Best evil & self Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“How do you live with evil? Art is traditionally - certainly with my secular background - the answer, but art is very self-referential, whereas religion claims to go beyond the bounds of human existence.”

Humans Art Self Evil Answers Existence Art Is Claims Bounds Backgrounds Secular Human Existence

Author:Yann Martel

“Moral decay first hampers and then strangles honest government, regular commerce, and even the ability to take genuine pleasure in the goods of this world. Compulsion is applied from above as self-discipline relaxes below, and the last liberties expire under the weight of a unitary state.... Since religion has lost its empire over the souls of men, the most prominent boundary that divided good from evil is overthrown; kings and nations are guided by chance and none can say where are the natural limits of despotism and the bound of license.”

“Sufis teach that we first must battle and destroy the evil within ourselves by shining upon it the good within, and then we learn to battle the evil in others by helping their higher selves gain control of their lower selves.”

Firsts Self Helping Evil Teach Higher Battle Gains Shining Sufi Higher Self Evil Within

Author:Feisal Abdul Rauf

“To disguise nothing, to conceal nothing, to write about those things that are closest to our pain, our happiness; to write about our sexual clumsiness, the agonies of Tantalus, the depth of our discouragement-what we glimpse in our dreams-our despair. To write about the foolish agonies of anxiety, the refreshment of our strength when these are ended; to write about our painful search for self, jeopardized by a stranger in the post office, a half-seen face in a train window, to write about the continents and populations of our dreams, about love and death, good and evil, the end of the world.”

“Do not beat up on yourself. Do not criticize your writing as lousy, inadequate, stupid, or any of the evil epithets that you are used to heaping on yourself. Such self-bashing is never useful. If you indulge in it, your writing doesn't stand a chance. So when your mind turns on you, turn it back, stamp it down, shut it up, and keep writing.”

Ifs Writing Mind Self Used Turns Evil Chance Stupid Beats Criticize Stamps Indulge Inadequate Indulge In Epithet

Author:Gail Carson Levine

“I like solitude. It is when you truly hear and speak your natural, unadulterated mind, and out comes your most stupid self as well as your most intelligent self. It is when you realize who you are and the extents of the good and the evils which you are capable of”

Mind Wells Self Evil Speak Realizing Natural Stupid Solitude Capable Intelligent Who You Are

Book:Killosophy

Source: Killosophy

“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).”

“Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men.”

Men Self Reason Lying Evil Poor Propaganda Serving Self Serving

Book:Assignment in Eternity

Source: Assignment in Eternity

“Never will we be able to understand our times if we naively 'think' of this system of self Government as the work of a few gangsters or the creation of a pack of criminals we call a political party. The appeal of Socialism, Fascism and communism was principally negative; they were protests against a live and let live anything goes liberalism, a spineless indifference to causes, a failure to recognize that nothing was evil enough to hate, and nothing was good enough to die for.”

“Worship means reverence and humility. It means revering your real self and humbling delusions. If you can wipe out evil desires and harbor good thoughts, even if nothing shows, it's worship. Such form is its real form.”

Ifs Mean Real Self Shows Form Desire Evil Humility Worship Delusion Reverence Wipe Harbors Good Thoughts Humbling Real Self

Book:The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma

Source: The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma

“The evils of mankind are caused, not by the primary aggressiveness of individuals, but by their self-transcending identification with groups whose common denominator is low intelligence and high emotionality.”

Self Evil Individual Common Groups Mankind Lows Primaries Identification Common Denominator Transcending Aggressiveness

Author:Arthur Koestler

“The evil done by oneself, self-begotten, self-bred, crushes the foolish, as a diamond breaks a precious stone.”

Self Done Evil Break Stones Oneself Foolish Crush Diamond Precious Stones

Book:The Dhammapada

Source: The Dhammapada

“By his willingly renouncing self-defence, the Christian affirms his absolute adherence to Jesus, and his freedom from the tyranny of his own ego. The exclusiveness of this adherence is the only power which can overcome evil.”

Self Christian Evil Jesus Ego Overcoming Absolutes Tyranny Defence Adherence Self Defence

Book:The Cost of Discipleship

Source: The Cost of Discipleship

“There is nothing disastrous in the temporary nature of our ideas. They are always that. But there may very easily be a train of evil in the self-deception which regards them as final. I think God will forgive us our skepticism sooner than our Inquisitions.”

