Circumstantial Evil Quotes

We take comfort in the notion of an unbridgeable gulf between good and evil, but maybe we should understand, as Zimbardo's work suggested, that evil is incremental - something we are all capable of, given the right circumstances. ~ Shane Bauer

I think we are entitled to at least three provisional conclusions. The first is that religion and the churches are manufactured, and that this salient fact is too obvious to ignore. The second is that ethics and morality are quite independent of faith, and cannot be derived from it. The third is that religion is - because it claims a special divine exemption for its practices and beliefs - not just amoral but immoral. The ignorant psychopath and or brute who mistreats his children must be punished but can be understood. Those who claim a heavenly warrant for the cruelty have been tainted by evil, and also constitute far more danger. ~ Christopher Hitchens

In literature, plays, and cinema, substitutionary sacrifice is always the most riveting and moving plot point. In the movie The Last of the Mohicans, British major Duncan Heyward asks his Indian captors if he might die in the flames so that Cora, whom he loves, and Nathaniel can go free. When, as he is being dragged away, Duncan cries, "My compliments, sir! Take her and get out!" we are electrified by his unflinching willingness to die to save others, one of whom has been his rival. He dies with his arms bound and stretched out, as if he were on a cross. In Ernest Gordon's memoir of being a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, he recounts how at the end of a day of forced labor the guards counted the shovels, and one was apparently missing. A furious guard threatened the British POWs that unless the guilty person confessed, he would kill them all. He cocked his gun to start shooting them one by one. At that moment, one prisoner stepped forward calmly and said, "I did it." He stood quietly at attention, and "he did not open his mouth" (Isaiah 53: 7) as he was beaten to death. When they all got back to the camp and counted the shovels again, it turned out that they were all there. The man had sacrificed himself to save them all. In the first Harry Potter novel, the evil Lord Voldemort can't touch Harry without being burned. Later Dumbledore explains it to him. "Your mother died to save you. . . . Love as powerful [as that] . . . leaves its own mark. . . . [T] o have be ~ Timothy J. Keller

The world will by no means perish by a diminution in the number of evil men. ~ Immanuel Kant

Icewind Dale. Windswept passes and forbidding glaciers stand at the top of the world. Below them, in the cold valley, an evil force broods: the magic of Crenshinibon, the Crystal Shard.
Now dwarf, barbarian, and drow elf join to battle this evil. Tempted in the furnace of struggle, they form an unbreakable friendship.
A legend is born. ~ R.A. Salvatore

Dwight Langley, the painter, is the pure exponent of the evil the play is attacking; he is, in effect, the spokesman for Platonism, who explicitly preaches that beauty is unreachable in this world and perfection unattainable. Since he insists that ideals are impossible on earth, he cannot, logically enough, believe in the reality of any ideal, even when it actually confronts him. Thus, although he knows every facet of Kay Gonda's face, he (alone among the characters) does not recognize her when she appears in his life. This philosophically induced blindness, which motivates his betrayal of her, is a particularly brilliant concretization of the play's theme, and makes a dramatic Act I curtain. ~ Ayn Rand

(Evil people) do not believe in forgiveness. Their transgressions are either punished or not punished. That is the only result that matters. ~ Daniel McHugh

...No one knows what they are doing on earth or even off it. The gods didn't even know what the gods were doing, assuming there were even gods. Did the void know what it was doing? Did it know itself? Maybe the void didn't even know what to do with itself and didn't even like itself. Maybe the nothingness knew only to fill itself with people, and in that way was a creator of sorts. Maybe nothingness was a god, but not intentionally cruel-not confident in itself. Maybe it was not evil or saying ha-ha to me, just lonely, hating itself, waning something else to stick inside itself to relieve itself of itself. It seemed as though Theo didn't know what he was doing. I obviously didn't either. In that way maybe we were like gods. ~ Melissa Broder

Some memories battened onto a person's mind like evil leeches, and certain words could bring them instantly back to squirming, feverish life. ~ Stephen King

In America, tribalism is alive and well. There are four kinds - class, ideology, region, and race. First, class. Pretty easy. Rich folk and poor folk. Second, ideology. Liberals and conservatives. They don't merely disagree on political issues, each side believes the other is evil. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Nippers was a whiskered, sallow, and, upon the whole, rather piratical-looking young man of about five and twenty. I always deemed him the victim of two evil powers - ambition and indigestion. ~ Herman Melville

GraceQuest is a gripping story of one man's (and his family's) struggle with tremendous weakness and pain, but it is also a narrative theodicy
defense of God's goodness in spite of the undeniable reality of evil ... This is an honest and hard-hitting book about God's grace in and through tremendous loss of health and strength. Readers will find hope and help here if they are open to its message about the God-given 'strength to suffer well.' ~ Roger E. Olson

Every minute you are thinking of evil, you might have been thinking of good instead. Refuse to pander to a morbid interest in your own misdeeds.
Pick yourself up, be sorry, shake yourself, and go on again. ~ Evelyn Underhill

I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. - W. H. AUDEN ~ John Le Carre

There can be no justification for choosing any part of that which one knows to be evil. ~ Ayn Rand

You must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I don't know the good or the evil of the thing. That's something that only you mortals worry about. ~ Jim Butcher

