c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I propose that the forces of corporate totalitarianism are deliberately destroying this entire world in order to sell their simulated version of it back to us at a profit.
— Diane Harvey
With no power to annul the elemental evil in him, though readily enough he could hide it; apprehending the good, but powerless to be it; a nature like Claggart’s, surcharged with energy as such natures almost invariably are, what recourse is left to it but to recoil upon itself and, like the scorpion for which the Creator alone is responsible, act out to the end the part allotted it.
— Herman Melville
There aren't any GOOD guys. You realize that, don't you? I mean: there aren't EVIL guys, and INNOCENT guys. It's just - it's just... It's just a bunch of guys.
— Jake Kasdan
the evil that is in this 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;
— Albert Camus, The Plague
Evil people must spread their evil everywhere.
— Jane Smiley, The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton
Silence rolled at me, in 
— Joyce Carol Oates, Jack of Spades
Grant Allen once said that an Englishman's idea of God was another Englishman twelve feet high, and I suppose that is more or less everybody's idea of God- with the necessary geographical adjustment. Zenith Brown has an idea about God that pleases me. 'God,' says Mrs. Brown, 'is obviously a friendly enough Old Gentleman most of the time, Who wishes us well and tries to see to it that we are reasonably happy. It is equally obvious the He has an idiot brother who takes over the reins whenever God Himself goes fishing. It is when the idiot brother is in charge of things that the world goes wrong and we have wars, famines, and pestilences on earth.
— Vincent Starrett, Born in a Bookshop: Chapters from the Chicago Renascence
Beyond all judgments of good and bad ...is perfection - Vivian Amis
— Vivian Amis, The Lotus - Realization of Oneness
Not long after we started working for him I asked Bernard if he thought Thatcher was evil,'I said. 'He said it was like asking what jazz is.
— Jack Womack, Heathern
There are two things that can stop us from committing an evil act
—  love and fear- religion always chooses the latter one.
We are not often against the evils, only because our enemies are against them.
— M.F. Moonzajer, The Journalist: Attack on the Central Intelligence Agency
The evil we create during the wars to save us, it can also end us when the war is over.
— M.F. Moonzajer, The Journalist: Attack on the Central Intelligence Agency
So if all what I’ve said is the definition of insanity then the next thing is how do you define an evil bastard? People can mix evil and insanity up, thinking both to be the one and self same thing…wrong! Let me tell you about evil, first you smell it, secondly you feel it, thirdly you taste it and finally you need to destroy it.
— Stephen Richards, Insanity: My Mad Life
Some people are here on earth because they were sent to hell
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
Because a person couldn't ever be good and evil at once. Little girl, don't you know? The world is made up of shades of grey.
— Rachel E. Carter, Candidate
If government played by the same rules as the rest of us, it would cease to be government.
— Sheldon Richman
She wrote, in the last pages, of feeling all the evil of the neighborhood around her. Rather, she wrote obscurely, good and evil are mixed together and reinforce each other in turn. Marcello, if you thought about it, was really a good arrangement, but the good tasted of the bad and the bad tasted of the good, it was a mixture that took your breath away. A few evenings earlier, something had happened that had really scared her. Marcello had left, the television was off, the house was empty, Rino was out, her parents were going to bed. She was alone in the kitchen washing the dishes and was tired, really without energy, when there was an explosion. She had turned suddenly and realized that the big copper pot had exploded. Like that, by itself. It was hanging on the nail where it normally hung, but in the middle there was a large hole and the rim was lifted and twisted and the pot itself was all deformed, as if it could no longer maintain its appearance as a pot. Her mother had hurried in in her nightgown and blamed her for dropping it and ruining it. But a copper pot, even if you drop it, doesn't break and doesn't become misshapen like that. "It's this sort of thing," Lila concluded, "that frightens me. More than Marcello, more than anyone. And I feel that I have to find a solution, otherwise, everything, one thing after another, will break, everything, everything.
— Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend
The most savage of human kind are the most advanced
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
All that's required for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.
— Richard Paul Evans, Battle of the Ampere
Our minds are a battle ground between good and bad ideas
—  we are whatever side wins the battle
The Sophisticate: “The world isn’t black and white. No one does pure good or pure bad. It’s all gray. Therefore, no one is better than anyone else.”The Zetet: “Knowing only gray, you conclude that all grays are the same shade. You mock the simplicity of the two-color view, yet you replace it with a one-color view….
— Marc Stiegler, David's Sling
the origin of wickedness is the cliff upon which theism, just as much as pantheism, is wrecked; for both imply optimism. However, evil and sin, both in their terrible magnitude, cannot be disavowed; indeed, because of the promised punishments for the latter, the former is only further increased. Whence all this, in a world that is either itself a God or the well-intentioned work of a God?
— Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena
Envy: Instead of focusing on your own goals, your goal becomes throwing off the rails other people’s goals and at the end of the day you gain nothing but a mischievous satisfaction that you have destroyed someone’s dream
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
As man becomes more technologically advanced, his barbarity becomes even more lethal
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
The inner suffering of the evil you do to others is not fully understood until you are wearing their aches.
— Darmie O-Lujon
The criminals who, in the face of contumely, hatred or violence, have led the world to a higher standard and brought humanity to a diviner order, have so loved truth and righteousness as to defy the law, and in every age these men have met the life of outcasts, and the death of felons. Whatever may be said of the necessity of government to protect itself, no one can believe that any human being merits punishment for following his own highest ideal. Punishment can only be in any wise defended upon the theory that the individual is untrue to himself, that his heart is bad. But all schemes of human punishment seem specially contrived to exempt this class of men. Those who are untrue to themselves find no difficulty in obeying the state, or at least in seeming to be subservient to its laws. The cunning man without strong convictions of right and wrong can always find ample room to operate his trade inside the dead line the law lays down. Even Blackstone wrote that a man who governed his conduct solely by the law was neither an honest man nor a good citizen. The penal code cannot pretend to cover all the vicious acts of men. If there is a distinction between vicious acts and righteous acts, each are so numerous that even to catalogue them would be beyond the power of the state.
— Clarence Darrow
Baumeister's point is that we have a deep need to understand violence and cruelty through what he calls "the myth of pure evil." Of this myth's many parts, the most important are that evildoers are pure in their evil motives (they have no motives for their actions beyond sadism and greed); victims are pure in their victimhood (they did nothing to bring about their victimization); and evil comes from outside and is associated with a group or force that attacks our group. Furthermore, anyone who questions the application of the myth, who dares muddy the waters of moral certainty, is in league with evil.
— Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
The balance of this world is not upset by accident. It is not upset by those who blunder accidentally into wrong. Evil comes when those who know better, who have seen the pain they cause, nevertheless cause more pain.
— Michael Grant
In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil," the man said. "Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities but are continually trading places. A good may be transformed into an evil in the next second. And vice versa. Such was the way of the world that Dostoevksy depicted in The Brothers Karamazov. The most important thing is to maintain the balance between the constantly moving good and evil. If you lean too much in either direction, it becomes difficult to maintain actual morals. Indeed, balance itself is the good.
— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
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;
— Albert Camus
Horror is a situation, not a character, no matter how evil one may be.
— Rachel Deering
In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil," the man said. "Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities but are continually trading places. A good may be transformed into an evil in the next second. And vice versa. Such was teh way of the world that Dostoevksy depicted in The Brothers Karamazov. The most important thing is to maintain the balance between the constantly moving good and evil. If you lean too much in either direction, it becomes difficult to maintain actual morals. Indeed, balance itself is the good.
— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
Everything that is good in the day is even better in the night.
— Joe Hill
I do love you but I hate the evil inside of you
— Farid F. Ibrahim
But sometimes to keep Evil from getting in, you have to let Good out.
— Soman Chainani, The Last Ever After
Misguided good men are more dangerous than honest bad men. It is because they are seen as good that, in and by good conscience, the mob will always, stubbornly back them without question.
— Criss Jami, Healology
Private property and free trade stand on exactly the same footing, both being essential and indivisible parts of liberty, both depending upon rights, which no body of men, whether called governments or anything else, can justly take from the individual.
— Auberon Herbert
What was it that Granny Weatherwax had said once? "Evil starts when you begin to treat people as things". And right now it would happen if you thought there was a thing called a father, and a thing called a mother, and a thing called a daughter, and a thing called a cottage, and told yourself that if you put them all together you had a thing called a happy family.
— Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight
Just because something isn’t good doesn’t mean it’s bad.
— Rebecca McNutt, Super 8: The Sequel to Smog City
There are two principles between which there can be no compromise—liberty and coercion.
— Frédéric Bastiat
The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule.
— Friedrich A. Hayek
He said that while one would like to say that God will punish those who do such things and that people often speak in just this way it was his experience that God could not be spoken for and that men with wicked histories often enjoyed lives of comfort and that they died in peace and were buried with honor. He said is was a mistake to expect too much of justice in this world. He said that the notion that evil is seldom rewarded was greatly overspoken for if there were no advantage to it then men would shun it and how could virtue then be attached to its repudiation.
— Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing
To know the good from the bad, measure the heart. Actions reveal the true coloring of one's heart, not their intentions.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
All good things come from love; God used the cross a symbol of His love, to paralyze and defeat all forces of evil. God is love. John 3:16
— Felix Wantang, God's Blueprint of the Holy Bible
There is a devil inside each one of us. Some just know to hide it too well.