Thinking May Ideas Self Evil Regard Forgiving Train Finals Gods Will Deception Temporary Skepticism Self Deception Inquisition

Book:A Preface to Politics

Source: A Preface to Politics

“Is it stupidity or is it moral cowardice which leads men to continue professing a creed that makes self-sacrifice a cardinal principle, while they urge the sacrificing of others, even to the death, when they trespass against us? Is it blindness, or is it an insance inconsistency, which makes them regard as most admirable the bearing of evil for the benefit of others, while they lavish admiration on those who, out of revenge, inflict great evils in return for small ones suffered? Surely our barbarian code of right needs revision, and our barbarian standard of honour should be somewhat changed.”

Source: Works: The study of sociology

“The daimonic refers to the power of nature rather than the superego, and is beyond good and evil. Nor is it man's 'recall to himself' as Heidegger and later Fromm have argued, for its source lies in those realms where the self is rooted in natural forces which go beyond the self and are felt as the grasp of fate upon us. The daimonic arises from the ground of being rather than the self as such.”

Men Self Lying Evil Force Felt Natural Fate Source Arise Realms Good And Evil Rooted Recalls Heidegger Power Of Nature Beyond Good And Evil Fromm Superego

Book:Love and will

Source: Love and will

“Anything that encourages pauperism, anything that relaxes the manly fiber and lowers self-respect, is an unmixed evil.”

Self Evil Self Respect Relax Manly Fiber

Book:The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses

Source: The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses

“Whatever... you pretend... if any of you be a prayerless person, or a scoffer, or a lover of evil company, in a word, if you are not a holy, strict, and self-denying Christian, you cannot be saved.”

Ifs Persons Self Christian Evil Company Lovers Holy Saved Strict Hebrew Matthew Scoffers

Author:Joseph Alleine

“The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others. The impression somehow prevails that the true believer, particularly the religious individual, is a humble person. The truth is that the surrendering and humbling of the self breed pride and arrogance. The true believer is apt to see himself as one of the chosen, the salt of the earth, a prince disguised in meekness, who is destined to inherit this earth and the kingdom of heaven, too. He who is not of his faith is evil; he who will not listen shall perish.”

Source: THE TRUE BELIEVER

“Self-righteousness and presumptive moral judgments pose a great danger in the political arena. To become convinced of the divine infallibility of one's personal predilections on a secular political issue is to play God, to assume to oneself the attributes of deity. It cultivates an arrogant intolerance of dissenting viewpoints and relegates one's political adversaries to the category of evil per se.”

“The gun-control crusade today is like the Prohibition crusade 100 years ago. It is a shared zealotry that binds the self-righteous know-it-alls in a warm fellowship of those who see themselves as fighting on the side of the angels against the forces of evil. It is a lofty role that they are not about to give up for anything so mundane as facts - or even the lives of other people.”

“Fantasy is a literature particularly useful for embodying and examining the real difference between good and evil. In an America where our reality may seem degraded to posturing patriotism and self-righteous brutality, imaginative literature continues to question what heroism is, to examine the roots of power, and to offer moral alternatives. Imagination is the instrument of ethics. There are many metaphors besides battle, many choices besides war, and most ways of doing good do not, in fact, involve killing anybody. Fanstasy is good at thinking about those other ways.”

“Government is only a necessary evil, like other go-carts and crutches. Our need of it shows exactly how far we are still children. All governing overmuch kills the self-help and energy of the governed.”

Needs Children Stills Self Helping Shows Government Evil Energy Self Help Governing Carts Crutches Necessary Evil

Book:Speeches, Lectures, and Letters

Source: Speeches, Lectures, and Letters

“Self-esteem is the goddamn root of all evil.”

Self Evil Self Esteem Roots Esteem

Author:Roseanne Barr

“It [childbearing] was never intended to be as time-consuming and self-conscious a process as it is. One of the deepest evils in our society is tyrannical nurturance.”

Self Evil Process Conscious Our Society Consuming Self Conscious Time Consuming Childbearing

Book:the female eunuch

Source: the female eunuch

“That there is a continuous link from humans to gorillas, with the intermediate species merely long dead, is beyond the understanding of speciesists. Tie the label Homo sapiens even to a tiny piece of insensible embryonic tissue, and its life suddenly leaps to infinite, incomputable value.... Self-styled pro-lifers, and others that indulge in footling debates about exactly when in its development a foetus becomes human, exhibit the same discontinuous mentality. Human, to the discontinuous mind, is an absolutist concept. There can be no half measures. And from this flows much evil.”

