves lying spoon-­fashion in the filthy hatches of slave-ships, and the subsequent auction blocks upon which were built great fortunes in our country. We turn our heads in bitter shame at the remembrance of Dachau and the other gas ovens, where millions of ourselves were murdered by millions of ourselves. As soon as we are reminded of our actions, more often than not we spend incredible energy trying to forget what we’ve just been reminded of.

Maya Angelou (1928-2014) American poet, memoirist, activist [b. Marguerite Ann Johnson]
“Facing Evil,” Interview by Bill Moyers (1982)
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Something Vimes had learned as a young guard drifted up from memory. If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you’re going to die. So they’ll talk. They’ll gloat.
They’ll watch you squirm. They’ll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar.
So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Men at Arms (1993)
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It is not pointless to acquire wealth but it is more evil than anything to get it from injustice.

[Χρήματα πορίζειν μὲν οὐκ ἀχρεῖον, ἐξ ἀδικίης δὲ πάντων κάκιον.]

Democritus (c. 460 BC - c. 370 BC) Greek philosopher
Frag. 78 (Diels) [tr. @sententiq (2018)]
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Original Greek. Diels citation "78. (74 N.) DEMOKRATES. 43."; collected in Joannes Stobaeus (Stobaios) Anthologium 4, 31, 21. Bakewell lists this under "The Golden Sayings of Democritus." Freeman notes this as one of the Gnômae, from a collection called "Maxims of Democratês," but because Stobaeus quotes many of these as "Maxims of Democritus," they are generally attributed to the latter. Alternate translations:

  • "Making money is not without its value, but nothing is baser than to make it by wrong-doing." [tr. Bakewell (1907)]
  • "To make money is not without use, but if it comes from wrong-doing, nothing is worse." [tr. Freeman (1948)]
 
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The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even — if you will — eccentricity. That is, something that can’t be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn’t be happy with. Something, in other words, that can’t be shared, like your own skin: not even by a minority. Evil is a sucker for solidity. It always goes for big numbers, for confident granite, for ideological purity, for drilled armies and balanced sheets. Its proclivity for such things has to do with its innate insecurity, but this realization, again, is of small comfort when Evil triumphs.

Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996) Russian-American poet, essayist, Nobel laureate, US Poet Laureate [Iosif Aleksandrovič Brodskij]
Commencement Address, Williams College (24 May 1984)
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To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions.

Alexander Solzhenitsen (1918-2008) Russian novelist, emigre [Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn]
The Gulag Archipelago, Vol. 1, Part 1, ch. 4 (1973) [tr. Whitney]
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Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble — and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb, too. The imagination and spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.

Ideology — that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations.

Alexander Solzhenitsen (1918-2008) Russian novelist, emigre [Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn]
The Gulag Archipelago, Vol. 1, Part 1, ch. 4 (1973) [tr. Whitney]
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In all your actions, words, and thoughts, be aware that it is possible that you may depart from life at any time. But leaving the human race is nothing to be afraid of, if the gods exist; they would not involve you in anything bad. And if they do not exist or have no concern for human affairs, why should I live in a universe empty of gods and empty of providence? But the gods do exist and have concern for human affairs and have placed it wholly in the power of human beings never to meet what is truly bad.

[Ὡς ἤδη δυνατοῦ ὄντος ἐξιέναι τοῦ βίου, οὕτως ἕκαστα ποιεῖν καὶ λέγειν καὶ διανοεῖσθαι. τὸ δὲ ἐξ ἀνθρώπων ἀπελθεῖν, εἰ μὲν θεοὶ εἰσίν, οὐδὲν δεινόν: κακῷ γάρ σε οὐκ ἂν περιβάλοιεν: εἰ δὲ ἤτοι οὐκ εἰσὶν ἢ οὐ μέλει αὐτοῖς τῶν ἀνθρωπείων, τί μοι ζῆν ἐν κόσμῳ κενῷ θεῶν ἢ προνοίας κενῷ; ἀλλὰ καὶ εἰσὶ καὶ μέλει αὐτοῖς τῶν ἀνθρωπείων καὶ τοῖς μὲν κατ̓ ἀλήθειαν κακοῖς ἵνα μὴ περιπίπτῃ ὁ ἄνθρωπος, ἐπ̓ αὐτῷ τὸ πᾶν ἔθεντο.]

Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) Roman emperor (161-180), Stoic philosopher
Meditations, Book 2, #11 [tr. Gill (2014)]
    (Source)

Original Greek. Alternate translations:

Whatsoever thou dost affect, whatsoever thou dost project, so do, and so project all, as one who, for aught thou knowest, may at this very present depart out of this life. And as for death, if there be any gods, it is no grievous thing to leave the society of men. The gods will do thee no hurt, thou mayest be sure. But if it be so that there be no gods, or that they take no care of the world, why should I desire to live in a world void of gods, and of all divine providence? But gods there be certainly, and they take care for the world; and as for those things which be truly evil, as vice and. wickedness, such things they have put in a man's own power, that he might avoid them if he would.
[tr. Casaubon (1634), #8]

