Famously Said Random quote

Topics/Morality

Quotes about good and evil

192 quotes from 117 people

Most readBy personPage 7 of 13

It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and ignore the evil, because by making people neglectful it lets in disaster. There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference.
Helen Keller1880–1968Optimism (1903)
It’s better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a terrific cost.
Stephen Kingborn 1947
One single war — we all know — may be productive of more evil, immediate and subsequent, than hundreds of years of the unchecked action of the mutual-aid principle may be productive of good.
Peter Kropotkin1842–1921Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902)
- War & Peace
Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous; more dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.
Primo Levi1919–1987Appendix (1976) to If This Is a Man, as translated in The New Republic
Here was a place where men and life and death had reached the lowest form of degradation. How could any reward in national progress even faintly justify the establishment and operation of such a place?
Charles Lindbergh1902–1974After visiting the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in Germany, as quoted in The New York Times (20 April 1980)
- War & Peace
What we call evil, is the only and best shape, which, for the person and his condition at the time, could be assumed by the best good.
George MacDonald1824–1905Phantastes (1858)
Time drives everything before it, and is able to bring with it good as well as evil, and evil as well as good.
Niccolò Machiavelli1469–1527The Prince (1532), Chapter IIIIn context
- Time
The object of punishment is, prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Horace Mann1796–1859Lectures on Education (1855), Lecture 7
- Justice
Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.
Thomas Mann1875–1955The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6, section, A Good Soldier as translated by Woods (1996), p. 506
One must have faith in the best in men and distrust the worst. One must allow the best to be shown so that it reveals and prevails over the worst.
José Martí1853–1895Our America (1891)
In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which.
George R. R. Martinborn 1948infinity plus interview (2001)
The battle between good and evil is a legitimate theme for a Fantasy (or for any work of fiction, for that matter), but in real life that battle is fought chiefly in the individual human heart.
George R. R. Martinborn 1948infinity plus interview (2001)
- Writing
I don’t think goodness is something that you learn. If you’re left adrift in the world to learn goodness from it, you would be in trouble.
Cormac McCarthy1933–2023The Wall Street Journal, November 20, 2009, “Hollywood’s Favorite Cowboy” by John Jurgensen
All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick.
Herman Melville1819–1891Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter XLIIn context
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
John Stuart Mill1806–1873Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St. Andrews, Feb. 1st 1867 (1867) p. 36.
- Responsibility