“The admission of Oriental immigrants who cannot be amalgamated with our people has been made the subject either of prohibitory clauses in our treaties and statutes or of strict administrative regulations secured by diplomatic negotiations. I sincerely hope that we may continue to minimize the evils likely to arise from such immigration without unnecessary friction and by mutual concessions between self-respecting governments.”

“Self-criticism, cruel, unsparing criticism that goes to the very root of the evil, is life and breath for the proletarian movement.”

Self Evil Movement Roots Criticism Breaths Self Criticism

Book:The Rosa Luxemburg Reader

Source: The Rosa Luxemburg Reader

“Evil deeds are the fruit of an evil heart. They are not an aberration from our true self but a revelation of it.”

Heart Self Evil Fruit Deeds Revelations True Self Aberration

Author:Sinclair B. Ferguson

“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

“Do your neighbour good by all means in your power, moral as well as physical - by kindness, by patience, by unflinching resistance against every outward evil - by the silent preaching of your own contrary life. But if the only good you can do him is by talking at him, or about him - nay, even to him, if it be in a self-satisfied, super-virtuous style - such as I earnestly hope the present writer is not doing - you had much better leave him alone.”

Ifs Wells Mean Self Evil Can Do Talking Moral Kindness Style Silent Contrary Satisfied Resistance Virtuous Preaching Neighbour Doing You

Author:Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

“It is this unquiet self-love that renders us so sensitive. The sick man, who sleeps ill, thinks the night long. We exaggerate, from cowardice, all the evils which we encounter; they are great, but our sensibility increases them. The true way to bear them is to yield ourselves up with confidence to God.”

Thinking Men Way Long Self Night Evil Sleep Bears Self Love Sick Increase Ill Sensitive Encounters Yield Cowardice Sensibility Sick Man

Author:Francois Fenelon

“The divine within you is stronger than anything that is without you. Therefore, be not afraid of anything. Rely on your own Inner Self, the Divinity within you. Tap the source through looking within. Improve yourself. Build your character. Purify the heart. Develop the divine virtues. Eradicate evil traits. Conquer all that is base in you. Endeavor to attain all that is worthy and noble. Make the lower nature the servant of the higher through discipline, Tapas, self-restraint and meditation. This is the beginning of your freedom.”

“It is the function of God Rama to destroy evil, wherever it occurs and it is equally the function of God Rama to give to his devotees like Bibhishana a free charter of irrevocable self-government.”

Giving Self Government Evil Function Rama Charter Self-government Devotee Irrevocable

Author:Mahatma Gandhi

“It is tempting to believe that social evils arise from the activities of evil men and that if only good men (like ourselves, naturally) wielded power, all would be well. That view requires only emotion and self-praise - easy to come by and satisfying as well. To understand why it is that 'good' men in positions of power will produce evil, while the ordinary man without power but able to engage in voluntary cooperation with his neighbors will produce good, requires analysis and thought, subordinating emotions to the rational.”

“If you were not full of self-pity you would soon observe that we ourselves are to blame for all this evil, because we refuse to understand that it is in reality a good thing.”

Ifs Self Reality Evil Blame Good Things Refuse Pity Self Pity Asceticism

Book:Way of the Ascetics: The Ancient Tradition of Discipline and Inner Growth

Source: Way of the Ascetics: The Ancient Tradition of Discipline and Inner Growth

“According to the spirit of this age, the ultimate sin is no longer the failure to honor and thank God but the failure to esteem oneself. Self-abasement, not God-abasement, is the evil. And the cry of deliverance is not "O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me?" but "O worthy man that I am, would that I could only see it better"!”

Men Self Age Spirit Evil Sin Self Esteem Cry Honor Ultimate Oneself Worthy Esteem Thank God Wretched Deliverance Abasement

Author:John Piper

“Liberty, according to my metaphysics, is an intellectual quality, an attribute that belongs not to fate nor chance. Neither possesses it, neither is capable of it. There is nothing moral or immoral in the idea of it. The definition of it is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power; it can elect between objects, indifferent in point of morality, neither morally good nor morally evil.”

Source: The Political Writings of John Adams: Representative Selections

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