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Evil Quotes

Browse 10263 quotes about Evil.

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Evil Quotes

“He who devoutly strives to attain wisdom and is on his guard against the invisible powers, should pray that both natural discrimination - whose light is but limited - and the illuminating grace of the Spirit abide in him. The first by means of practice trains the flesh in virtue, the second illuminates the intellect so that it chooses above all else companionship with wisdom; and through wisdom it destroys the strongholds of evil and pulls down 'all the self-esteem that exalts itself against the knowledge of God' (II Cor. 10:5).”

ShouldFirstsMeanSelfLightChristianSpiritEvilNaturalPracticeVirtueGraceSelf EsteemPrayingTrainStriveIntellectFleshInvisibleDiscriminationEsteemOrthodoxCompanionshipStrifeOrthodox ChristianIlluminatingKnowledge Of GodStrongholds
Author:Maximus the Confessor
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“Being Christian is not just obeying orders but means being in Christ, thinking like him, acting like him, loving like him; it means letting him take possession of our life and change it, transform it, and free it from the darkness of evil and sin. ... Let us show the joy of being children of God, the freedom that living in Christ gives us which is true freedom, the freedom that saves us from the slavery of evil, of sin and of death!”

ThinkingGivingMeanChildrenShowsChristianJoyOrderEvilChristSinActingDarknessOur LivesSlaveryPossessionChild Of GodObeyingTrue FreedomLife And Change
Author:Pope Francis
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“We can think of Lent as a time to eradicate evil or cultivate virtue, a time to pull up weeds or to plant good seeds. Which is better is clear, for the Christian ideal is always positive rather than negative. A person is great not by the ferocity of his hatred of evil, but by the intensity of his love for God. Asceticism and mortification are not the ends of a Christian life; they are only the means. The end is charity. Penance merely makes an opening in our ego in which the Light of God can pour. As we deflate ourselves, God fills us. And it is God’s arrival that is the important event.”

ThinkingMeanPersonsImportantEndsLightChristianEvilVirtueClearEventsEgoNegativeIdealsHatredPlantCharitySeedsOpeningChristian LifeGod LoveWeedIntensityHis LoveArrivalsAsceticismPenanceMortificationPull UpsFerocityImportant Events
Author:Fulton J. Sheen
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“Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship. Forgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere necessary for a fresh start and a new beginning.”

MeanDoeHas BeensDoneEvilCreatingForgivenessRemainsLabelsAtmosphereBarriersNew BeginningsCatalystFresh StartLoving Your Enemies
Book:A Gift of Love: Sermons from Strength to Love and Other Preachings
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“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.”

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Book:Dark Rivers of the Heart: A Novel
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“What we are accustomed to decry as great social evils, will, for the most part, be found to be only the out-growth of our own perverted life; and though we may endeavor to cut them down and extirpate them by means of law, they will only spring up again with fresh luxuriance in some other form, unless the conditions of human life and character are radically improved.”

HumansMayMeanCharacterFormLawEvilFoundSocialGrowthCuttingConditionsSpringDown AndHuman LifeEndeavorAccustomedSocial Evils
Book:Self-help
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“The acceptance of ambiguity implies more than the commonplace understanding that some good things and some bad things happen to us. It means that we know that good and evil are inextricably intermixed in human affairs; that they contain, and sometimes embrace, their opposites; that success may involve failure of a different kind, and failure may be a kind of triumph.”

KnowsHumansKindMayMeanDifferentSometimesHappensEvilUnderstandingAcceptanceFailureOppositesEmbraceGood ThingsAffairThings HappenTriumphGood And EvilBad ThingsDifferent KindsAmbiguityCommonplaceBad Things Happen
Book:Clearing the ground
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“The employment of the poor in roads and public works, and a tendency among landlords and persons of property to build, to improve and beautify their grounds, and to employ workmen and menial servants, are the means most within our power and most directly calculated to remedy the evils arising from that disturbance in the balance of produce and consumption.”

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Author:Thomas Malthus
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“To combat depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection -- a procedure which can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end.”

WantMeanEndsSufferingEvilEconomicsCrisisProductionsCreditCuresDeceptionCombatExpansionSevereBankingProceduresVery MeanMisdirection
Author:Friedrich August von Hayek
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“It is generally allowed, that no man ever found the happiness of possession proportionate to that expectation which incited his desire, and invigorated his pursuit; nor has any man found the evils of life so formidable in reality, as they were described to him by his own imagination; every species of distress brings with it some peculiar supports, some unforeseen means of resisting, or powers of enduring.”

