Defeating Evil Quotes

And with the Savior's passing came Satan's sure defeat
Christ whispered, "It is finished," for payment was complete.
I could not earn salvation, it's been dispensed for free
And mercy's gates would open, as He has died for me. ~ Joyce Rachelle

For the average man, driven as he is by lurid fantasies, there is almost nothing more deliciously titillating than the contemplation, from a safe distance, of evil laid out in its cause and effect. ~ Yukio Mishima

I think evil is very relative. ~ Geoff Johns

Good or evil-you cannot build your life apart from this distinction. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Now you see only the mystery of this great sorrow; then you shall see how the threatening enemy was swept away in the wild night of fear and grief.
Now you look only at the loss; then you shall see how it struck at the evil that had begun to rivet its fetters upon you.
Now you shrink from the howling winds and muttering thunders; then you shall see how they beat back the waters of destruction, and opened up your way to the goodly land of promise. ~ Mark Guy Pearse

The effort to put down Christian Science by law is one of the craziest enterprises upon which medical men waste their energies. It is based upon a superstition even sillier than that behind Christian Science itself: to wit, the superstition that, when an evil shows itself, all that is needed to dispose of it is to pass a law against it. ~ H.L. Mencken

The choice between good and evil is all a matter of doctrine. In reality, one always has to choose between the greater evil and the lesser evil. Every choice in life is relative. It is not a question of whether what Krishna did was good or bad. The question is whether it would have resulted in good or bad had he not done what he did. The question would be much easier if it was a simple choice between good and bad, but this is not the case in reality. The realities of life are that it is always the choice between greater evils and lesser evils. ~ Osho

The self centred disregard for anything living outside of me , is pure solipsism. One may feel the world is pure evil but its " I " who filters the thought through "my "own un - coping mind, seeking complete annihilation of the world for my own self relief ! ~ BinYamin Gulzar

Paul wisely taught, 'Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.' [Rom. 12:21] ~ Richard G. Scott

I profess accurately to describe native Africa - Africa in those places where it has not received the slightest impulse, whether for good or evil, from European civilisation. ~ John Hanning Speke

The existence of God is neither precluded nor rendered improbable by the existence of evil. Of course, suffering and misfortune may nonetheless constitute a problem for the theist; but the problem is not that his beliefs are logically or probabilistically incompatible. The theist may find a religious problem in evil; in the presence of his own suffering or that of someone near to him he may find it difficult to maintain what he takes to be the proper attitude towards God. Faced with great personal suffering or misfortune, he may be tempted to rebel against God, to shake his fist in God's face, or even to give up belief in God altogether. But this is a problem of a different dimension. Such a
problem calls, not for philosophical enlightenment, but for pastoral care. The Free Will Defense, however, shows that the existence of God is compatible, both logically and probabilistically, with the existence of evil; thus it solves the main philosophical problem of evil. ~ Alvin Plantinga

Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored - it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over those who feel it least and allow its evil effects to go on. ~ Pearl S. Buck

She looks in the mirror
seems vaguely familiar
like steam on the glass
shame covers her past
the fog slithers down
as evil surrounds. ~ Diana Rasmussen

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

The most unrealistic thing I've ever read in comics is when some group of characters calls themselves the Brotherhood of Evil or the Masters of Evil. I don't believe any character believes their goals to be truly evil. ~ Len Wein

I would rather be a little nobody, then to be a evil somebody. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Those of you who love the Lord should hate evil ~ Dennis Prager

this miserable creature, this once evil bureaucratic butcher ~ D. Lawrence-Young

The greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a despot, great though that evil be, but he who is in the thrall of his own moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice. ~ Samuel Smiles

A 'sadist' of her kind is an artist in evil, which a wholly wicked person could not be ... ~ Marcel Proust

It is evil," the Old Wise One said. "For very long we have walked carefree in the only paradise. It would be better if all here were to die." The last Shadow child said firmly, "Nothing is worse than that I should die," and something that had wrapped the world was gone. ~ Gene Wolfe

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. ~ Evan Sayet

Afternoon classes - that evil invention! ~ John Gresham Machen

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness. All can know good as good only because there is evil. ~ Lao-Tzu

But for that blindness which is inseparable from malice, what terrible powers of evil would it possess! Fortunately for the world, its venom, like that of the rattlesnake, when most poisonous, clouds the eye of the reptile, and defeats its aim. ~ William Gilmore Simms

Power is of its nature evil, whoever wields it. ~ Jacob Burckhardt

There is a certain kind of morality which is even more alien to good and evil than amorality is. ~ Simone Weil

Can we really fix ourselves? Can we really see what needs to be seen and do what needs to be done? Tolstoy suggests we can, even though the road will be long and arduous. He is Orthodox enough to see that humans are sinners in need of mercy, but not Orthodox enough to get to the root of the problem. The prophet does not plunge deeply enough into the human heart. Tolstoy was Christian enough to see that evil exists but not Orthodox enough to get to the root of the problem. ~ John Mark Reynolds

The silent workings, and still more the explosions, of human passion which bring to light the darker elements of man's nature present to the philosophical observer considerations of intrinsic interest; while to the jurist, the study of human nature and human character with its infinite varieties, especially as affecting the connection between motive and action, between irregular desire or evil disposition and crime itself, is equally indispensable and difficult." - Wills on Circumstantial Evidence. ~ Henry B. Irving

