Top 1200 Acts Of Evil Quotes & Sayings

The oppressive weight of disaster and tragedy in our lives does not arise from a high percentage of evil among the summed total of all acts, but from the extraordinary power of exceedingly rare incidents of depravity to inflict catastrophic damage, especially in our technological age when airplanes can become powerful bombs. (An even more evil man, armed only with a longbow, could not have wreaked such havoc at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.)

I have heard and seen many examples of the cruelty that we are able to visit on one another during my time. . . I have also seen incredible forgiveness and compassion. Yes, each of us has the capacity for great evil. But for every act of evil there are a dozen acts of goodness in our world that go unnoticed. It is only because we believe that people should be good that we despair when they are not. Indeed, if people condoned the evil, we would be justified in losing hope. But most of the world does not. We know that we are meant for better.

According as a man acts and walks in the path of life, so he becomes. He that does good becomes good; he that does evil becomes evil. By pure actions he becomes pure; by evil actions he becomes evil.

Adolf Hitler was a vile, heinous, vicious killer responsible for one of the greatest acts of evil committed on this planet.

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.

What is evil? Killing is evil, lying is evil, slandering is evil, abuse is evil, gossip is evil, envy is evil, hatred is evil, to cling to false doctrine is evil; all these things are evil. And what is the root of evil? Desire is the root of evil, illusion is the root of evil.

In the face of unspeakable evil, our whole nation must respond with countless acts of kindness, warmth and generosity.

We tolerate, even promote, many things we once regarded as evil, wrong, or immoral. And then we seek "explanations" for an act that seems beyond comprehension. Remove societal restraints on some evils and one can expect the demons to be freed to conduct other evil acts.

[Abortion] is an evil in and of itself, but it is not a religious evil in the beginning, no, it's a human evil. Then obviously, as with every human evil, each killing is condemned.

The contest is not between us and them, but between good and evil, and if those who would fight evil adopt the ways of evil, evil wins.

I mean, evil and boredom. Evil and ennui. Evil and the lack of stimulation. Evil and sluggish blood.

The people who did this act on America, and who may be planning further acts, are evil people. They don't represent an ideology, they don't represent a legitimate political group of people. They're flat evil. That's all they can think about, is evil. And as a nation of good folks, we're going to hunt them down, and we're going to find them, and we will bring them to justice.

She's evil. Evil, evil, evil. I want to see her naked.

Politicians are propaganda, the people with guns are the enforcers and the media is the enthusiastic lapdog who enables the entire behavior and acts as the verbal abuser against those who deviate from nodding their heads at the vast statues of evil that we inherited.

In the story of the Creation we read: ". . . And behold, it was very good." But, in the passage where Moses reproves Israel, the verse says: "See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil." Where did the evil come from? Evil too is good. It is the lowest rung of perfect goodness. If you do good deeds, even evil will become good; but if you sin, evil will really become evil.

Annihilation itself is no death to evil. Only good where evil was, is evil dead. An evil thing must live with its evil until it chooses to be good. That alone is the slaying of evil.

Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil but then also do no evil.

I have the belief that truly evil people, it's a genetic evil. I only have the experience of exploring the landscape of some of the characters I've played that people have labeled as evil; I don't think they're evil.

I believe that in your heart you already know something is profoundly wrong. When bartenders are responsible for drunk drivers' acts, and gunmakers are responsible for criminals' acts, and nobody is responsible for O. J. Simpson's acts, something is wrong.

As we have come to understand the psychology of evil, we have realized that such transformations of human character are not as rare as we would like to believe. Historical inquiry and behavioral science have demonstrated the "banality of evil" -- that is, under certain conditions and social pressures, ordinary people can commit acts that would otherwise be unthinkable.

Death, which we are accustomed to consider an evil, really acts for us the friendliest part, and takes away the commonplace of existence.