MenMeanRealityDesireEvilFoundImaginationSupportExpectationsSpeciesEndurePossessionPursuitPeculiarDistressResistingFormidableUnforeseen
Book:The Wisdom of the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler
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“The terror in which English capitalists now stand of organized proletarian resistance gives to the naturally protected craft organizations the power to receive the wages they demand. They act as they have been trained to act by capitalist society, which denies the doctrine of the Just Price, which proclaims work to be an evil and the goal of human endeavor to be the avoidance of it; which puts it up as an ideal that individuals should get as much money as they possibly can out of their fellows by any means in their power.”

GivingShouldHumansMeanHas BeensWisdomEvilPoliticsIndividualGoalEconomyDemandIdealsOrganizationFellowsTerrorDenyResistanceDoctrineCraftsOrganizedLiberalismEndeavorCapitalistProtectedWagesAvoidance
Author:Hilaire Belloc
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“One ideological claim is that private property is theft, that the natural product of the existence of property is evil, and that private ownership therefore should not exist... What those who feel this way don't realize is that property is a notion that has to do with control - that property is a system for the disposal of power. The absence of property almost always means the concentration of power in the state.”

WayFeelsShouldMeanStatesEvilPoliticsRealizingNaturalExistenceEconomyProductsClaimsPropertyNotionAbsenceLiberalismConcentrationOwnershipTheftIdeologicalPrivate Property
Author:Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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“From a Buddhist point of view, this is standing the truth on its head by considering goods as more important than people and consumption as more important than creative activity. It means shifting the emphasis from the worker to the product of work, that is, from the human to the sub-human, surrender to the forces of evil.”

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Book:SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL
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“When Goethe says that in every human condition foes lie in wait for us, "invincible only by cheerfulness and equanimity," he does not mean that we can at all times be really cheerful, or at a moment's notice; but that the endeavor to look at the better side of things will produce the habit, and that this habit is the surest safeguard against the danger of sudden evils.”

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Book:Table-talk: To which are added Imaginary conversations of Pope and Swift
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“You cannot be naïve about evil. You cannot be naïve to the reality that there are human beings and human situations which have totally identified with the dark side of reality. They are malicious. Realism teaches you to put up appropriate boundaries so that people can't do any more evil than possible. But that doesn't mean you do evil back to them.”

PeopleHumansMeanRealityEvilSidesDarkHuman BeingsSituationTeachBoundariesAppropriateRealismDark SideMalicious
Author:Richard Rohr
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“The life of any one can by no means be changed after death; an evil life can in no wise be converted into a good life, or an infernal into an angelic life: because every spirit, from head to foot, is of the character of his love, and therefore, of his life; and to convert this life into its opposite, would be to destroy the spirit utterly.”

MeanCharacterWould BeSpiritEvilChangeWiseFeetChangedOppositesThis LifeGood LifeHis LoveAfter DeathAngelic
Book:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg
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“It is an assumption that there is always one single dimension for assessing persons and their actions that has canonical priority. This is the dimension of moral evaluation; "good/evil" is supposed always to trump any other form of evaluation, but that is an assumption, probably the result of the long history of the Christianisation and then gradual de-Christianisation of Europe, which one need not make. Evaluation need not mean moral evaluation, but might include assessments of efficiency, ... simplicity, perspicuousness, aesthetic appeal, and so on.”

NeedsMeanPersonsLongMightActionFormEvilResultsMoralTrumpEuropeSimplicityPrioritiesAppealsAssumptionDimensionsAestheticEfficiencyAssessmentEvaluationGood EvilAssessing
Author:Raymond Geuss
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“Error is multiform (for evil is a form of the unlimited, as in the old Pythagorean imagery, and good of the limited), whereas success is possible in one way only (which is why it is easy to fail and difficult to succeed - easy to miss the target and difficult to hit it); so this is another reason why excess and deficiency are a mark of vice, and observance of the mean a mark of virtue: Goodness is simple, badness is manifold.”

WayMeanReasonFormEvilEasyDifficultSimpleVirtueFailingMissingSucceedGoodnessMarkErrorsVicesOne WayReason WhyTargetExcessUnlimitedImageryDeficiencyBadnessObservanceManifold
Book:The Nicomachean ethics
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“Not every action or emotion however admits of the observance of a due mean. Indeed the very names of some directly imply evil, for instance malice, shamelessness, envy, and, of actions, adultery, theft, murder. All these and similar actions and feelings are blamed as being bad in themselves; it is not the excess or deficiency of them that we blame. It is impossible therefore ever to go right in regard to them - one must always be wrong.”