— Adwitiya Borah, The Wrong Vantage Point
Once someone asked, when I was present, what constituted the greatest pleasure in love. Someone replied, naturally: in receiving. Another: in giving. Someone said: the pleasure of pride! someone else: the ecstasy of humility! All these muckers making like the Imitation of Christ. Finally, an impudent utopian was found who insisted that the greatest pleasure of love was in forming new citizens for the fatherland. Me, I said: what is uniquely, supremely voluptuous about love lies in the certainty of doing evil.
— Charles Baudelaire
I see how you look at me,” spits the hateful man. He thinks we look upon him with the evil eye when we are not looking at him that way at all. We are just looking at him. It’s because he can’t accept the hate inside of himself that he projects it onto us.
— Kate McGahan, JACK McAFGHAN: Reflections on Life with my Master
We love that which we corrupt.
— Kiana Davenport, Shark Dialogues
It wasn’t Hell; only fools and drama queens throw that word around about a place like Gotham. It was worse, in a way, because it was manmade. There wasn’t any timeless malevolence behind it all, it was just… what human beings can descend to when they let themselves forget they can be heroes.
— Chris Dee, Cattitude
If God were good, why would he create Rush Limbaugh?
— Sherman Alexie, Reservation Blues
I find it hard to swallow the notion that the world is improved by extra suffering. And that goes for a lot of Christian doctrine. Jones commits a crime, so you expiate the evil by nailing Smith to a cross and it's all better. - John Leslie
— Jim Holt, Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story
We need to teach our nation to detest any form of plots, insinuations, evil intrigues and violence.
— Sunday Adelaja
We must clean our national psyche from all manifestation of evil, be it kidnapping, militancy, insurgency, murders or assassinations.
— Sunday Adelaja
It has been observed of the warring Turks, that often they used this notable deceit - to send a lying rumor and a vain tumult of war to one place, but, in the meanwhile, to address their true forces to another place, that so they might surprise those who have been unwarily led by pernicious credulity. So have we manifest (alas! too, too manifest) reasons to make us conceive, that whilst the chief urgers of the course of conformity are skirmishing with us about the trifling ceremonies (as some men count them), they are but laboring to hold our thoughts so bent and intent upon those smaller quarrels, that we may forget to distinguish between evils immanent and evils imminent, and that we be not too much awake to espy their secret slight in compassing further aims.
— George Gillespie, A Dispute Against the English Popish Ceremonies Obtruded on the Church of Scotland: Wherein Not Only Our Own Arguments Against the Same Are Strongly Confirmed, But Likewise the Answers and Defences of Our Opposites, Such as Hooker, Morton, Burges, Spri...
Evil exemplifies the contemptuous transgression and annihilation of virtue.
— Albert Thomas Bifarelli, Meditations and Exhumations:
Miko: You would stand between me and this evil murderer?Hinjo: I'll stand between any two murderers I wish, thanks.
— Rich Burlew, War and XPs
Conflict is not unavoidable. However, it is nonsensical to consider the institution of a state as a solution to the problem of possible conflict, because it is precisely the institution of a state which first makes conflict unavoidable and permanent.
— Hans-Hermann Hoppe
They caught up their horses and turned back. Nothing moved in that high wilderness save the wind. They did not speak. They were men of another time for all that they bore christian names and they had lived all their lives in a wilderness as had their fathers before them. They'd learnt war by warring, the generations driven from the eastern shore across a continent, from the ashes at Gnadenhutten onto the prairies and across the outlet to the bloodlands of the west. If much in the world were mystery the limits of that world were not, for it was without measure or bound and there were contained within it creatures more horrible yet and men of other colors and beings which no man has looked upon and yet not alien none of it more than were their own hearts alien in them, whatever wilderness contained there and whatever beasts.
— Cormac McCarthy
The flower, as he saw it, ruled over evil; it absorbed in itself all innocently shed blood (that is why it is so red) all tears and all the gall of humanity. It was an awful and mysterious being, the antitheses of God, an Ahriman presenting a most unassuming and innocent appearance. It was necessary to break it off and kill it. But this was not all; it was also necessary not to permit it at its death to discharge its evil upon the world.
— Vsevolod Garshin
He believes it’s time to redesign Evil from the ground up; to face the challenges and opportunities of a diverse, rapidly changing society.“He’s thinking of calling it,” said Miss Gold, “New Evil.
— Tom Holt, The Good, the Bad and the Smug
Evil was defined as the use of power to destroy the spiritual growth of others for the purpose of defending and preserving the integrity of our own sick selves. In short, it is scapegoating. We scapegoat not the strong but the weak. For the evil to so misuse their power, they must have the power to use in the first place. They must have some kind of dominion over their victims. The most common relationship of dominion is that of parent over child. Children are weak, defenseless, and trapped in relation to their parents. They are born in thrall to their parents ... They are simply not free or powerful enough to escape.
— M. Scott Peck
Mr Winckler clapped his hands together. “Evil, as personified by me. Meet the new Dark Lord. But you can call me Albert.