Manage all your Actions and Thoughts in such a Manner as if you were just going to step into the Grave. And what great matter is the Business of Dying; if the Gods are in Being you can suffer nothing, for they'll do you no Harm, and if they are not, or take no Care of us Mortals, why then I must tell you, that a World without either Gods, or Providence is not worth a Man's while to live in. But there's no need of this Supposition; The Being of the Gods, and their Concern in Human Affairs is beyond Dispute. And as an Instance of this, They have put it in his Power not to fall into any Calamity properly so called.
[tr. Collier (1701)]

Since it is possible that thou mayest depart from life this very moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly. But to go away from among men, if there are gods, is not a thing to be afraid of, for the gods will not involve thee in evil; but if indeed they do not exist, or if they have no concern about human affairs, what is it to me to live in a universe devoid of gods or devoid of providence? But in truth they do exist, and they do care for human things, and they have put all the means in man's power to enable him not to fall into real evils.
[tr. Long (1873 ed.)]

Manage all your actions, words, and thoughts accordingly , since you may at any moment quit life. And what great matter is the business of dying? If the gods are in being, you can suffer nothing, for they will do you no har. And if they are not, or take no care of us mortals -- why, then a world without either gods or Providence is not worth a man's while ot live in. But, in truth, the being of the gods, and their concern in human affairs, is beyond dispute. And they have put it entirely in a man's power not to fall into any calamity properly so-called.
[tr. Zimmern (1887)]

Whatever you do or say or think, it is in your power, remember, to take leave of life. In departing from this world, if indeed there are gods, there is nothing to be afraid of; for gods will not let you fall into evil. But if there are no gods, or if they do not concern themsleves with men, why live on in a world devoid of gods, or devoid of providence? But there do exist gods, who do concern themselves with men. And they have put it wholly in the power of man not to fall into any true evil.
[tr. Rendall (1898 ed.)]

Let thine every deed and word and thought be those of a man who can depart from life this moment.[16] But to go away from among men, if there are Gods, is nothing dreadful ; for they would not involve thee in evil. But if indeed there are no Gods, or if they do not concern themselves with the affairs of men, what boots it for me to live in a Universe where there are no Gods, where Providence is not? Nay, but there are Gods, and they do concern themselves with human things;[17] and they have put it wholly in man's power not to fall into evils that are truly such.
[tr. Haines (1916)]

In the conviction that it is possible you may depart from life at once, act and speak and think in every case accordingly. But to leave the company of men is nothing to fear, if gods exist; for they would not involve you in ill. If, however, they do not exist or if they take no care for man's affairs, why should I go on living in a world void of gods, or void of providence? But they do exist, and they do care for men's lives, and they have put it entirely in a man's power not to fall into real ills.
[tr. Farquharson (1944)]

In all you do or say or think, recollect that at any time the power of withdrawal from life is in your hands. If gods exist, you have nothing to fear in taking leave of mankind, for they will not let you come to harm. But if there are no gods, or if they have no concern with mortal affairs, what is life to me, in a world devoid of gods or devoid of Providence? Gods, however, do exist, and do concern themselves with the world of men. They have given us full power not to fall into any of the absolute evils.
[tr. Staniforth (1964)]

You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. If the gods exist, then to abandon human beings is not frightening; the gods would never subject you to harm. And if they don't exist, or don't care what happens to us, what would be the point of living in a world without gods or Providence? But they do exist, they do care what happens to us, and everything a person needs to avoid real harm they have placed within him.
[tr. Hays (2003)]

Do, say, and think each thing as if it is possible to die right now. To leave the discussion of human affairs, if there are gods, it is nothing terrible -- for they would not ensnare you in evil. If, moreover, there are no gods -- or if the realms of men are not their concern -- why would I live in a universe emptied of gods or their foresight? No, there are gods and they are concerned with the affairs of men. And they have completely arranged it that the human race many not fall into evils that are truly evil.
[tr. @sentantiq (2017)]

 
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Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality, that is, against the claim on our thinking attention that all events and facts make by virtue of their existence.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
“Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture,” Social Research (Fall 1971)
    (Source)

Referring to Adolf Eichmann's use of "cliché-ridden language" as a sign of his "thoughtlessness." Reprinted in The Life of the Mind, Part 1 "Thinking," Introduction (1974).
 
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See no evil, hear no evil, makes you seem really evil.

Stephen Colbert (b. 1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian
Late Show (9 Feb 2021)
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Because one cause is bad does not make the opposing cause good.

Fay Weldon (b. 1931) English author, essayist, playwright
Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen (1984)
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If we look at the techniques of totalitarian government, it is obvious that the argument of “the lesser evil” — far from being raised only from the outside by those who do not belong to the ruling elite — is one of the mechanisms built into the machinery of terror and criminality. Acceptance of lesser evils is consciously used in conditioning the government officials as well as the population at large to the acceptance of evil as such.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
“Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship” (1964)
    (Source)
 
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In their moral justification, the argument of the lesser evil has played a prominent role. If you are confronted with two evils, thus the argument runs, it is your duty to opt for the lesser one, whereas it is irresponsible to refuse to choose altogether. […] Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
“Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship” (1964)
    (Source)
 
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War makes murderers out of otherwise decent people. All wars, and all decent people.

