Best evil & reason Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

Source: Assignment in Eternity

“Johnny Depp is like a brother to me. We have matching tattoos on our backs - Charles Baudelaire, the flowers of evil, this giant skeleton thing. It's kind of a secret. People say to us, 'Why did you get that?' And we say, 'No reason.'”

People Kind Reason Evil Secret Brother Flower Giants No Reason Tattoo Skeletons Matching Baudelaire

Author:Marilyn Manson

“From my observations, it would seem that the core message of most major religions is right, just and pure. For this reason I can not help but conclude that evil acts committed by religious people are committed not because of their religion, but in spite of it.”

People Life I Can Reason Helping Seems Evil Religious Pure Majors Messages Committed Core Observation Spite Can Not

Author:Derek R. Audette

“Many of our miseries are merely comparative: we are often made unhappy, not by the presence of any real evil, but by the absence of some fictitious good; of something which is not required by any real want of nature, which has not in itself any power of gratification, and which neither reason nor fancy would have prompted us to wish, did we not see it in the possession of others.”

Want Made Real Reason Evil Wish Misery Possession Absence Unhappy Fancy Consumerism Gratification Overconsumption

Book:The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.: D., with an Essay on His Life and Genius

Source: The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.: D., with an Essay on His Life and Genius

“We frequently do good in order to enable us to do evil later with impunity exemption of punishment.”

Reason Order Evil Punishment Impunity Exemption

Author:Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“The reason we must put on the whole armor of God is to withstand evil. We don't war against people, but against a spiritual hierarchy of invisible power.”

People War Reason Whole Spiritual Evil Invisible Hierarchy Armor

Book:The 7-Day Prayer Warrior Experience (Free One-Week Devotional)

Source: The 7-Day Prayer Warrior Experience (Free One-Week Devotional)

“Nature is not evil. The world occasionally shrugs its shoulders, and people get knocked off. The earth, for geological reasons that are well known, is a fairly risky place to live. To be evil, you have to have intent. Any remarkable natural happening in which no human will is employed cannot be regarded as evil.”

People World Humans Wells Reason Earth Evil Natural Known Happenings Shoulders Remarkable Well Known Employed Places To Live Human Will

Author:Simon Winchester

“It must be remembered that there is no real reason to expect anything in particular from mankind; good and evil are local expedients - or their lack - and not in any sense cosmic truths or laws.”

Real Reason Law Evil Mankind Particular Locals Remembered Good And Evil Cosmic

Author:H. P. Lovecraft

“No one punishes the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done wrong -- only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that way. But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong, for that which is done cannot be undone, but he has regard to the future, and is desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong again.”

Men Way May Doe Reason Done Past Desire Evil He Man Regard Notion Punishment Rational Beast Fury Undone Unreasonable Doers Evil Doers Past Wrongs

Author:Plato

“In a word, the Holy Scripture is the highest and best of books, abounding in comfort under all afflictions and trials. It teaches us to see, to feel, to grasp, and to comprehend faith, hope, and charity, far otherwise than mere human reason can; and while evil oppresses us, it teaches how these virtues throw light upon the darkness, and how, after this poor, miserable existence of ours on earth, there is another and an eternal life.”

Source: The Table Talk Or Familiar Discourse of Martin Luther

“But now well democracy has shown us that what is evil are the grosses têtes, the big heads, all big heads are greedy for money and power, they are ambitious that is the reason they are big heads and so they are at the head of the government and the result is misery for the people. They talk about cutting off the heads of the grosses têtes but now we know that there will be other grosses têtes and the will be all the same.”

People Knows Wells Reason Bigs Government Evil Results Democracy Cutting Misery Ambitious Greedy Democracies Have Money And Power Cutting Off Big Heads

Author:Gertrude Stein

“Good and Evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions, which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different: And diverse men differ not only in their judgment, on the senses of what is pleasant and unpleasant to the taste, smell, hearing, touch, and sight, but also of what is conformable, or disagreeable to Reason, in the actions of the common life. Nay, the same man, in diverse times, differs from himself, and one time praiseth, that is, calleth Good, what another time he dispraiseth, and calleth Evil.”

“What happened in World War II was what happened in war generally, and that was whatever the initiating cause, and however clear the moral reason is for the war in which one side looks better than the other, by the time the war ends both sides have been engaged in evil.”