— Tom Holt, The Good, the Bad and the Smug
Nobody can cause another man evil unless the second party involved allows him to.
— James Purdy, Narrow Rooms
Even if everybody is looking at the same light bulb, the unique composition of an individual will dictate how they interpret and see things. Some people will only see things with their left eye (mind/moon), while others will use only their right (heart/sun). Some people are completely void of light and repel it immediately. For instance, a beetle will chase after an opening of light, while a cockroach will scatter at a crack of it. How are we different than the insects? Nobody is purely good or purely evil. Most of us are in-between. There are moths that explore the day and butterflies that play at night. Polarity is an integral part of nature — human or not human.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
On the opening day of law school at Yale, I always counsel my first-year students never to support a law they are not willing to kill to enforce. Usually they greet this advice with something between skepticism and puzzlement, until I remind them that the police go armed to enforce the will of the state, and if you resist, they might kill you.
— Stephen L. Carter
It was his self-esteem she had sought to destroy, knowing that a man who surrenders his value is at the mercy of anyone’s will; it was his moral purity she had struggled to breach, it was his confident rectitude she had wanted to shatter by means of the poison of guilt—as if, were he to collapse, his depravity would give her a right to hers.
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
He’s evil in a can.
— John Jackson Miller, Star Wars - A New Dawn
Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.For what is evil but good tortured by it’s own hunger and thirst?Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Or as Gabe had done, to rescue your betrothed from some evil force. That appealed to him. But he'd yet to find a damsel in distress, oppressed by evil and in need of rescue.
— Melanie Dickerson, The Captive Maiden
She had set out to break him, as if, unable to equal his value, she could surpass it by destroying it, as if the measure of his greatness would thus become the measure of hers, as if the vandal who smashed a statue were greater than the artist who had made it, as if the murderer who killed a child were greater than the mother who had given it birth.
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
The justice which would forgive miles of innocent errors of knowledge, would not forgive a single step taken in conscious evil.
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
People are always quick to call evil what they do not know. The unknown sprouts fear. It spreads like an infection, burrowing into every facet of their lives. They need a scapegoat, someone to blame. Fingers are pointed, accusations are made, and a target lands on somebody’s back. They grow angry. They turn violent.To history, human nature must be a stubborn and tiring student. No matter how many times history tries to show it the error of its ways, it never learns from its mistakes.
— Kelseyleigh Reber, If I Resist
If not me then who? Confront evil!
— Ken Poirot
The bigger the government, the more the corruption. It's almost never mentioned, and it might be the biggest of the ten principles that I am speaking of…Do you know who has created the greatest evils of history? Big governments. Big SECULAR governments. Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, all big States. Why would anybody trust the big state? It's amazing how many callers have imbued the college message that more people have been killed by religion than anything else in history. NO. More people have been killed by governments than anything else in history…….and just in the 20th century alone, and none of them were religious. You don't learn THAT in college.
— Dennis Prager
People are not embracing collectivism because they have accepted bad economics. They are accepting bad economics because they have embraced collectivism.
— Ayn Rand
But if they have a flashlight, it means they're human and not some kind of monsters from the surface,' objected Artyom."I don't know what's worse," said Melnik, cutting off Artyom.
— Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033
Those who claim to be on the side of good yet do nothing to fight evil are on the side of evil.
— Joyce Rachelle
A country as such does not be good or bad, only the people are good or bad, that too change by generations and this scenario is same to any nations. what India really have is a rich legacy.. nothing else
— Rajesh Nanoo
What ranks above all else for economic and political reconstruction is a radical change of ideologies. Economic prosperity is not so much a material problem; it is, first of all, an intellectual, spiritual, and moral problem.
— Ludwig von Mises
The chicken thing let out a whispering cackle.
— Terry Goodkind, Soul of the Fire
Not long ago, man grew a sense of conscience. He defined himself by what he is, what he thinks, and, more importantly, what he feels—failing to realize that all come from One single source. All of man’s qualities come from One divine being. And that One being has bestowed nature’s hand with the ability to balance itself. Where there is good, there is also evil. And where evil arises, so does good
— Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams
The universe doesn't know good or bad, only less or more.
— Pat Cadigan, Angel
An evil brute grows strong and now is on the verge of crossing over from the island to the world you know. His name is Hubal, and his strength grows as your world’s lightness folds.
— Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams
When we prepare not our hearts for the things of God, evil things take over.
— Sunday Adelaja
...one cannot deal with pure evil, with the naked, full-conscious evil that neither has nor seeks justification.
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
This, I think, is the crux of evil in this world, Majesty: those who feel entitled to whatever they want, whatever they can grab. Such people never ask themselves if they have the right. They consider no cost to anyone but themselves.
— Erika Johansen, The Invasion of the Tearling
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am -- not stuck in the middle, but hovering above the entire farcical spectrum, weeping as I behold my fellow man's devotion to political illusion and self-destruction.