Benjamin Ferencz (b. 1920) American lawyer, international legal scholar, activist
“What the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive wants the world to know,” interview with Leslie Stahl, 60 Minutes (7 May 2017)
    (Source)

Ferencz served as chief prosecutor of twenty Einsatzgruppen officers during the Nuremberg war crimes trials. Longer excerpt:

STAHL: Did you meet a lot of people who perpetrated war crimes who would otherwise in your opinion have been just a normal, upstanding citizen?
FERENCZ: Of course, is my answer. These men would never have been murderers had it not been for the war. These were people who could quote Goethe, who loved Wagner, who were polite --
STAHL: What turns a man into a savage beast like that?
FERENCZ: He's not a savage. He's an intelligent, patriotic human being.
STAHL: He's a savage when he does the murder though.
FERENCZ: No. He's a patriotic human being acting in the interest of his country, in his mind.
STAHL: You don't think they turn into savages even for the act?
FERENCZ: Do you think the man who dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima was a savage? Now I will tell you something very profound, which I have learned after many years. War makes murderers out of otherwise decent people. All wars, and all decent people.
 
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It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.

Margaret Mead (1901-1978) American anthropologist
(Attributed)
 
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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.

Edward Teller (1908-2003) Hungarian-American theoretical physicist
(Attributed)

Quoted in István Hargittai, The Martians of Science: Five Physicists Who Changed the Twentieth Century (2006), via Judith Shoolery.
 
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A bad cause seldom fails to betray itself.

James Madison (1751-1836) American statesman, political theorist, US President (1809-17)
The Federalist Papers, #41 (19 Jan 1788)
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“People aren’t either wicked or noble,” the hook-handed man said. “They’re like chef salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.”

Lemony Snicket (b. 1970) American author, screenwriter, musician (pseud. for Daniel Handler)
The Grim Grotto (2004)
 
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Another point of disagreement [over Lesser Evil Voting] is not factual but involves the ethical/moral principle […] sometimes referred to as the “politics of moral witness.” Generally associated with the religious left, secular leftists implicitly invoke it when they reject LEV on the grounds that “a lesser of two evils is still evil.” Leaving aside the obvious rejoinder that this is exactly the point of lesser evil voting — i.e. to do less evil, what needs to be challenged is the assumption that voting should be seen a form of individual self-expression rather than as an act to be judged on its likely consequences. […] The basic moral principle at stake is simple: not only must we take responsibility for our actions, but the consequences of our actions for others are a far more important consideration than feeling good about ourselves.

Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky (b. 1928) American linguist and activist
“An Eight Point Brief for LEV (Lesser Evil Voting)” (2016-06-15) [with John Halle]
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I did not hate them: I was indifferent to them. My crime was far worse because I was not an anti-Semite. … My conscience was progressively calloused and blunted. Of course, one’s conscience does not just cease to exist overnight; it is slowly eroded over the years, eaten away day by day, anesthetized by a multiplicity of little crimes. … As the Nazi environment enveloped us, its evils grew invisible — because we were part of them.

Albert Speer 1905-1981) German architect, government official, author, war criminal
Interview by Eric Norden, Playboy (Jun 1971)
    (Source)
 
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Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
I Shall Wear Midnight (2010)
    (Source)

The protagonist, Tiffany, recalling something that Granny Weatherwax had once said.
 
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If it be true, that men are miserable because they are wicked, it is likewise true, that many are wicked because they are miserable.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) English poet and critic
Aids to Reflection, “Prudential Aphorisms II” (1831 ed.)
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It is not murder which is forgiven but the killer, his person as it appears in circumstances and intentions. The trouble with the Nazi criminals was precisely that they renounced voluntarily all personal qualities, as if nobody were left to be either punished or forgiven. They protested time and again that they had never done anything out of their own initiative, that they had no intentions whatsoever, good or bad, and that they only obeyed orders.

To put it another way: the greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
“Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” Lecture (1965-66)
    (Source)

Reprinted in Responsibility and Judgment (2003).
 
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What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. 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.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
On Revolution, ch. 2 (1963)
    (Source)
 
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The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together, for it implied — as had been said at Nuremberg over and over again by the defendants and their counsels — that this new type of criminal, who is in actual fact hostis generis humani, commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Epilogue (1963)
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Hostis humani generis (Latin for "enemy of humanity") was an admiralty legal term indicating that slavers, pirates, and terrorists were held beyond legal protection and were a legitimate target of any nation.
 
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For the lesson of such stories is simple and within everybody’s grasp. Politically speaking, it is that under conditions of terror, most people will comply but some people will not, just as the lesson of the countries to which the Final Solution was proposed is that “it could happen” in most places but it did not happen everywhere. Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, ch. 14 (1963)
    (Source)

Speaking of resistance to Nazi atrocities.
 
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Loyalty is one of the most attractive of moral qualities, and it necessarily inhibits criticism of its own objects, which has the appearance of treason. But, unless the aims of the corporate body which claims our absolute allegiance are right and reasonable, loyalty may be, and often has been, the parent of hideous crimes, and a social evil of the first magnitude.