World Looks Has Beens War Ends Reason Evil Causes Sides Moral Clear Happened War Of The Worlds Engaged World War Ii World War I Both Sides

Book:Howard Zinn Speaks: Collected Speeches, 1963-2009

Source: Howard Zinn Speaks: Collected Speeches, 1963-2009

“Up until today evil has lured goodness into evil, but goodness has not been able to lure evil into goodness. This may be the reason why up to today Christianity has not been able to boldly fulfill the Will of God.”

May Reason Today Able Evil Christianity Goodness Gods Will Reason Why Lure

Author:Sun Myung Moon

“The greatest talents have been frequently misapplied and have produced evil proportionate to the extent of their powers. Both reason and revelation seem to assure us that such minds will be condemned to eternal death, but while on earth, these vicious instruments performed their part in the great mass of impressions, by the disgust and abhorrence which they excited.”

Mind Has Beens Reason Seems Earth Evil Talent Eternal Mass Instruments Excited Impression Revelations Disgusting Vicious Abhorrence

Book:An Essay on the Principle of Population: Illustrated

Source: An Essay on the Principle of Population: Illustrated

“For years I've been interested in a fundamental question concerning what I call the psychology of evil: Why is it that good people do evil deeds? I've been interested in that question since I was a little kid. Growing up in the ghetto in the South Bronx, I had lots of friends who I thought were good kids, but for one reason or another they ended up in serious trouble. They went to jail, they took drugs, or they did terrible things to other people. My whole upbringing was focused on trying to understand what could have made them go wrong.”

“Reason is a necessary instrument, to be used for good or evil, but it has no moral qualities.”

Reason Used Evil Quality Moral Instruments

Book:Embattled Reason: Essays on Social Knowledge

Source: Embattled Reason: Essays on Social Knowledge

“Iraq's invasion of Kuwait is a case of bad men doing wrong things for wicked reasons. This is the full-sized or standard purebred evil and is easily recognized even by moral neophytes. Other malignities-drugs in America, famine in Africa and everything in the Middle East-are more complex. When combating those evils people sometimes have trouble deciding whom to shoot.”

Source: Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice, and Alcohol-Free Beer

“Whoso turns his attention to the bitter strifes of these days and seeks a reason for the troubles that vex public and private life must come to the conclusion that a fruitful cause of the evils which now afflict, as well as of those which threaten us, lies in this: that false conclusions concerning divine and human things, which originated in the schools of philosophy, have crept into all the orders of the state, and have been accepted by the common consent of the masses.”

“the leading error of the human mind, - the bane of human happiness - the perverter of human virtue ... is Religion - that dark coinage of trembling ignorance! It is Religion - that poisoner of human felicity! It is Religion - that blind guide of human reason! It is Religion - that dethroner of human virtue! which lies at the root of all the evil and all the misery that pervade the world!”

World Mind Humans Reason Lying Evil Dark Virtue Ignorance Roots Blind Misery Errors Guides Human Mind Trembling Felicity Bane Human Happiness Human Reason Poisoners

Author:Frances Wright

“Religion holds a man back from the path, prevents his stepping forward, for various very plain reasons. First, it makes the vital mistake of distinguishing between good and evil.”

Men Firsts Reason Religion Evil Mistake Path Various Good And Evil

Book:Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold

Source: Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold

“The reason we're governing right now is because we defeated moderate Republicans with moderate Democrats. And people need to be patient about that and realize that compromise is not evil.”

People Needs Reason Evil Realizing Republican Right Now Democrat Patient Compromise Defeated Moderates Be Patient Governing

Author:Barack Obama

“We may never understand what leads anybody to terrorize their fellow human beings. Such violence, such evil is senseless. It's beyond reason.”

Humans May Reason Evil Human Beings Violence Fellows

Author:Barack Obama

“Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive empire, the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind; and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise the improvements of social life.”

Reason Evil Social History Mankind Consequence Vices Improvement Empires Rome Beneficial Intercourse Social Life Roman Empire Declamation

Book:The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:

Source: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:

“The virtue of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was of a severer and more laborious kind. It was the well-earned harvest of many a learned conference, of many a patient lecture, and many a midnight lucubration. At the age of twelve years, he embraced the rigid system of the Stoics, which taught him to submit his body to his mind, his passions to his reason; to consider virtue as the only good, vice as the only evil, all things external as things indifferent.”

Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“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.”

