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Topics/Morality

Quotes about good and evil

192 quotes from 117 people

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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)
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.
Hannah Arendt1906–1975Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), Epilogue
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
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
There are depths in man which go down the length of the lowest Hell, as there are heights which reach the highest Heaven; — for are not both Heaven and Hell made out of him, everlasting Miracle and Mystery that he is?
Thomas Carlyle1795–1881The French Revolution. A History (1837), Pt. III, Bk. I, ch. 4.
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
Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere.
George W. Bushborn 1946Farewell Address to the Nation (15 January 2009)
The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn1918–2008The Gulag Archipelago (1973)
Good deeds remain good, no matter whether we know how the world was made or not.
Felix Adler1851–1933Life and Destiny (1913), Section 9: Ethical Outlook
- Morality
Nazism and Fascism are thoroughly beaten, but I must admit that their defeat does not mean that barbarism and brutality have been defeated.
Karl Popper1902–1994Utopia and Violence (1947)
- War & Peace
One of the most evil of people is the two-faced person who shows one face to these people and another face to those people.
MMuhammad571–632Muwatta of Imam Malik, Speech, hadith 21
- Character
The most important message of a crucifix, to me anyway, was how unspeakably cruel supposedly sane human beings can be when under orders from a superior authority.
Kurt Vonnegut1922–2007Hocus Pocus (1990)
- Christianity
Religion amplifies the good and evil tendencies of individual souls.
Freeman Dyson1923–2020Progress In Religion (2000)
- Religion
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)
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)