William Ralph Inge (1860-1954) English prelate [Dean Inge]
“The Indictment against Christianity” (1917), Outspoken Essays: First Series, ch. 10 (1919)
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And just as the law in civilized countries assumes that the voice of conscience tells everybody, “Thou shalt not kill,” even though man’s natural desires and inclinations may at times be murderous, so the law of Hitler’s land demanded that the voice of conscience tell everybody: “Thou shalt kill,” although the organizers of the massacres knew full well that murder is against the normal desires and inclinations of most people. Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it — the quality of temptation.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, ch. 8 (1963)
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It is strange that we sort the wheat from the chaff and the unfit from the fit in war, but we do not excuse evil men from the service of the state.

[ἄτοπον ἔφη τοῦ μὲν σίτου τὰς αἴρας ἐκλέγειν καὶ ἐν τῷ πολέμῳ τοὺς ἀχρείους, ἐν δὲ πολιτείᾳ τοὺς πονηροὺς μὴ παραιτεῖσθαι]

Antisthenes (c. 445 - c. 365 BC) Greek Cynic philosopher
Fragment 104 [tr. Laurén]
    (Source)

In Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Book 6, ch. 1.

Alt. trans.:
  • "He used to say that it is strange that we sift out the chaff from the wheat and those useless for war, but we do not forbid scoundrels in politics." [@sentantiq (3 Jun 2020)]
  • "He used to say that it was strange that we separate the wheat from the chaff, the useless in war, but we do not ban wicked men from public life." [@sentantiq (21 Feb 2017)]
  • "That it seemed very absurd to separate the chaff from the wHeat, to discharge a coward from the army, and not to extrude the envious from the state." [Source (1753)]
  • "'It is strange,' said he, 'that we weed out the darnel from the corn and the unfit in war, but do not excuse evil men from the service of the state.'" [Loeb Classical (1925)]
 
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Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them, and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men, than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But if men be bad, let the government be never so good, they will endeavour to warp and spoil it to their turn.

William Penn (1644-1718) English writer, philosopher, politician, statesman
First Frame of Government for Pennsylvania, Preface (1682)
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People are very romantic about these guys, but the only thing I’ve ever learned is that if you talk to gangsters long enough, you’ll find out they’re just as bad as respectable people.

Murray Kempton (1917-1997) American journalist.
In Ron Rosenbaum, The Secret Parts of Fortune, “The Connoisseur of Scoundrels” (2000)
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Ill doers in the end shall ill receive.

[Chi mal opra, male al fine aspetta.]

Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) Italian poet
Orlando Furioso, Canto 37, st. 106, l. 6 (1532) [tr. Rose (1831)]
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Father asked us what was God’s noblest work. Anna said men, but I said babies. Men are often bad; babies never are.

Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) American writer
Diary (1843-09-01)
    (Source)

Quoted in Edna D. Cheney, ed., Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals (1889)
 
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Most of the great results of history are brought about by discreditable means.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
“Considerations by the Way,” The Conduct of Life, ch. 7 (1860)
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As nought good endures beneath the skies,
So ill endures no more.

[Come cosa buona non si trova
Che duri sempre, così ancor né ria.]

Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) Italian poet
Orlando Furioso, Canto 37, st. 7 (1532) [tr. Rose (1831)]
    (Source)

Alt trans.: "For learn this truth, by just experience found, / Nor good, nor ill has one eternal round." [tr. Hoole (1807), l. 51]
 
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To expose vices to the ridicule of all the world is a severe blow to them. Reprehensions are easily suffered, but not so ridicule. People do not mind being wicked; but they object to being made ridiculous.

[C’est une grande atteinte aux vices que de les exposer à la risée de tout le monde. On souffre aisément des répréhensions, mais on ne souffre point la raillerie. On veut bien être méchant, mais on ne veut point être ridicule.]

Molière (1622-1673) French playwright, actor [stage name for Jean-Baptiste Poquelin]
Tartuffe, Preface (1664) [tr. Van Laun (1876)]
    (Source)

Alt. trans.: "To expose vices to everyone’s laughter is to deal them a mighty blow. People easily endure reproofs, but they cannot at all endure being made fun of. People have no objection to being considered wicked, but they are not willing to be considered ridiculous." [tr. Kerr]
 
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Human blunders, however, usually do more to shape history than human wickedness.

A. J. P. Taylor (1906-1990) British historian, journalist, broadcaster [Alan John Percivale Taylor]
The Origins of the Second World War, ch. 10 “The War of Nerves” (1961)
 
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Slavery is doomed, and that within a few years. Even Judge Douglas admits it to be an evil, and an evil can’t stand discussion. In discussing it we have taught a great many thousands of people to hate it who had never given it a thought before. What kills the skunk is the publicity it gives itself.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Interview with David R. Locke (1859)
    (Source)

Recounted in A. T. Rice, Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, ch. 25 (1896).
 
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For the holy are susceptible too to evil, even as you and I, signori; they too are helpless before sin without God’s aid. … And the holy can be fooled by sin as quickly as you or I, signori. Quicker, because they are holy.