The Western world needs to ally themselves against the evil that is political Islam. To unite with its practitioners would be to unite with evil. Anyone who sees that as a virtue is simply enabling evil and, by proxy, is evil themselves.

We live in a world of terrorism where evil acts are being regularly perpetrated in the name of your faith. And because it is your faith that is being invoked as justification for these evil acts, it is your problem. You can't wish it away, or ignore it, just because it has been caused by others. Instead, speak up and condemn terrorism, defend your role in the way of life that we all share here in Australia.

Evil's just destructive? Then storms are evil, if it's that simple. And we have fire, and there there's hail. Underwriters lump it all under 'Acts of God.

I think of moral beauty as what is the good and the just - terms perhaps best defined by their opposite: evil. Evil is the willingness to do damage to the other; its maximal expression is murder, but it includes a great deal of subtle and not-so-subtle injuries as it advances to that extreme. Evil acts reduce the other to an object, a being to its component parts, and obliterate subjectivity. Evil's breeding ground is a lack of empathy.

Some people give themselves over to their most evil desires, and those people becomes evil. But in general, it's reductive to think of evil as something foreign and separate from the rest of us. Evil is part of everyone. We all have the capacity to commit evil acts.

Malicious acts are performed by people for personal gain … Sorcerers, though, have an ulterior purpose for their acts, which has nothing to do with personal gain. The fact that they enjoy their acts does not count as gain. Rather, it is a condition of their character. The average man acts only if there is a chance for profit. Warriors say they act not for profit but for the spirit.

No evil is completely destroyed nor are acts of goodness.

Justice demands that the good and hard-working be rewarded and the evil and the lazy be punished (if only by the withholding of the rewards of doing the right things). Modern Liberalism demands that the good and hardworking be punished as the recipients of an unfair advantage and the evil and the lazy be rewarded, their acts of evil and their failure all the proof the Modern Liberal needs that somehow they have been victimized by forces out of their control.

... In contrast to the "banality of evil," which posits that ordinary people can be responsible for the most despicable acts of cruelty and degradation of their fellows, I posit the "banality of heroism," which unfurls the banner of the heroic Everyman and Everywoman who heed the call to service to humanity when their time comes to act. When that bell rings, they will know that it rings for them. It sounds a call to uphold what is best in human nature that rises above the powerful pressures of Situation and System as the profound assertion of human dignity opposing evil.

Only the violent acts of men "count" toward something besides evil in a patriarchy. It is the male story of violence that is sanctioned both socially and aesthetically. The male hero and acts of heroism require violence. Everyone is okey dokey with that. We are only beginning to see that constricting set of truths open up a little.

One may say that evil does not exist for subjective man at all, that there exist only different conceptions of good. Nobody ever does anything deliberately in the interests of evil, for the sake of evil. Everybody acts in the interests of good, as he understands it. But everybody understands it in a different way. Consequently men drown, slay, and kill one another in the interests of good.

In what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoted and invisible.

Offensive acts come back upon the evil doer, like dust that is thrown against the wind.

I've always felt like we're all human beings and we're all basically given the tools to make whatever choices we want to make. How we treat other people. How we treat ourselves. Just the whole philosophy of that and the philosophical logic of that is that we're all capable of great acts of evil, and we're all capable of great acts of good.

It will never do to plead sin as an excuse for sin, or to attempt to justify sinful acts by pleading that we have an evil heart. This instead of being a valid apology, is the very ground of our condemnation.

Evil cannot be "treated" -- nor should it be. Evil has to [be] confronted and destroyed and it matters not why the evil is in play. Society has no obligation to try to rehabilitate evil.

A warrior doesn't know remorse for anything he has done, because to isolate one's acts as being mean, or ugly, or evil is to place an unwarranted importance on the self.

Nothing in the nature around us is evil. This needs to be repeated since one of the human ways of talking oneself into inhuman acts is to cite the supposed cruelty of nature.

