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Topics/Morality

Quotes about good and evil

192 quotes from 117 people

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The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature
George Eliot1819–1880Silas Marner (1861), Part I, Chapter IIIIn context
It has always been easy to hate and destroy. To build and to cherish is much more difficult.
Elizabeth II1926–20221957 Christmas Broadcast; quoted on royal website (25 December 1957)
When good men die their goodness does not perish, but lives though they are gone. As for the bad, all that was theirs dies and is buried with them.
Euripides481–407 BCFrg. 734 (Bartlett’s, 1892)
It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.
Anne Frank1929–1945The Diary of a Young Girl (1942—1944), 15 July 1944
Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.
And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
Viktor Frankl1905–1997Postscript 1984: The Case for a Tragic Optimism, based on a lecture at the Third World Congress of Logotherapy, Regensburg University (19 June 1983)
- War & Peace
No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human beast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.
Sigmund Freud1856–1939Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905), his analysis of the case of Ida Bauer (also translated as Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria)
In a free society, it is hard for “good” people to do “good,” but that is a small price to pay for making it hard for “evil” people to do “evil,” especially since one man’s good is another’s evil.
Milton Friedman1912–2006“The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits”, The New York Times Magazine (13 September 1970)
- Freedom
Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
Mahatma Gandhi1869–1948Written statement in trial for sedition, March 1922
A good man, through obscurest aspiration,
Has still an instinct of the one true way.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749–1832Faust (1808), Prologue in Heaven, spoken by The LordIn context
- Character
Part of that Power, not understood,
Which always wills the Bad, and always works the Good.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749–1832Faust (1808), Scene III, spoken by MephistophelesIn context
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.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749–1832Faust (1808), Scene III, spoken by MephistophelesIn context
Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.
William Golding1911–1993Lord of the Flies (1954), Ch. 12: The Cry of the Hunters
- Friendship
The world is not black and white. More like black and grey.
Graham Greene1904–1991The Observer (London, January 2, 1983)
Cruelty is the law pervading all nature and society; and we can’t get out of it if we would!
Thomas Hardy1840–1928Jude the Obscure (1895), Part Fifth: At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere, Chapter VIIIIn context
- Nature
All things truly wicked start from an innocence.
Ernest Hemingway1899–1961A Moveable Feast (1964), Ch. 20