William Faulkner (1897-1962) American novelist
“Mistral,” These 13 (1931)
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He said the wicked know that if the ill they do be of sufficient horror men will not speak against it. That men have just enough stomach for small evils and only these will they oppose.

Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
The Crossing (2010)
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You have oppressed the poor and robbed them of their grain. And so you will not live in the fine stone houses you build or drink wine from the beautiful vineyards you plant. I know how terrible your sins are and how many crimes you have committed. You persecute good people, take bribes, and prevent the poor from getting justice in the courts. And so, keeping quiet in such evil times is the smart thing to do! Make it your aim to do what is right, not what is evil, so that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty really will be with you, as you claim he is.

The Bible (The Old Testament) (14th - 2nd C BC) Judeo-Christian sacred scripture [Tanakh, Hebrew Bible], incl. the Apocrypha (Deuterocanonicals)
Amos 5:11-14 [GNT (1976)]
    (Source)

Alternate translations:

Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them. For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right. Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time. Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken.
[KJV (1611)]

Well then, since you have trampled on the poor man, extorting levies on his wheat -- those houses you have built of dressed stone, you will never live in them; and those precious vineyards you have planted, you will never drink their wine. For I know that your crimes are many, and your sins enormous: persecutors of the virtuous, blackmailers, turning away the needy at the city gate. No wonder the prudent man keeps silent, the times are so evil. Seek good and not evil so that you may live, and that Yahweh, God of Sabaoth, may really be with you as you claim he is.
[JB (1966)]

Therefore because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine. For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins -- you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate. Therefore the prudent will keep silent in such a time; for it is an evil time. Seek good and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you, just as you have said.
[NRSV (1989 ed.)]

Assuredly,
Because you impose a tax on the poor
And exact from them a levy of grain,
You have built houses of hewn stone,
But you shall not live in them;
You have planted delightful vineyards,
But shall not drink their wine.
For I have noted how many are your crimes,
And how countless your sins --
You enemies of the righteous,
You takers of bribes,
You who subvert in the gate
The cause of the needy!
Assuredly,
At such a time the prudent keep silent,
For it is an evil time.
Seek good and not evil,
That you may live,
And that the ETERNAL, the God of Hosts,
May truly be with you,
As you think.
[RJPS (2006)]

 
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We must learn to suffer whatever we cannot avoid. Our life is composed, like the harmony of the world, of discords as well as of different tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. If a musician liked only some of them, what could he sing? He has got to know how to use all of them and blend them together. So too must we with good and ill, which are of one substance with our life. Without such blending our being cannot be: one category is no less necessary than the other.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
Essays, Book 3, Essay 13 “On Experience” (1587-88) [tr. Screech (1987)]
    (Source)

Alt. trans.
  • [Frame (1943)] "We must learn to endure what we cannot avoid. Our life is composed, like the harmony of the world, of contrary things, also of different tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. If a musician liked only one kind, what would he have to say? He must know how to use them together and blend them. And so must we do with good and evil, which are consubstantial with our life. Our existence is impossible without this mixture, and one element is no less necessary for it than the other."
  • [Source] "We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade; our life, like the harmony of the world, is composed of contrary things -- of diverse tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, sprightly and solemn: the musician who should only affect some of these, what would he be able to do? He must know how to make use of them all, and to mix them; and so we should mingle the goods and evils which are consubstantial with our life; our being cannot subsist without this mixture, and the one part is no less necessary to it than the other."
  • [Florio (1603)] A man must learne to endure that patiently which he cannot avoyde conveniently. Our life is composed, as is the harmony of the world, of contrary things: so of divers tunes, some pleasant, some harsh, some sharpe, some flat, some low, and some high. What would that musitian say that should love but some one of them? He ought to know how to use them severally and how to entermingle them. So should we both of goods and evils which art consubstnatiall to our life; our being cannot subsist without this commixture, whereto one side is no lesse necessary than the other."
 
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I’ve seen the meanness of humans till I don’t know why God ain’t put out the sun and gone away.

Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
Outer Dark, ch. 17 (1968)
    (Source)
 
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Let us shun extremes, not only because each extreme is in itself a positive evil, but also because each extreme necessarily engenders its opposite. If we love civil and religious freedom, let us in the day of danger uphold law and order. If we are zealous for law and order, let us prize, as the best safeguard of law and order, civil and religious freedom.

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) English writer and politician
Speech on re-election to Parliament, Edinburgh (2 Nov 1852)
    (Source)
 
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Silence in the face of evil is itself evil; God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, martyr
(Spurious)

Frequently attributed to Bonhoeffer, but not found in his works. The origins of its attribution are discussed here, and the phrasing seems to more or less originate with Robert K. Hudnut, A Sensitive Man and the Christ (1971).
 
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If someone tells you he is going to make a “realistic decision,” you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.

Mary McCarthy (1912-1989) American author, critic, political activist
“American Realist Playwrights,” On the Contrary (1961)
    (Source)
 
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It is by means of my vices that I understand yours.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Journal (1844, Spring-Summer)
    (Source)

He recorded this phrase multiple times, including in his lecture, "The Anglo-American" (7 Dec 1852), and Notebook S Salvage.
 