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. ~ Bill O'Reilly

It has been said that people never do evil with more enthusiasm than when they do it in the name of God. ~ Tony Campolo

All errors which a man is likely to commit against advice are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him for his good. ~ John Stuart Mill

Be assured those will be thy worst enemies, not to whom thou hast done evil, but who have done evil to thee. And those will be thy best friends, not to whom thou hast done good, but who have done good to thee. ~ Tacitus

Nothing kills the soul that commands to evil (Nafs al Ammarra) like seeing the beauty of the heart. ~ Shams Tabrizi

Nobody wants blood on their hands, not even the blood of a devil, because it's still just as red. ~ Chris Whitaker

Accustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation of all awareness; therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life an unlimited time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. ~ Epicurus

Under the pressure of fanaticism, and with the mob complacently applauding the show, democratic law tends more and more to be grounded upon the maxim that every citizen is, by nature, a traitor, a libertine, and a scoundrel. In order to dissuade him from his evil-doing the police power is extended until it surpasses anything ever heard of in the oriental monarchies of antiquity. ~ H.L. Mencken

When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer. There is no escape from justice, nothing can be unearned and unpaid for in the universe, neither in matter nor in spirit - and if the guilty do not pay, then the innocent have to pay it. ~ Ayn Rand

The Lord is calling us to turn from evil. And return to Him in repentance. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

A tough fight against evil is the duty of good man. ~ Khem Veasna

and the righteous cowed and the evil grew bold. ~ Leon Uris

It is important to remember that good overcomes evil ~ Sunday Adelaja

That seduction or initiation into evil can be understood by recognizing that most actors are not solitary figures improvising on the empty stage of life. Rather, they are often an ensemble of different players, on a stage with various props and changing costumes, scripts, and stage directions from producers and directors. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

Use your powers for good instead of evil ~ Nnedi Okorafor

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. ~ Bill James

Callous, adj. Gifted with great fortitude to bear the evils afflicting another. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Has the universe any unity of plan or purpose, or is it a fortuitous concourse of atoms? Is conciousness a permanent part of the universe, giving hope of indefinite growth in wisdom, or is it a transitory accident on a small planet on which life must ultimately become impossible? Are good and evil of importance to the universe or only to man? ~ Bertrand Russell

The creed of evil has been, since the beginnings of highly industrialized society, not only a precursor of barbarism but a mask of good. The worth of the latter was transferred to the evil that drew to itself all the hatred and resentment of an order which drummed good into its adherents so that it could with impunity be evil. ~ Theodor Adorno

The war of good and evil is mightiest in mightiest souls, and even in the darkest time the heart will maintain its right against the hardest creed. ~ James Anthony Froude

Ordinary men commit extraordinary evil all the time. Trust me. ~ Mindy Mejia

But what, then, is original sin? According to the Apostle it is not only the lack of a good quality in the will, nor merely the loss of man's righteousness and ability. It is rather the loss of all his powers of body and soul, of his whole outward and inward perfections. In addition to this, it is his inclination to all that is evil, his aversion against that which is good, his antipathy against light and wisdom, his love for error and darkness, his flight from and his loathing of good works, and his seeking after that which is sinful. Thus we read in Psalm 14:3: "They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one"; and in Genesis 8:21: "The imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth." Actual sins essentially consist in this that they come from out of us, as the Lord says in Matthew 15:19: "Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." But original enters into us; we do not commit it, but we suffer it. We are sinners because we are the sons of a sinner. A sinner can beget only a sinner, who is like him. ~ Martin Luther

Duny," said Geralt seriously, "Calanthe, Pavetta. And you, righteous knight Tuirseach, future king of Cintra. In order to become a witcher, you have to be born in the shadow of destiny, and very few are born like that. That's why there are so few of us. We're growing old, dying, without anyone to pass our knowledge, our gifts, on to. We lack successors. And this world is full of Evil which waits for the day none of us are left." "Geralt," whispered Calanthe. "Yes, you're not wrong, queen. Duny! You will give me that which you already have but do not know. I'll return to Cintra in six years to see if destiny has been kind to me. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

People are not evil; they are schlemiels. ~ Abraham Maslow

The tithe simply is not a sufficiently radical concept to embody the carefree unconcern for possessions that marks life in the Kingdom of God ...
It is quite possible to tithe and at the same time oppress the poor and needy ...
The tithe is not necessarily evil' it simply cannot provide a sufficient base for Jesus' call to carefree unconcern over provision ...
Perhaps the tithe can be a beginning way to acknowledge God as the owner of all things, but it is only a beginning and not an ending. ~ Richard J. Foster

Until mankind realizes that there is, in truth, no good, and there is, in truth, no evil-there will be no peace. ~ Shirley Maclaine

Let no pleasure tempt thee, no profit allure thee, no ambition corrupt thee, to do anything which thou knowest to be evil; so shalt thou always live jollily; for a good conscience is a continual Christmas. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Whatever our creed, we feel that no good deed can by any possibility go unrewarded, no evil deed unpunished. ~ Orison Swett Marden

For all good and evil, whether in the body or in human nature, originates ... in the soul, and overflows from thence, as from the head into the eyes. ~ Plato