Quotes, aphorisms and phrases about good and evil, or about those two principles that regulate human life, as opposing forces and in constant struggle with each other, with prevalence sometimes of one rather than the other.
Quotes about good and bad
- Men are very strange animals: a mixture of the nervousness of a horse, the stubbornness of a mule and the badness of a camel. (Thomas Henry Huxley)
- Evil knows good, but good does not know evil. (Franz Kafka)
- Some people don't do well simply because they don't feel well. (Jim Rohn)
- Good and great souls strive to find good even in evil, while mediocre and wicked find evil even in good. (Blaise Pascal)
- If I were the wind, I would no longer blow on such a wicked and miserable world ... Yet, I repeat and swear, there is something glorious and benign in the wind. (Herman Melville)
- Woe to those who call evil good and evil good: who transform darkness into light and light into darkness; which transform the bitter into sweet and the sweet into bitter. (Isaiah)
- From the powerful come the most wicked men. (Socrates)
- If evil is contagious, good is also. Therefore, the good must abound in us more and more. Let us get infected by the good and infect the good! (Pope francesco)
- There is too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will. (Agatha Christie)
- No good can happen to a good man, neither in life nor in death. (Socrates)
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- Needless to ask why. There is evil. It's a fact. It must be fought. It should not be explained. (Father Gabriele Amorth)
- Man is never so close to the gods of when he does good to his neighbor. (Guide)
- I object to violence, because when it seems to cause good this is only temporary, the evil it causes is instead permanent. (Mahatma Gandhi)
- In the good man, evil has the purpose of fortifying it, so it practically resolves into a good. (Lucio Anneo Seneca)
- He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his own. (Confucius)
- The supreme evil is superficiality. Everything you realize is good. (Oscar Wilde)
- Nothing disturbs human life as much as ignorance of good and evil. (Guide)
- Knowledge of beauty is the true path and the first step towards understanding things that are good. (John Ruskin)
- The wicked can delay the sentence, not escape it. (Publilio Siro)
- There is neither good nor evil. There is only what is possible. (Aristotle Socrates Onassis)
- If you love rightly you can only do good. (Giovanni Boccaccio)
- Inside you is the source of good, a source that can always gush if you always dig. (Marco Aurelio)
- It is an evil man to be deceived with lies. (Dante Alighieri)
- The spread of evil is the symptom of a void. Wherever evil overcomes, it is only out of incapacity, for the moral failure of those who escape the fact that there can be no compromises on fundamental principles. (Ayn Rand)
- Why can't the memory of evil change humanity? What is memory for? (Primo Levi)
- The world is not threatened by people who do evil, but by those who tolerate it. (Albert Einstein)
- Why does man have in his nature this horrible power to enjoy with greater acuteness when he is aware of harming the creature from which he takes enjoyment? (Gabriele D’Annunzio)
- Despite everything, I still believe that people are really good in their hearts. I simply cannot build my hopes on bases made of confusion, unhappiness and death. (Anne Frank)
- Everyone has something good inside them. Some hide it, others deny it, but there is. (Mother Teresa of Calcutta)
- Every evil has its compensation. The less money, the less problems; the less favors, the less envy. Even in those cases that make us go insane, it is not loss in itself that worries us, but our assessment of loss. (Lucio Anneo Seneca)
- We follow this apostolic rule transmitted to us by the Fathers: if we find something true even in wicked men, we correct its wickedness without violating what is right in them. Thus, in the same person, we amend the errors starting from the truths admitted by him, avoiding to destroy the real things with the criticism of the false ones. (St. Augustine)
- The problem is not doing the right thing.It is knowing what is the right thing. (Lyndon Baines Johnson)
- Love is perennial possession of the good. (Plato)
- Well it is what unites us; hurt what separates. (Aldous Leonard Huxley)
Aphorisms on good and evil
- All bad precedents began as justifiable measures. (Julius Caesar)
- Sometimes it seems to us that God does not respond to evil, that he remains silent. In reality God spoke, he answered, and his answer is the Cross of Christ: a Word that is love, mercy, forgiveness. (Pope francesco)
- But take care, citizens, that this is not the most difficult thing, that is to escape from death, but that it is much more difficult to escape from evil. Indeed, wickedness runs much faster than death. (Socrates)
- Good is never all to one side. At best, evil is. (Michelangelo)
- The greatest good that can be done is to be aware; for every other good flows from this. (Osho)
- Loneliness is the fate of all good spirits. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
- Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most evil of men will do the most evil of actions for the greatest good of all. (John Maynard Keynes)
- Symbols are all the names of good and evil: they do not explain, they only mention. It is foolish who wants to draw from them. (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
- The sad truth is that much of the evil is done by people who never decide to be good or bad. (Hannah Arendt)
- I am a part of that force that eternally wants evil and eternally does good. (Goethe)
- There are those who believe that, if there is a way that leads to the Best, this requires a good look at the worst. (Thomas Hardy)
- The good man is intelligent, the bad man is, moreover, an imbecile. Moral gifts cannot be separated from intellectual ones. (Jorge Luis Borges)
- Of all the cruelties, the most intolerable are those that pass under the name of compassion and consolation. (Walter Savage Landor)
Once the sage has experienced someone's wickedness, he is no longer fooled by his moves. (Aesop)
- The worst Evil is what humans do against each other. (Elian Moon)
- All people have an inner limit thanks to which they attribute a certain measure to both good and evil. (Sandor Marai)
- Indifference, for me, is the personification of evil. (Elie Wiesel)
- They say that those who recognize the good but are forced to keep their feet away are very unhappy. (Pindar)
- In nature there is nothing as perfidious, savage and cruel as normal people. (Hermann Hesse)