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It can truly be said: Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are the tormented souls.

[Man möchte wahrlich sagen: die Menschen sind die Teufel der Erde und die Tiere die geplagten Seelen]

Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) German philosopher
Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. 2, ch. 15 “On Religion [Ueber Religion], § 179 “The Christian System [Über das Christenthum]” (1851) [tr. Hollingdale (1970)]
    (Source)

(Source (German)). Alternate translation:

One might say with truth, Mankind are the devils of the earth, and the animals the souls they torment.
[tr. Saunders (1890)]

 
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A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

The Bible (The New Testament) (AD 1st - 2nd C) Christian sacred scripture
Matthew 7:18–20 (KJV)

    Alt. trans.:
  • "A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a poor tree cannot bear good fruit. And any tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown in the fire. So then, you will know the false prophets by what they do." (GNT)
  • "A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits." (NRSV)
 
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Being cruel to be kind is just ordinary cruelty with an excuse made for it.

Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884-1969) English novelist
Daughters and Sons, ch. 6 (1937)
    (Source)
 
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The ratio of damn fools to villains is high.

Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
The Puppet Masters, ch. 26 (1951)
    (Source)
 
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No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one’s sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one’s character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With mere good intentions, hell is proverbially paved.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1, ch. 4 “Habit” (1890)
    (Source)

This chapter originally published in Popular Science Monthly (Feb 1887).
 
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If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast. The most savage of men are not beasts; they are worse, a great deal worse.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) English poet and critic
Table Talk (30 Aug 1833)
    (Source)
 
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This simply means that there is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. When we look beneath the surface, beneath the impulsive evil deed, we see within our enemy-neighbor a measure of goodness and know that the viciousness and evilness of his acts are not quite representative of all that he is. We see him in a new light. We recognize that his hate grows out of fear, pride, ignorance, prejudice, and misunderstanding, but in spite of this, we know God’s image is ineffably etched in being. Then we love our enemies by realizing that they are not totally bad and that they are not beyond the reach of God’s redemptive love.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
“Loving Your Enemies,” Sermon, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery (25 Dec 1957)
    (Source)
 
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Fools! who fancy Christ mistaken;
Man a tool to buy and sell;
Earth a failure, God-forsaken,
Ante-room of Hell.

Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) English clergyman, historian, essayist, novelist (pseud. "Parson Lot")
“The World’s Age” (1849)
    (Source)
 
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The way to avoid evil is not by maiming our passions, but by compelling them to yield their vigor to our moral nature. Thus they become, as in the ancient fable, the harnessed steeds which bear the chariot of the sun.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
Life Thoughts (1858)
    (Source)
 
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Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
The Measures of Man (1959)
 
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[Capitalism is] the astonishing belief that the nastiest motives of the nastiest men somehow or other work for the best results in the best of all possible worlds.

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) English economist
(Attributed)

Attributed by Sir George Schuster, Christianity and Human Relations in Industry (1951). Frequently quoted, but no direct citation found. More information here.

Variations:
  • "... the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
  • "... the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
  • "The great merit of the capitalist system, it has been said, is that it succeeds in using the nastiest motives of nasty people for the ultimate benefit of society." (written by E. A. G. Robinson, Monopoly (1941). (Robinson was a colleague of Keynes.)
 
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The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, martyr
“On Stupidity” (1942)
    (Source)
 
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Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed — in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical — and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, martyr
“On Stupidity” (1942)
    (Source)
 
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We should not be too hasty in bestowing either our praise or censure on mankind, since we shall often find such a mixture of good and evil in the same character, that it may require a very accurate judgment and a very elaborate inquiry to determine on which side the balance turns.

Henry Fielding (1707-1754) English novelist, dramatist, satirist
The Life and Death of Jonathan Wild, the Great, Vol. 5 (1743)
    (Source)
 
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It is stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the devil, when he is the only explanation of it.

Ronald Knox (1888-1957) English priest, theologian, author, broadcaster
Let Dons Delight, ch. 8 (1939)
 
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A man prone to suspect evil is most looking for in his neighbor what he sees in himself.

Julius Hare (1795-1855) English cleric, theologian
Guesses at Truth: First Series (1827) [with A. W. Hare]
 
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FRISCO DOLL: Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.

Mae West (1892-1980) American film actress
Klondike Annie (1936)
 
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The meaning of good & bad, of better & worse, is simply helping or hurting.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Journal (1838-08-27)
    (Source)
 
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Alexia was quite disgusted with her sister. To be stupid was one thing; to be stupid and evil yielded up untidy consequences.

Gail Carriger (b. 1976) American archaeologist, author [pen name of Tofa Borregaard]
Heartless (2011)
 
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For we do not easily expect evil of those whom we love most.

[Non enim facile de his quos plurimum diligimus turpitudinem suspicamur.]

