see also Good

• All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.--Scott Alexander

• All that we are is the result of what we have thought… If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him… If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.--Buddha

• Almighty God, grant us grace fearlessly to contend against evil, and to make no peace with oppression; and, that we may reverently use our freedom, help us to employ it in the maintenance of justice among people and nations. (The Book of Common Prayer)

• Anger is not bad. Anger can be a very positive thing, the thing that moves us beyond the acceptance of evil.--Joan Chittister

• Between two evils, choose neither; between two goods, choose both.--Tyron Edwards

• Destroy the seed of evil, or it will grow up to your ruin.--Aesop ("The Swallow and Other Birds")

• Every temptation is an opportunity to triumph over evil.--Marc Williams

• Evil can never survive, though for a time it may seem to triumph. It is only a question of our endurance and patience.--Paramananda

• Evil enters like a needle and spreads like an oak tree.--Ethiopian Proverb

• Evil is not something superhuman, it's something less than human.--Agatha Christie (The Pale Horse)

• Familiarity with evil breeds not contempt but acceptance.--Roy Hattersley

• The first idea that the child must acquire in order to be actively disciplined is that of the difference between good and evil; and the task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility, and evil with activity.--Maria Montessori

• The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.--Luke 6:45 (NIV)

• The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of evil that Dickens loved to paint ... but is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.--C. S. Lewis (Screwtape Letters)

• He that is kind is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.--Saint Augustine

• He who does evil that good may come, pays a toll to the devil to let him into heaven.--Julius & August Hare (Guesses at Truth)

• He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.--Martin Luther King, Jr. (Stride Toward Freedom)

• Hypocrisy, the lie, is the true sister of evil, intolerance, and cruelty.--Raisa M. Gorbachev

• If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, an 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 a piece of his own heart?--Alexander Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago)

• If you know that a thing is unrighteous, then use all dispatch in putting an end to it--why wait till next year?--Menicius

• Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.--Simone Weil

• An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.--Buddha

• Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.--Mohandas Gandhi (Non-Violence in Peace and War)

• It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.--Eric Hoffer (The Passionate State of Mind)

• It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.--Margaret Mead (Redbook, 1978)

• Man has always been dexterous at confusing evil with good. That was Adam's and Eve's problem, and it is our problem today. If evil were not made to appear attractive, there would be no such thing as temptation.--Billy Graham

• The man who does evil to another does evil to himself, and the evil counsel is most evil for him who counsels it.--Hesiod (Works and Days)

• Many have puzzled themselves about the origin of evil. I am content to observe that there is evil, and that there is a way to escape from it, and with this I begin and end.--John Newton

• Men are slower to recognize blessings than evils.--Livy (Ab Urbe Condita, 29 B.C.)

• Much less evil would be done on earth if evil could not be done in the name of good.--Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (Aphorisms)

• Never let a man imagine that he can pursue a good end by evil means, without sinning against his own soul. The evil effect on himself is certain.--Robert Southey

• Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.--Mahatma Gandhi

• The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.--Edmund Burke

• A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.--Thomas Hardy

• Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.--Seneca (Letters to Lucilius)

• The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger.--Ralph Waldo Emerson

• There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.--Henry David Thoreau (Walden)

• There is no evil that does not offer inducements. Avarice promises money; luxury, a varied assortment of pleasure; ambition, a purple robe and applause. Vices tempt you by the rewards which they offer.--Seneca

• Those that set in motion the forces of evil cannot always control them afterwards.--Charles W. Chestnutt

• To overcome evil with good is good, to resist evil by evil is evil.--Mohammed

• ...try to understand that there is more thoughtlessness than malice in the world. People are not out to offend you deliberately and maliciously. But all of us are thoughtless at times and do not readily realize that our words and actions are going to hurt people.--Lawrence G. Lovasik (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
  As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
  Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
  We first endure, then pity, then embrace.--Alexander Pope (An Essay on Man: Epistle 2)

• We believe at once in evil, we only believe in good upon reflection. Is this not sad?--Dorothe Deluzy

• When evil acts in the world it always manages to find instruments who believe that what they do is not evil but honorable.--Max Lerner (The Unfinished Country)

• When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil.--Max Lerner, 1902-1992 (Actions and Passions)

• When you use bad means to get good ends, you ruin the ends. You find evil in the end that you introduced into the means.--Joseph Jean Lanza del Vasto ("The Principle is to Unity of Life" in Peace is the Way)