Source: The Nicomachean ethics

“When a man's eyes are sore his friends do not let him finger them, however much he wishes to, nor do they themselves touch the inflammation: But a man sunk in grief suffers every chance comer to stir and augment his affliction like a running sore; and by reason of the fingering and consequent irritation it hardens into a serious and intractable evil.”

Men Reason Eye Running Suffering Evil Wish Chance Grief Serious Fingers Affliction Irritation

Author:Plutarch

“The mystery of God's providence is a most sublime consideration. It is easy to let our reason run away with itself. It is at a loss when it attempts to search into the eternal decrees of election or the entangled mazes and labyrinths in which the divine providence walks. This knowledge is too wonderful for us. Man can be very confident that God exercises the most accurate providence over him and his affairs. Nothing comes to pass without our heavenly Father. No evil comes to pass without his permissive providence, and no good without his ordaining providence to his own ends.”

“Good and evil are essential differences of the act of the will. For good and evil pertain essentially to the will; just as truth and falsehood pertain to the reason, the act of which is distinguished essentially by the difference of truth and falsehood (according as we say that an opinion is true or false.) Consequently, good and evil volition are acts differing in species.”

Reason Evil Differences Opinion Essentials Species Good And Evil Falsehood Distinguished Volition Truth And Falsehood True Or False

Book:Basic Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, Volume 2

Source: Basic Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, Volume 2

“Any refusal to recognize reality, for any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences. There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think. Don't ignore your own desires.... Don't sacrifice them. Examine their cause. There is a limit to how much you should have to bear.”

Thinking Should Reason Reality Desire Evil Causes Sacrifice Bears Limits Consequence Should Have Refusal Evil Thoughts

Book:Ayn Rand Novel Collection

Source: Ayn Rand Novel Collection

“One reason why so many people are unhappy, not knowing why, is that they have burdened their minds with resentments. These evil thoughts pile right on top of happier and generous ones and smother them so that they never get expression. Resentments are a form of hate.... What a dearth of good will and co-operation there are among human beings and nations! What a world this would be if we all worked together, and as a popular diplomat recently expressed it-played together!”

“Reason, in a strict sense, as meaning the judgment of truth and falsehood, can never, of itself, be any motive to the will, and can have no influence but so far as it touches some passion or affection. Abstract relations of ideas are the object of curiosity, not of volition. And matters of fact, where they are neither good nor evil, where they neither excite desire nor aversion, are totally indifferent, and whether known or unknown, whether mistaken or rightly apprehended, cannot be regarded as any motive to action.”

Source: A Dissertation on the Passions: The Natural History of Religion : a Critical Edition

“The law of karma is neither fatalistic nor punitive; nor is man a hapless, helpless victim in its bonds. God has blessed each one of us with reason, intellect and discrimination, as well as the sovereign free will. Even when our past karma inclines us toward evil, we can consciously tune our inclination towards detachment and ego-free action, thus lightening the karmic load.”

Men Wells Reason Action Past Law Evil Ego Victim Blessed Intellect Karma Discrimination Tunes Free Will Load Helpless Sovereign Our Past Inclination Detachment Incline Law Of Karma

Author:Dada Vaswani

“In estimating the adversities of life, we would seldom have much reason to complain of the evils we suffer, did we understand the dangers we daily escape.”

Reason Suffering Evil Danger Adversity Complaining Estimating

Author:Norm MacDonald

“Lying is a false significance of speech, with a will to deceive, which cannot be cured but by shame and reason; it is a monstrous and wicked evil, that filthily depraved and defileth the tongue of man.”

Men Reason Lying Evil Speech Shame Tongue Wicked Significance Deceiving Monstrous Depraved

Author:Jon Jones

“Nature in causing reason and the passions to be born at one and the same time apparently wished by the latter gift to distract man from the evil she had done him by the former, and by only permitting him to live for a few years after the loss of his passions seems to show her pity by early deliverance from a life that reduces him to reason as his sole resource.”

Men Years Reason Done Shows Seems Passion Evil Born Loss Resources Pity Former Latter Sole Deliverance

Book:The Cynic's Breviary: Maxims and Anecdotes from Nicolas de Chamfort

Source: The Cynic's Breviary: Maxims and Anecdotes from Nicolas de Chamfort

“In order to forgive reason for the evil it has wrought on the majority of men, we must imagine for ourselves what man would be without his reason. 'Tis a necessary evil.”