Peter Abelard (1079-1142) French philosopher, theologian, logician [Pierre Abélard]
Historia Calamitatum Mearum, ch. 6
 
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CATO: Content thyself to be obscurely good.
When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway,
The post of honour is a private station.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Cato, Act 4, sc. 4, l. 139ff (1713)
    (Source)
 
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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.

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) English philosopher and economist
On Liberty, ch. 1 “Introductory” (1859)
    (Source)
 
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An evil-speaker differs from an evil-doer only in the want of opportunity.

[Maledicus a malefico non distat nisi occasione.]

Quintilian (39-90) Roman orator [Marcus Fabius Quintilianus]
De Institutione Oratorio, Book 12, ch. 9, l. 9
 
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Often the fear of one evil leads us into a worse.

[Souvent la peur d’un mal nous conduit dans un pire.]

Boileau-Despereaux - fear of one evil - wist_info quote

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636-1711) French poet and critic
The Art of Poetry [L’Art Poétique], Canto 1, l. 64 (1674)
    (Source)

(Source (French)).

Though this sounds like a profound philosophical comment, in reality it refers to writers overcompensating for problems in their work. Soame (1892) translates this and the following line thus:

A verse was weak, you turn it much too strong.
And grow obscure for fear you should be long.

 
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For man’s only weapon is courage that flinches not from the gates of Hell itself, and against such not even the legions of Hell can stand.

Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) American author
“Skulls in the Stars,” Weird Tales (Jan 1929)
    (Source)
 
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Under the guidance of reason, we should pursue the greater of two goods, and the lesser of two evils.

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) Dutch philosopher
Ethics, “Reason and Desire” (1677) [tr. Runes (1957)]
 
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LADY MACBETH: Whither should I fly?
I have done no harm. But I remember now
I am in this earthly world; where to do harm
Is often laudable, to do good sometime
Accounted dangerous folly.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Macbeth, Act 4, sc. 2, l. 81ff (4.2.81-85) (1606)
    (Source)
 
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Good is that which makes for unity; Evil is that which makes for separateness.

Huxley - good unity evil separateness - wist_info quote

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
Ends and Means, “Ethics” (1937)
 
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There is a capacity of virtue in us, and there is a capacity of vice to make your blood creep.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Journal (1831)
 
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I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

Baretti - hate mankind - wist_info quote

Giuseppe Baretti (1719-1789) Italian-English literary critic and translator [a.k.a. Joseph Baretti]
(Attributed)

Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791).
 
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It is circumstance and proper measure that give an action its character, and make it either good or bad.

Plutarch (AD 46-127) Greek historian, biographer, essayist [Mestrius Plutarchos]
Parallel Lives, “Agisilaus” [tr. Dryden (1693)]
 
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ANTONY: The evil men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Julius Caesar, Act 3, sc. 2, l. 84ff (3.2.84-85) (1599)
    (Source)
 
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HAMLET: For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Hamlet, Act 2, sc. 2, l. 268ff (2.2.268) (c. 1600)
    (Source)
 
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When “Do no Evil” has been understood,
Then learn the harder, braver rule, “Do Good.”

Arthur Guiterman (1871-1943) American poet, humorist
“Of Duty” (1924)
 
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If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.

Russell - happiness unhappiness paradise - wist_info quote

Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Interview by Seth King, New York Times (1961-05-18)

Interview on his 89th Birthday. The article does not presently show up in the NYT archives, but the quotation is mentioned in Newsweek, "Newsmakers" (1961-05-29), and in Think Magazine, "Thoughts" (1961-12).
 
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Only evil grows of itself, while for goodness we want effort and courage.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821-1881) Swiss philosopher, poet, critic
Journal (16 Nov 1864) [tr. Ward (1887)]
 
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The good person loves people and uses things, while the bad person loves things and uses people.

Sydney J. Harris (1917-1986) Anglo-American columnist, journalist, author
Pieces of Eight, ch. 4 (1982)
 
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The good may prove to be a hidden form of evil. The evil may prove to be a new and not yet recognized form of the good.

Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev (1874-1948) Russian religious and political philosopher
The Destiny of Man, 2.4.1 (1931) [tr. Duddington (1955)]
 
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Good and bad men are each less so than they seem.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) English poet and critic
Table Talk, “19 April 1830” (1835)
 
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The common interests
of states and individuals alike demand
that good and evil receive their just rewards.

Euripides (485?-406? BC) Greek tragic dramatist
Hecuba, l. 900 [tr. Arrowsmith (1964)]
 
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Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.

Atwood - stupidity evil - wist_info quote

Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) Canadian writer, literary critic, environmental activist
Surfacing, ch. 3 (1972)
    (Source)
 
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Nothing is good or bad but by Comparison.

Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, #3666 (1732)
    (Source)
 
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When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out “stop!”
When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible.
When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard.
The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) German poet, playwright, director, dramaturgist
“When evil-doing comes like falling rain [Wenn die Untat kommt, wie der Regen fällt]” (1935) [tr. Willett]
 
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Music and silence — how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell — though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express — no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise — Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile — Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth. The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it.

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Screwtape Letters (1942)
 
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My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.