For evil to take place, the acts of a few people are not sufficient; the great majority also has to remain indifferent. That is something of which we are all quite capable.

To then say that our own actions in combating evil have led to evil, is nothing more than saying, "Islamic terrorists are somewhat justified, at least we can understand why they hate us because we've done things to make them hate us. ... We have been evil ourselves, and we are evil and that justifies them being evil."

When anything is in the presence of evil, but is not as yet evil, the presence of good arouses the desire of good in that thing; but the presence of evil, which makes a thing evil, takes away the desire and friendship of the good; for that which was once both good and evil has now become evil only, and the good has no friendship with evil.

[Nonviolence] is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil.

When evil acts in the world it always manages to find instruments who believe that what they do is not evil but honorable.

If the myth of pure evil is that evil is committed with the intention of causing harm and an absence of moral considerations, then it applies to very few acts of so-called 'pure evil' because most evildoers believe what they are doing is forgivable or justifiable.

Merely to resist evil with evil by hating those who hate us and seeking to destroy them, is actually no resistance at all. It is active and purposeful collaboration in evil that brings the Christian into direct and intimate contact with the same source of evil and hatred which inspires the acts of his enemy. It leads in practice to a denial of Christ and to the service of hatred rather than love.

God did not just overcome evil at the cross. He made evil serve the overcoming of evil. He made evil commit suicide in doing its worst evil.

Whether it's the Axis of Evil, or the evils of eating meat, it is a concept that has all but lost the impact it once had, because everyone thinks different things in this world are evil. PETA thinks what we do to animals is evil, but I think their overzealous approach is evil. Evil, in more ways than one, is comparable to the truth: definitions vary from one individual to the next.

The man who does evil to another does evil to himself, and the evil counsel is most evil for him who counsels it.

Evil has always been there; it's always a part of us. Evil is no big surprise. But what about the people who gave freely, who stood up for human dignity? Even in the most extreme and terrible situations, these acts of dignity existed. And for me, that is the banality of good.

Every judgement of conscience, be it right or wrong, be it about things evil in themselves or morally indifferent, is obligatory, in such wise that he who acts against his conscience always sins.

Karma is not fate, for man acts with free will, creating his own destiny. The Vedas tell us, if we sow goodness, we will reap goodness; if we sow evil, we will reap evil. Karma refers to the totality of our actions and their concomitant reactions in this and previous lives, all of which determines our future.

There are certainly people who have committed horrific, evil acts in the history of humanity. I don't think Aaron Burr's one of them.

Not evil. Moronic, which isn't quite the same thing. Evil presupposes a moral decision, intention, and some forethought. A moron or a lout, however, doesn't stop to think or reason. He acts on instinct, like a stable animal, convinced he's doing good, that he's always right, and sanctimoniously proud to go around f***ing up ... anyone he perceives to be different from himself, be it because of skin color, creed, language, nationality, or ... leisure habits. What the world needs is more thoroughly evil people and fewer borderline pigheads.

A warrior takes responsibility for his acts, for the most trivial of acts. An average man acts out his thoughts, and never takes responsibility for what he does.

Evil acts of the past are never rectified by evil acts of the present.

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.

Millennials do not know their country at war. They don't see militant Islam as evil. They don't see Islamic terrorism as evil. If they're 30, 911, 2001, they were teenagers, there's been so much propaganda about that. The United States largely has been blamed for these acts of terror, presidents like Bush with their torture have created terrorists and so forth. They've really been given a dose of anti-Americanism, well, I think since they first started going to school but it intensified once they got to high school and college.

Food is not evil, but gluttony is. Childbearing is not evil, but fornication is. Money is not evil, but avarice is. Glory is not evil, but vainglory is. Indeed, there is no evil in existing things, but only in their misuse.

Religion acts as a moral gardener, to weed out, or suppress, evil tendencies, which, like weeds and nettles, would shoot up spontaneously in the wonderful compost of the garden, if unwatched.