Men Reason Would Be Order Evil Imagine Majority Forgiving Necessary Evil

Book:The Cynic's Breviary: Maxims and Anecdotes from Nicolas de Chamfort

Source: The Cynic's Breviary: Maxims and Anecdotes from Nicolas de Chamfort

“I became evil for no reason. I had no motive for my wickedness except wickedness itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved the self-destruction, I loved my fall, not the object for which I had fallen but my fall itself. My depraved soul leaped down from your firmament to ruin. I was seeking not to gain anything by shameful means, but shame for its own sake.”

Mean Soul Self Reason Fall Evil Objects Gains Destruction Shame Sake Seeking Ruins Fallen Motive No Reason Wickedness Foul Shameful Self Destruction Depraved Firmament

Book:The Confessions

Source: The Confessions

“Reason! how many eyes hast thou to see evils, and how dim, nay, blind, thou art in preventing them.”

Art Reason Eye Evil Blind Preventing

Author:Philip Sidney

“There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray. One concerns the great question of the free and the necessary, above all in the production and the origin of Evil. The other consists in the discussion of continuity, and of the indivisibles which appear to be the elements thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must enter in.”

Two Reason Evil Elements Concern Infinite Productions Discussion Consideration Continuity Labyrinth

Author:Gottfried Leibniz

“It is useless to check the vain dunce who has caught the mania of scribbling, whether prose or poetry, canzonets or criticisms,--let such a one go on till the disease exhausts itself. Opposition like water, thrown on burning oil, but increases the evil, because a person of weak judgment will seldom listen to reason, but become obstinate under reproof.”

Persons Reason Evil Water Goes On Disease Judgment Criticism Weak Increase Caught Oil Checks Burning Useless Vain Prose Opposition Thrown Mania Obstinate Dunces Reproof

Author:Sarah Josepha Hale

“Man is an Animal, formidable both from his Passions and his Reason; his Passions often urging him to great Evils, and his Reason furnishing Means to achieve them. To train this Animal, and make him amenable to Order; to inure him to a Sense of Justice and Virtue, to withhold him from ill Courses by Fear, and encourage him in his Duty by Hopes; in short, to fashion and model him for Society, hath been the Aim of civil and religious Institutions; and, in all Times, the Endeavour of good and wise Men. The aptest Method for attaining this End, hath been always judged a proper Education.”

“I think the first reason that we should love our enemies, and I think this was at the very center of Jesus' thinking, is this: that hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe.”

Thinking Should Firsts Reason Hate Universe Evil Jesus Existence Enemy Peace And Justice

Book:A Time to Break Silence: The Essential Works of Martin Luther King, Jr., for Students

Source: A Time to Break Silence: The Essential Works of Martin Luther King, Jr., for Students

“Just because we don't see a reason for evil and suffering doesn't mean there's not a reason for it.”

Mean Reason Suffering Faith Evil Religious Evil And Suffering

Author:Timothy Keller

“Passion is the evil in adultery. If a man has no opportunity of living with another man's wife, but if it is obvious for some reason that he would like to do so, and would do so if he could, he is no less guilty than if he was caught in the act.”

Ifs Men Reason Passion Evil Opportunity Wife Caught Obvious Guilty Infidelity Adultery Another Man Caught In The Act

Author:Saint Augustine

“One reason for the decline in moral values is that the world has invented a new, constantly changing and undependable standard of moral conduct referred to as "situational ethics." Now, individuals define good and evil as being adjustable according to each situation; this is in direct contrast to the proclaimed God-given absolute standard: "Thou shalt not!"-as in "Thou shalt not steal".”

World Reason Values Evil Individual Given Situation Moral Standards Ethics Direct Absolutes Stealing Good And Evil Contrast Decline Moral Values Absolutism

Author:David B. Haight

“The atheists are for the most part imprudent and misguided scholars who reason badly who, not being able to understand the Creation, the origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis the eternity of things and of inevitability.”

Reason Able Evil Atheism Creation Eternity Difficulty Atheist Scholar Hypothesis Inevitability Misguided Recourse

Author:Voltaire

“The law no passion can disturb. 'Tis void of desire and fear, lust and anger. 'Tis mens sine affectu, written reason, retaining some measure of the divine perfection. It does not enjoin that which pleases a weak, frail man, but, without any regard to persons, commands that which is good and punishes evil in all, whether rich or poor, high or low.”

Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations

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