— Robert Higgs
All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.
— Edmund Burke
Evil travels the world in anonymity, its presence revealed only by the periodic consequences of its desires...
— Dean Koontz, Deeply Odd
Small-town boy meets big-time evil.
— Dean Koontz, Saint Odd
The overwhelming tendency of markets is to bring people together, break down prejudices, persuade people of the need to cooperate regardless of class, race, religion, sex/gender, and physical ability. The same is obviously and especially true of sexual orientation. It is the market that rewards people who put aside their biases and seek gains through trade. This is why states devoted to racialist and hateful policies always resort to violence in control of the marketplace.
— Jeffrey Tucker
City of Wizards is normally quite a GOOD thing, since only Good WIZARDS seem able to live together. . . .There have been cities of EVIL Wizards in the past. You will occasionally come across the sites of these, reduced to a glassy slag during the ultimate disagreement.
— Diana Wynne Jones, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland
You know, I gave you the benefit of the doubt earlier when I first encountered you, the raging beast—oh I mean bitch. But nowI truly think that if greats who devoted themselves and achieved in some way at killing evil with kindness like Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Mandela, Mother Teresa, well I think if any of them met you... they truly would break that seal of devotion and beat the bloody shit out of you.”“I take that as a compliment.”“Oh, I know you do.
— Chelsea Ballinger, Sinners & Saints
A true recognition of God's sovereignty will avow God’s perfect right to do with us as He wills. The one who bows to the pleasure of the Almighty will acknowledge His absolute right to do with us as seemeth Him good. If He chooses to send poverty, sickness, domestic bereavements, even while the heart is bleeding at every pore, it will say, Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right! Often there will be a struggle, for the carnal mind remains in the believer to the end of his earthly pilgrimage. But though there may be a conflict within his breast, nevertheless, to the one who has really yielded himself to this blessed truth there will presently be heard that Voice saying, as of old it said to the turbulent Gennesaret, "Peace be still"; and the tempestuous flood within will be quieted and the subdued soul will lift a tearful but confident eye to Heaven and say, “Thy will be done.
— Arthur W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God
Crying is good for the soul, or so they say.
— Chelsea Ballinger, Sinners & Saints
It is a proper and excellent thing for infinite glory to shine forth; and for the same reason, it is proper that the shining forth of God's glory should be complete; that is, that all parts of his glory should shine forth, that every beauty should be proportionably effulgent, that the beholder may have a proper notion of God.”	Thus it is necessary, that God's awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been decreed; so that the shining forth of God's glory would be very imperfect, both because these parts of divine glory would not shine forth as the others do, and also the glory of his goodness, love, and holiness would be faint without them; nay, they could scarcely shine forth at all.
— Jonathan Edwards, Works of Jonathan Edwards
An evil mind will always live with the ghosts of its decisions and actions.
The beauty of the human race is not in its victory over evil, but the attempt.
— Sarah Brownlee
Guns give Evil a means to expression.
— Jonathan Heatt, Teaching Snapping Turtles How To Chew Bubblegum
Not everything that happens during the day is an open portending a good or evil development in the future, but everything has meaning to one degree or another, for the world is an ever-weaving tapestry from which no thread can be pulled without destroying the integrity of the cloth.
— Dean Koontz, Deeply Odd
Not everything that happens during the day is an open portending a good or evil development in the future, but everything has meaning to one degree or another, for the world is an ever-weaving tapestry from which no thread can be pulled without destroying the integrity of the cloth. The breadth of Creation makes it impossible for us to step back far enough to see the story that the tapestry tells; the intricacy of it, from the macro to the micro to the subatomic, make sit impossible for us to comprehend the megatrillions of connections between the threads in just one small fragment of the whole.
— Dean Koontz, Deeply Odd
Providence then - and this is what is most important to grasp - is not the same thing as a universal teleology. To believe in divine and unfailing providence is not to burden one's conscience with the need to see every event in this world not only as an occasion for God's grace, but as a positive determination of God's will whereby he brings to pass a comprehensive design that, in the absence of any single one of these events, would not have been possible. It may seem that this is to draw only the finest of logical distinction, one so fine indeed as to amount to little more than a sophistry. Some theologians - Calvin, for instance - have denied that the distinction between what God wills and what he permits has any meaning at all. And certainly there is no unanimity in the history of Christian exegesis on this matter. Certain classic Western interpretations of Paul's treatment of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart and of the hardened heart of Israel in Romans 9 have taken it as a clear statement of God's immediate determination of his creatures' wills. But in the Eastern Christian tradition, and in the thought of many of the greatest Western theologians, the same argument has often been understood to assert no more than that God in either case allowed a prior corruption of the will to run its course, or even - like a mire in the light of the sun - to harden the outpouring of God's fiery mercy, and always for the sake of a greater good that will perhaps redound even to the benefit of the sinner. One might read Christ's answer to his disciples' question regarding why a man had been born blind - 'that the works of God should be made manifest in him' (John 9:3) - either as a refutation or as a confirmation of the distinction between divine will and permission. When all is said and done, however, not only is the distinction neither illogical nor slight; it is an absolute necessity if - setting aside, as we should, all other judgments as superstitious, stochastic, and secondary - we are to be guided by the full character of what is revealed of God in Christ. For, after all, if it is from Christ that we are to learn how God relates himself to sin, suffering, evil, and death, it would seem that he provides us little evidence of anything other than a regal, relentless, and miraculous enmity: sin he forgives, suffering he heals, evil he casts out, and death he conquers. And absolutely nowhere does Christ act as if any of these things are part of the eternal work or purposes of God.