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Author:Aristotle
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“'Dallas' hit a chord back in the late Seventies and Eighties because it was the age of greed: here you have this unapologetic character who is mean and nasty and ruthless and does it all with an evil grin. I think people related to JR back then because we all have someone we know exactly like him. Everyone in the world knows a JR.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsWorldMeanDoeCharacterAgeEvilLateGreedRelatedNastySeventiesChordsEightyRuthlessDallasUnapologetic
Author:Larry Hagman
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“Since the primary motive of the evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church. What better way to conceal one's evil from oneself, as well as from others, than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture? ... I do not mean to imply that the evil are anything other than a small minority among the religious or that the religious motives of most people are in any way spurious. I mean only that evil people tend to gravitate toward piety for the disguise and concealment it can offer them.”

PeopleWayWellsMeanChristianFormCultureEvilFoundChurchReligiousAtheismOffersOneselfPositive AtheismPrimariesMotiveVisibleMinoritiesDisguisePietyBetter WaysEvil PeopleConcealmentDeacons
Author:Martin Buber
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“The idea of direct action against the evil that you want to overcome is a kind of common denominator for anarchist ideas and anarchist movements. I think one of the most important principles of anarchism is that you cannot separate means and ends. Anarchism requires means and ends to be in line with one another. I think this is in fact one of the distinguishing characteristics of anarchism.”

ThinkingWantKindMeanImportantIdeasEndsFactsActionEvilLinesCommonPrinciplesMovementDirectOvercomingCharacteristicsAnarchismAnarchistCommon DenominatorDirect Action
Author:Howard Zinn
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“There's people that say “It's not fair You have all that stuff.” I wasn't born with it. It was a horrible process to get to this. It took me my whole life. If you're new at this- and by “new at it.” I mean 15 years in, or even 20- you're just starting to grow traction. Young musicians believe they should be able to throw a band together and be famous, and anything that's in their way is unfair and evil. What are you, in your 20s, you picked up a guitar? Give it a minute.”

PeopleIfsWayGivingShouldYearsBelieveMeanWholeAbleTogetherYoungEvilGrowsStuffProcessBornMinutesBandMusicianFairsGuitarStartingWhole LifeHorribleUnfairNot FairTraction
Author:Louis C. K.
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“Evil denotes the lack of good. Not every absence of good is an evil, for absence may be taken either in a purely negative or in aprivative sense. Mere negation does not display the character of evil, otherwise nonexistents would be evil and moreover, a thing would be evil for not possessing the goodness of something else, which would mean that man is bad for not having the strength of a lion or the speed of a wild goat. But what is evil is privation; in this sense blindness means the privation of sight.”

MenMayMeanDoeCharacterWould BeEvilTakenGoodnessNegativeSightMereSpeedAbsenceLionsDisplayBlindnessGoatsPossessingNegation
Book:Philosophical Texts
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“When one has once accepted and absorbed Evil, it no longer demands the unfitness of the means. The ulterior motives with which youabsorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.... Evil is whatever distracts. Evil knows of the Good, but Good does not know of Evil. Knowledge of oneself is something only Evil has. One means that Evil has is the dialogue.... One cannot pay Evil in installments--and one always keeps on trying to.”

KnowsTryingMeanDoeEvilPayDemandGoodnessOneselfAcceptedDialogueMotiveSeductionUlterior Motive
Author:Franz Kafka
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“When we say that pleasure is the end, we do not mean the pleasure of the profligate or that which depends on physical enjoyment--as some think who do not understand our teachings, disagree with them, or give them an evil interpretation--but by pleasure we mean the state wherein the body is free from pain and the mind from anxiety.”

ThinkingGivingMindMeanEndsStatesBodyPainEvilPleasureTeachingDependsAnxietyEnjoymentInterpretationDisagree
Book:Letters: Principles Doctrines, and Vatican Sayings Translated, with an Introd. and Notes, by Russel M. Geor. Indianapolis Merrill
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“Grace is not against good works! It simply does not bless on the basis of good works. We receive blessing from God based solely on the merits of His Son--blessings freely given to us in Christ and nowhere else. The completeness that is in Christ mean deliverance from trying to 'be good' and 'do right' in order to be accepted by God.”

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Author:Richard Jordan
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“Hannah Arendt in her study of totalitarianism borrowed from Immanuel Kant the concept of radical evil, of evil that's so evil that in the end it destroys itself, it's so committed to evil and it's so committed to hatred and cruelty that it becomes suicidal. My definition of it is the surplus value that's generated by totalitarianism. It means you do more violence, more cruelty than you absolutely have to to stay in power.”

MeanEndsValuesEvilStudyViolenceConceptsHatredDefinitionsCommittedCrueltyRadicalSuicidalTotalitarianismBorrowedSurplus
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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