What makes this constant assessing and comparing so self-defeating is that we are often comparing our lives, our marriages, our families, and our communities to unattainable, media-driven visions of perfection, or we're holding up our reality against our own fictional account of how great someone else has it. Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison. ~ Brene Brown

As I leafed through the book in front of me and watched the dust swirl in the air, I wondered if maybe there was some evil dormant virus in the pages that would infect me, like the mummy dust that used to kill archaeologists. Death by research. That was not a glorious end. ~ Rachel Caine

Accustom yourself to submit on all and every occasion, and on the most minute, no less than on the most important circumstances of life, to a small present evil, to obtain a greater distant good. This will give decision, tone, and energy to the mind, which, thus disciplined, will often reap victory from defeat and honor from repulse. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

That government is not a necessary good but an unavoidable evil. ~ Lyn Nofziger

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. ~ Plato

I have beheld the power of God manifest in my home and in my ministry. I have seen evil rebuked and the elements controlled. I know what it means to have mountains of difficulty and ominous Red Seas part. I know what it means to have the destroying angel "pass by them." To have received the authority and to have exercised the power of "the Holy Priesthood, after the Order of the Son of God," is as great a blessing for me and for my family as I could ever hope for in this world. And that, in the end, is the meaning of the priesthood in everyday terms
its unequaled, unending, constant capacity to bless. ~ Jeffrey R. Holland

The religion of both Old and New Testaments is marked by fervent outspoken testimonies against evil. To speak smooth things in such a case may be sentimentalism, but it is not Christianity. It is a betrayal of the cause of truth and righteousness. ~ Charles Spurgeon

Instead, she found her argument in the "doctrine of necessity," an idea established in common law that in certain limited circumstances, which no parliament would ever care to define, it was permissible to break the criminal law to prevent a greater evil. ~ Ian McEwan

Temujin: I want to hate you, yet you don't seem overwhelmed by evil.
Blake: Maybe I kick puppies in my spare time. ~ Ian Isaro

The human race will have no respite from evils until those who are really philosophers acquire political power or until, through some divine dispensation, those who rule and have political authority in the cities become real philosophers. ~ Plato

It is a great evil for a Chief of a nation to be born the enemy of the freedom whose defender he should be. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

My father told me to follow your teachings. But you argue that the ends justify the means. Doesn't each generation need to learn anew that fighting evil with evil serves only to make one evil himself? ~ Joan Roughgarden

There is a mixture of evil in everything we do; indulgence encourages us to encroach, while we Crabbe exercise the rights of children, we become childish. ~ William Cowper

Maybe we all have in us a secret pond where evil and ugly things germinate and grow strong. But this culture is fenced, and the swimming brood climbs up only to fall back. ~ John Steinbeck

I believe that dogma is often evil. ~ Pat Buckley

For the Orthodox tradition, then, Adam's original sin affects the human race in its entirety, and it has consequences both on the physical and the moral level: it, results not only in sickness and physical death, but in moral weakness and paralysis. But does it also imply an inherited guilt? Here Orthodoxy is more guarded. Original sin is not to be interpreted in juridical or quasi-biological terms, as if it were some physical 'taint' of guilt, transmitted through sexual intercourse. This picture, which normally passes for the Augustinian view, is unacceptable to Orthodoxy. The doctrine of original sin means rather that we are born into an environment where it is easy to do evil and hard to do good; easy to hurt others, and hard to heal their wounds; easy to arouse men's suspicions, and hard to win their trust. It means that we are each of us conditioned by the solidarity of the human race in its accumulated wrong-doing and wrong-thinking, and hence wrong-being. And to this accumulation of wrong we have ourselves added by our own deliberate acts of sin. The gulf grows wider and wider. It is here, in the solidarity of the human race, that we find an explanation for the apparent unjustness of the doctrine of original sin. Why, we ask, should the entire human race suffer because of Adam's fall? Why should all be punished because of one man's sin? The answer is that human beings, made in the image of the Trinitarian God, are interdependent and coinherent. No man is an island. We ~ Kallistos Ware

All of us, I suppose, like to believe that in a moral emergency we will behave like the heroes of our youth, bravely and forthrightly, without thought of personal loss or discredit. Certainly that was my conviction back in the summer of 1968. Tim O'Brien: a secret hero. The Lone Ranger. If the stakes ever became high enough - if the evil were evil enough, if the good were good enough - I would simply tap a secret reservoir of courage that had been accumulating inside me over the years. Courage, I seemed to think, comes to us in finite quantities, like an inheritance, and by being frugal and stashing it away and letting it earn interest, we steadily increase our moral capital in preparation for that day when the account must be drawn down. It was a comforting theory. It dispensed with all those bothersome little acts of daily courage; it offered hope and grace to the repetitive coward; it justified the past while amortizing the future. ~ Tim O'Brien

I was tired of seeing evil everywhere
so I found the heavenly spots and showed my
neighbors where they were ~ Cleo Wade

No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins. ~ Orson Scott Card

I don't have to be a monster to hurt people. I can do it gently, with a single careless breath. ~ Isaac Marion

There are lots of special places and special jobs, but for me being a Las Vegas dice dealer was pretty sublime. It was somehow timeless. Timeless and imbued with the corrosive and bland patina of a mundane evil, a venality, a soulless mockery of human aspirations. What could be more useless than playing with money? ~ Jesse Kaellis