— David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?
As in this world there are degrees of evils, So in this world there are degrees of devils.
— John Webster, The White Devil
Evil is a cluster of well orchestrated blind spots. When it manifests itself to excess, we protest and want the blind spots that both produce it and conceal it back, and fast.
— John Thomas Allen
It is probable that the most inhuman monsters, even the Himmlers and the Mengeles, convince themselves that they are engaged in noble and courageous acts.
— Noam Chomsky
..it happens in all human affairs that we never seek to escape one mischief without falling into another. Prudence therefore consists in knowing how to distinguish degrees of disadvantage, and in accepting a less evil as a good.
— Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
Sometimes evil didn't need an excuse. Sometimes evil just was.
— Nenia Campbell, Cease and Desist
My rage is derived from eyes so sharp they see through the idiocy being passed off as sophistication. Under the cloak of universal themes and terms such as freedom, change, and acceptance, madness ensues, being readily welcomed by those whose mind's eye questions nothing.
— Justin K. McFarlane Beau
Religion became the evil of our society when it started to teach resentment and hate instead of unconditional love and wisdom.
— Debasish Mridha
There is only a certain amount of wealth in the world, this thinking goes. Economics is a matter of acquiring and allocating, not creating. This was the view of the world’s smartest people, all top philosophers and not stupid people, for many thousands of years before the age of the enlightenment. It still is.
— Jeffrey Tucker
Growing economies are built by billions of actors behaving according to their own interests, coordinated through institutions that no one in particular created.Realizing this requires humility, a trait that is in short supply among would-be dictators, politicians, and bureaucrats, which is precisely why these groups are the proven enemies of prosperity in all times and places.
— Jeffrey Tucker
Christianity now is in crisis, and a large part because people have marketed it as a religion of good people getting better, when in fact it is religion a bad people coping with their failure to be good.
— William McDavid, Law & Gospel: A Theology for Sinners
You cannot love God and tolerate evil. Psalm 97:10.
— Felix Wantang, Face to Face Meetings With Jesus Christ: The Language of Heaven
That same moment he ordered the hateful portrait taken out. But that did not calm his inner agitation: all his feelings and all his being were shaken to their depths, and he came to know that terrible torment which, by way of a striking exception, sometimes occurs in nature, when a weak talent strains to show itself on too grand a scale and fails; that torment which gives birth to great things in a youth, but, in passing beyond the border of dream, turns into a fruitless yearning; that dreadful torment which makes a man capable of terrible evildoing.
— Nikolai Gogol, The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol
There are times when the evil seems so impenetrable, the wickedness so victorious, you don't even know how to hope. But then the good news bursts in, as impossible to deny as it is to believe.
— Heather Day Gilbert, Trial by Twelve
It was not evil that gave her the idea of pleasure, that seemed to her attractive; it was pleasure, rather, that seemed evil. And as, every time that she indulged in it, pleasure came to her attended by evil thoughts such as, ordinarily, had no place in her virtuous mind, she came at length to see in pleasure itself something diabolical, to identify it with Evil.
— Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
Why choose the lesser evil anyway, when the greater evil is usually higher quality and will last longer before it breaks?
— Scott Perkins, Howard Carter Saves the World
….This time she did not feel a thing when the Headmaster stuck the pin into her arm.
— Gillian Cross, The Demon Headmaster
Alas! There's no one in hell ... all the devils are here!
— Aimé Césaire
Every act intends some good.
— Brent Weeks, The Broken Eye
...guilt is deserved only when the effort to resist evil is never made.
— Dean Koontz, Odd Interlude: A Special Odd Thomas Adventure
A great leader may be executed in the name of malevolence, yet when his followers look upon his legacy they will see not only the man who once stood, but even more will they see the ideas for which he stood.
— Riley Larock
Thou hast gone on in all thy life hitherto, ever since thou wast born, in a continual opposition to God Himself, unto the infinite Lord, the eternal first being of all the world; thy life hath been nothing but enmity to this God: thou hast as directly opposed, and striven against, and resisted Him, as ever man did oppose, and resist, and strive with another man, and this thou hast done in the whole course of thy life: certainly there is more in this to humble a man than anything that can be spoken to shew him the evil of sin.
