Sunday, October 2, 2011 – Just Evil
The soul that has conceived one wickedness can nurse no good thereafter. ~ Sophocles, Philoctetes
Evil is a point of view. ~ Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding. ~ Albert Camus, The Plague
Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art. ~ Charles Baudelaire
There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., The Sirens of Titan
Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels to be warriors for Good accept the demagogy of the angels. Things are clearly more complicated. ~ Milan Kundera
All things truly wicked start from an innocence. ~ Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible. ~ Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd
What we call evil, it seems to me, is simply ignorance bumping its head in the dark. ~ Henry Ford, Theosophist Magazine, February 1930
Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil. ~ Anatole France, The Revolt of the Angels
I’ve got evil in me as much as anyone, some desires that scare me. Even if I don’t give in to them, just having them scares the living bejesus out of me sometimes. I’m no saint, the way you kid about. But I’ve always walked the line, walked that goddamned line. It’s a mean mother of a line, straight and narrow, sharp as a razor, cuts right into you when you walk it long enough. You’re always bleeding on that line, and sometimes you wonder why you don’t just step off and walk in the cool grass. ~ Dean Koontz, Dark Rivers of the Heart
As long as what you are afraid of is something evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue. But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it also is dreadful? How if food itself turns out to be the very thing you can’t eat, and home the very place you can’t live, and your very comforter the person who makes you uncomfortable? Then, indeed, there is no rescue possible: the last card has been played. ~ C. S. Lewis, Perelandra
Between two evils, I always like to take the one I’ve never tried before. ~ Mae West, Klondike Annie
I think that if there were a God, there would be less evil on this earth. I believe that if evil exists here below, then either it was willed by God or it was beyond His powers to prevent it. Now I cannot bring myself to fear a God who is either spiteful or weak. I defy Him without fear and care not a fig for his thunderbolts. ~ Marquis De Sade, Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue
Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion. ~ Steven Weinberg
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents. ~ H. L. Mencken
The term “evil powers” is one you hear only in the church, or in Marvel comic books, or Republican speeches. ~ Garrison Keillor
A great cause of evil in the world is that men seldom think themselves criminal if they offer the same injustice to others that has been successfully practiced on themselves. ~ Norman Macdonald
I believed in love, but I believed in evil too. Neither love nor evil conquers all, but evil cheats more. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton
I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room. ~ Blaise Pascal
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being, and who is willing to destroy his own heart? ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much… the wheel, New York, wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely the dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons. ~ Douglas Adams
Evil will always triumph over good because good is dumb. ~ Dark Helmet, Space Balls (Mel Brooks)
All evil comes from the old. They grow fat on ideas and young men die of them. ~ Jean Anouilh
Art is an attempt to integrate evil. ~ Simone de Beauvoir
Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable. ~ E. M. Forster
“Evil men have no songs.” How is it that the Russians have songs? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
The way I understand it, the Russians are sort of a combination of evil and incompetence… sort of like the Post Office with tanks. ~ Emo Philips
May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house. ~ George Carlin
Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
Evil is whatever distracts. ~ Franz Kafka
Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle. The modern industrial proletariat does not belong to the category of such classes. ~ Vladimir Lenin
Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good. ~ W. H. Auden
No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does. ~ La Rochefoucauld
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there. ~ Eric Hoffer
There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless. ~ W. Somerset Maugham
This is the very worst wickedness, that we refuse to acknowledge the passionate evil that is in us. This makes us secret and rotten. ~ D. H. Lawrence
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil. ~ Hannah Arendt
Just Above Sunset 