- Every evil comes from pride. (Mahatma Gandhi)
- Humankind never hates those who hurt, nor the evil itself, as much as those who name it. (Giacomo Leopardi)
- Courage consists in voluntarily taking on the evil of the moment to prevent a worse future evil; cowardice instead in considering the evil of the moment as worse. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
- When you have lived for a long time like me, you will discover that cruelty and benevolence are only shades of the same color. (Khaled Hosseini)
- Truth is the first thing to look for, after which Beauty and Goodness will add themselves. (Mahatma Gandhi)
- The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil. (Guide)
- You will be good only if you can see the good things and virtues of others. Therefore, if you have to correct, do it with charity, at the right time, without humiliating ... and with the disposition to learn and improve yourself in what you correct. (Saint Josemaria Escriva De Balanguer)
- When a good man is injured, everyone who considers himself good must suffer with him. (Euripides)
- Believing that a supernatural source of evil exists is superfluous; men are perfectly capable of any wickedness. (Joseph Conrad)
- Wickedness never proceeds on any reasonable basis. (Tito Livio)
- The principle of honor and courage properly consists in considering the greatest evils small, if they are caused by destiny, and instead also the smallest ones, if they are caused by men. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
- From the moment you desire evil, you refuse honesty. (Publilio Siro)
- Practicing good is a business. If man does not pursue it, it is only because he has no idea where the good is. Therefore it is not evil but ignorant. (Socrates)
- Easy and easy is to choose evil, a flat road very close to us; but the gods placed sweat before virtue; the road is long and difficult and, at the beginning, rough, but when you reach the summit, what was previously difficult becomes easy. (Hesiod)
- You must not fear the gods; death must not make us suspicious; the good is easily found, the evil is hardly endured. (Epicurus)
Phrases about good and evil
- To excuse evil means to multiply it. (Gustave Le Bon)
- To hurt someone sometimes feels pleasure, but pleasure passes immediately and evil remains.Doing good costs effort; but the effort passes immediately and the good remains; and with good remain peace of conscience, the satisfaction of feeling good and the pride of victory! (Pope John Paul I)
- The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil things but because of those who observe without doing anything. (Albert Einstein)
- There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth. (Lev Tolstoj)
- We will never know how well a simple smile can do. (Mother Teresa of Calcutta)
- The devil is an optimist if he believes he can make men worse. (Karl Kraus)
- Do not do good if you do not have the strength to bear ingratitude. (Confucius)
- I know and feel that doing good is the true happiness that the human heart can enjoy. (Jean Jacques Rousseau)
- We must do all possible good, love freedom above all things and never betray the truth. (Beethoven)
- Bad deeds don't thrive; the slow man reaches the quick one. (Homer)
- If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend you're evil, the world doesn't believe it. The stupidity of optimism is staggering. (Oscar Wilde)
- You can kill evil by burying it with laughter. (Stephen King)
- Of the evils of life we console ourselves with death, and of death with the evils of life. A pleasant situation. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
- Life - as it really is - is a battle not between Evil and Good but between Evil and Worse. (Joseph Brodsky)
- The penalty that good people have to pay for indifference to public affairs is that of being ruled by evil men. (Socrates)
- The pious fiction that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and threatening. (Aleister Crowley)
- I know of no other sign of superiority for man than goodness. (Beethoven)
- Evil takes root when one man thinks he is better than another. (Joseph Brodsky)
- From the same time derive the origins of the highest good and the enjoyment of it. (Epicurus)
- Some people are bad only because of the need to talk. Their conversation, chatter in the living rooms and chatter in the antechambers, resembles those fireplaces that soon consume wood: they need a lot of fuel, the next. (Victor Hugo)
- The evil that men do extends beyond their lives, while the good is often buried together with their bones. (William Shakespeare)
- Even if the ability to cheat is a sign of acuteness and power, the intention to cheat is undoubtedly a sign of malice or weakness. (Descartes)
- The safest way to look big and good, strong and sweet is still to be. (Henri Frederic Amiel)
- I would like to bring you nothing but joy and surround yourself with a calm and continuous happiness to compensate you a little for everything you give me with full hands in the generosity of your love. (Victor Hugo)
- The bad guy never tells himself good advice. (Publilio Siro)
- The evil in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions can do the same harm as badness if they lack understanding.The evil in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions they can do the same harm as badness if they lack understanding. (Albert Camus)
- The hallmark of man is the hand, the tool with which he does all that is bad. (George Orwell)
- The badness of a few is the misfortune of many. (Publilio Siro)
- Do not discuss anymore how good man should be, but be it. (Marco Aurelio)
- Who is as cruel to animals as a good person can be? (Arthur Schopenhauer)
- Nobody chooses an evil understanding that it is an evil, but remains trapped if, by mistake, he considers it a good compared to a greater evil. (Epicurus)
- Tyrants surround themselves with bad men because they like to be flattered and no man of high spirit will flatter them. (Aristotle)
- Your happiness is in the good that you will do, in the joy that you will spread, in the smile that you will make bloom, in the tears that you will have dried. (Raoul Follereau)
- A good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I don't mean that if you are good you will be happy - I want to say that if you are happy you will be good. (Bertrand Russel)
- The true power of God consists not in preventing evil, but in knowing how to draw good from evil. (St. Augustine)
- Nothing bad can happen to him who is good, neither alive nor dead. (Socrates)