— Jeremiah Burroughs, The Evil of Evils: The Exceeding Sinfulness of Sin
This is true, at the least, that no veil of beauty hides the evils from our sight.
— Jane Smiley, The Greenlanders
Evil triumphs when good men refuse to call it evil
— Dean Cavanagh
You know what whore is. Next the devil adultery,Enters the devil murder.
— John Webster, The White Devil
You see, Risa, survival is a dance between our needs and our consciences. When the need is great enough, and the music loud enough, we can stomp conscience into the ground.'Risa closes her eyes. She knows the dance...'It's the way of the world,' Divan continues. 'Look at unwinding, society's grand gavotte of denial. There will, no doubt, come a time when people look to one another and say, 'My God, what have we done?' But I don't believe it will happen any time soon. Until then, the dance must have music; the chorus must have its voice. Give it that voice, Risa. Play for me.'But Risa's fingers offer him nothing, and the Orgao Organico holds the obdurate, unyielding silence of the grave.
— Neal Shusterman, UnDivided
The Devil can quote scripture, after all. And monsters can say "please" and "thank you" same as any mother's son.
— Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory
Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. A mystic craves obedience from men, not their agreement. He wants them to surrender their consciousness to his assertions, his edicts, his wishes, his whims—as his consciousness is surrendered to theirs. He wants to deal with men by means of faith and force—he finds no satisfaction in their consent if he must earn it by means of facts and reason. Reason is the enemy he dreads and, simultaneously, considers precarious; reason, to him, is a means of deception; he feels that men possess some power more potent than reason—and only their causeless belief or their forced obedience can give him a sense of security, a proof that he has gained control of the mystic endowment he lacked. His lust is to command, not to convince: conviction requires an act of independence and rests on the absolute of an objective reality. What he seeks is power over reality and over men’s means of perceiving it, their mind, the power to interpose his will between existence and consciousness, as if, by agreeing to fake the reality he orders them to fake, men would, in fact, create it.
— Ayn Rand
Then why do we do so many bad things?He sighed. “Because one thing God gave us—and I’m afraid it’s at times a little too much—is free will. Freedom to choose. I believe he gave us everything needed to build a beautiful world, if we choose wisely.
— Mitch Albom, Have a Little Faith: a True Story
Evil never dies. It just changes faces.
— Dean Koontz, Forever Odd
Laissez faire (in its full true meaning) opens the way to the realization of the noble dreams of socialism.
— Henry George
It's always the lesser of two evils.''I don't see why there have to be any evils at all.'-Connor
— Neal Shusterman, Unwind
Notorious Lucifer, King of Hell, claimed to know love again.
— J.M. Darhower, Reignite
The idea that the government has services or goods that they can pass on is a complete farce. Governments have nothing. They can’t create anything, they never have. All they can do is steal from one group and give it to another at the destruction of the principles of freedom, and we ought to challenge that concept.
— Ron Paul
Price controls almost invariably produce black markets, where prices are not only higher than the legally permitted prices, but also higher than they would be in a free market, since the legal risks must also be compensated. While small-scale black markets may function in secrecy, large-scale black markets usually require bribes to officials to look the other way.
— Thomas Sowell
I believe in the sun even when it’s not shining. I believe in love even when not feeling it. I believe in God even when he is silent...
— Anonymous inscription left in the wall of a German internment camp
Humans are in delusion by default, and those who conquer their delusion can understand good and evil. Morality is an arbitrary abstract, it is not good or evil and those who provoke morality a righteous act, are still at the sideways of delusion and conquer.
— M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS
Others are not born bad or good... and neither are people, by the way.
— Sergei Lukyanenko
The devil is always around the corner.
— Will Leamon, Mama, Me & 'em: Bittersweet Memories
You have heard that evil is a perversion of the good. The greatest goods can be perverted into the greatest evils. The poor man has not the opportunities for covetousness and self-indulgence which the rich man enjoys. The unlettered man has not the opportunities for intellectual pride and arrogance which the scholar may succumb to. An irreligious man may prostitute the flesh; but it takes a 'religious' man to prostitute the things of the Spirit and the Church of God. Every gift, every insight, ever vision, every talent brings its demand for self-forgetfulness in sanctified service: each brings its opportunities for richer worship or for more damnable self-love. The slum labourer may pervert beer and steak to the sole end of abusing an indulged body. It takes a bishop to pervert episcopacy to the service of self-indulgence; it takes a monk to pervert the religious life to the service of pride.
— Harry Blamires, The Devil's Hunting Grounds
Goodness is sparked by a caution for the sake of what is good, not a fear of what is bad.