Anna Sewell (1820-1878) English novelist
Black Beauty, Part 3, ch. 33 “Dolly and a Real Gentleman” (1877)
    (Source)
 
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What I particularly admire in him is the firm stand he has taken, not only against the oppressors of his countrymen, but also against those opportunists who are always ready to compromise with the Devil. He perceives very clearly that the world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.
 
[Was ich aber an ihm besonders bewundere ist seine charaktervolle Haltung nicht nur gegen die Unterdrücker seines Volkes, sondern auch gegen alle diejenigen Opportunisten, die immer bereit sind, mit dem Teufel zu paktieren. Er hat klar erkannt, dass die Welt mehr bedroht ist durch die, welche das Uebel dulden oder ihm Vorschub leisten, als durch die Uebeltäter selbst.]

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
In Josep Maria Corredor, Conversations avec Pablo Casals [Conversations with Casals], Preface (1955) [tr. Mangeot (1956)]
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The last part of the last sentence here is most frequently quoted. The text is from a letter Einstein wrote to Corredor about Pablo Casals, the Spanish cellist (30 Mar 1953), of which part was included in the Preface. The book of interviews with Casals was originally published in French, and used this translation to that language:

Ce que j’admire cependant particulièrement en lui, c’est sa ferme attitude non seulement à l’endroit des oppresseurs de son peuple, mais également à l’endroit des opportunistes toujours prêts à pactiser avec le diable. Il a su comprendre avec beaucoup de clairvoyance que le monde court un plus grand danger de la part de ceux qui tolèrent le mal ou l’encouragent que de la part de ceux-là mêmes qui le commettent.

Variants / paraphrases:
  • "The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."
  • "The world is too dangerous to live in, not because of people’s evil deeds but because of those who sit and let it happen."
  • "The world is a dangerous place not because there are so many evil people in it, but because there are so many good ones willing to sit back and let evil happen."
  • "The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm. It’s dangerous because of those who watch and do nothing."
  • "The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything."
More discussion and background of this quotation:
 
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If evil Men speak good, or good Men evil of thee; examine thy Actions, and suspect thy self: But if evil Men speak evil of thee; hold it as an Honor, and by way of Thankfulness love them; but upon condition, that they continue to hate thee.

Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Introductio ad Prudentiam, Vol. 1, # 1252 (1725)
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Any sufficiently advanced indifference is indistinguishable from evil.

George Wiman (contemp.) American blogger, computer technician
Google+ (15 May 2015)
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See Clarke.
 
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Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, ch. 9 epigraph “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar” (1894)
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KIRSTEN: Do you figure his parents just assumed he’d grow up to be evil when they named him “Zebediah Killgrave”?

MATT: Yeah, we call that the “Victor Von Doom” Paradox.

Mark Waid (b. 1962) American comic book writer, editor
Daredevil, Vol. 4, #10 (Nov 2014)
 
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Man — who is he?
Too bad to be the work of God; too good for the work of chance!

[Der Mensch, wo ist er her?
Zu schlecht für einen Gott, zu gut fürs Ungefähr.]

Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781) German playwright, philosopher, dramaturg, writer
Fragmente und Fabeln [Fragments and Fables], Fragment 6 “Die Religion” (1753)

As with many of his quotations, frequently misattributed to contemporary author Doris Lessing.

(Source (German)). Alternate translation:

Man, whence is he?
Too bad to be the work of a god, too good for the work of chance.
[ed. Wood (1893)]

 
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Like many men of genius, he could not understand why things obvious to him should not be so at once to other people, and found it easier to believe that they were corrupt than that they could be so stupid.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
The Apple Cart, Preface (1928)
 
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I know that we will be the sufferers if we let great wrongs occur without exerting ourselves to correct them.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
“My Day” (13 Aug 1943)
 
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Most of the bad guys in the real world don’t know that they are bad guys. You don’t get a flashing warning sign that you’re about to damn yourself. It sneaks up on you when you aren’t looking.

Jim Butcher (b. 1971) American author
Proven Guilty, ch. 41 (2006)
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In looking at the world as it is, we shall find it folly to deny that, to worldly success, a surer path is Villainy than Virtue.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) American author, poet, editor, literary critic
Marginalia, June 1849 (1981)
 
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“What’s up, boss?”
“Evil’s afoot.”
“Well, sure,” Bob said, “because it refuses to learn the metric system. Otherwise it’d be up to a meter by now.”

Jim Butcher (b. 1971) American author
White Night (2007)
 
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The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.

Albert Camus (1913-1960) Algerian-French novelist, essayist, playwright
The Plague (1947)
 
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The wacky thing about those bad guys is that you can’t count on them to be obvious. They forget to wax their mustaches and goatees, leave their horns at home, send their black hats to the dry cleaners. They’re funny like that.

Jim Butcher (b. 1971) American author
White Night (2007)
 
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Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference.

Jim Butcher (b. 1971) American author
(Attributed)

Often cited to the short story "Vignette" (also known as "Publicity and Advertising"), but not found there.
 
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Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British author, screenwriter, fabulist
Coraline (2002)

Paraphrase by Gaiman of G. K. Chesterton. Gaiman included it as an epigraph, attributed to Chesterton, but without looking up the exact wording.
 
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