— Criss Jami, Healology
The proposal to quit voting is basically revolutionary; it amounts to a shifting of power from one group to another, which is the essence of revolution. As soon as the nonvoting movement got up steam, the politicians would most assuredly start a counterrevolution. Measures to enforce voting would be instituted; fines would be imposed for violations, and prison sentences would be meted out to repeaters.
— Frank Chodorov
The purpose of this life is to worship Allah the only God who has no partners or associates.And I (Allah) created not the jinn and mankind except that they should worship Me (Alone)Quran Chapter 51 verse 56
— Mahair Ashaboon
Evil became invisible when it was everywhere. Like air, everyone forgot it was there until it was blowing hard enough to knock off their hat or muss up their hair.
— Sean DeLauder, The Least Envied
In modern fantasy (literary or governmental), killing people is the usual solution to the so-called war between good and evil.
— Ursula K. Le Guin
We can't play God.We can't do this to kids.You're evil, I'm evil.Everyone will die.No matter what.Let nature win.
— James Dashner, The Maze Runner Files
Being Scared-off by EvilLastly, we deny the presence of evil because we are terriﬁed by the horrendously hurtful, cruel, and bloody kinds of evil people tell us about—if we are willing to listen. This was poignantly brought home during an interdisciplinary case conference involving a resident who was counseling for the ﬁrst time a woman who had been sexually abused. As we worked with him, it became clear that he was resisting entering what he called the 'psychic cave" of her sealed—off experience from which she was shouting for assistance. Because of his resistance, he was not providing her the support and guidance she so desperately needed, and he was not facilitating her working through the abuse and hurt that were continuing to impact her life. As he was confronted about this at one point in the conference, he stated tearfully: "I'm afraid if I help her move into her memories. I will have to go with her, and if I go with her, my view of the world as a basically good and safe place will be shattered. I'm not sure I can handle that for myself, or be able to think about the fact that my wife and kids may be more vulnerable living in this world than I can be comfortable believing" (Means 1995, 299).
— J. Jeffrey Means, Trauma and Evil: Healing the Wounded Soul
I only have two fingers left.I wrote the lies of my farewell with two fingers.That is the truth.We are evil.They are kids.We are evil.
— James Dashner, The Maze Runner Files
Indifference is a well that never runs dry, and as good a word for evil as was ever composed.
— Fernando A. Torres, A Habit of Resistance
To fight with demons, your intent must be pure. And even then, there's no guarantee you'll win.
— Simon R. Green, Ghost of a Chance
Was he he handsome?" she asked with a sly smirk."Very. He is still, I think.""The devil, they say, goes about in finery.""And if you believe Beelzebub is as cunning as he is attractive, then I think we have found him.
— Nancy E. Turner
She's had a long life of experience in noticing evil, fancying evil, suspecting evil and going forth to do battle with evil.
— Agatha Christie
Oh God. We’re talking about me being naked, in the shower with cooter cream. Please world, end. Kill me. “I know it’s not soap. I just… if it’s scented… I can’t do scented. Flowers and stuff like that. Fruit-flavored soaps make… things… burnish.” She could tell from the peeks at his face Mr. Fitzwell had never stepped foot in bath and lotion store, wanting to try the array of fun fragrances. Nor had he purchased Peppermint Candy shower gel, foamed up his nether regions, and felt like he had dipped them in lava. Dove crossed and uncrossed her legs at the memory. Mr. Fitzwell seemed concerned. “Okay, just a heads-up. It’s definitely not good to put any fruits or plant life near your genitals.” He made a V with his hands and formed his own pretend vagina in front of his pants. Dove covered her eyes and tried to defend herself because now she could hear the sickly older woman beating her supporters with a purse. Dove’s mumbling got louder with her embarrassment. “I don’t put weird things down… there. Just make sure that the cream’s vagina-scented. Just plain. For vaginas.” She kept her eyes on the counter.
— Debra Anastasia, Fire Down Below
He stopped, finally, and smiled. “Honestly? With this thing I think I could get my jerk-off muscles so well-developed that I could rub out a spooge with one pump! If that’s not worth $19.95, I don’t know what is.
— Debra Anastasia, Fire Down Below
One never learns how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice for her - is it ever the right choice? Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil? It is at the very least a question of definitions.
— Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Even the most sadistic and destructive man is human, as human as the saint.
— Erich Fromm
The devil is not the prince of matter; the devil is the arrogance of spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns from whence he came.
— Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
There's no such thing as an evil race, just evil circumstances that make people do evil things.
— Stuart Hill
ATTACHMENT IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL!" Myth: 'Money is the root of all evil.' It's just a wrong interpretation of a wise ancient message. TRUTH: 'LUST(GREED) OF MONEY(ANYTHING) IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL.' ~ UNIVERSE LOVES YOU & SO DO I ‪#‎StardustAK‬ PS. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. ( 1 Timothy 6:10 )
— Abhishek Kumar