Doing Evil Quotes

Life is short and the time of death is uncertain; so apply yourself to meditation. Avoid doing evil, and acquire merit, to the best of your ability, even at the cost of life itself. In short: Act so that you have no cause to be ashamed of yourselves and hold fast to this rule. ~ Milarepa

The majority of the great fortunes were "won not by doing evil, but as an incident to action which has benefited the community as a whole. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

I was naughty. I wasn't bad. Bad is hurting people, doing evil. Naughty is not hurting anyone. Naughty is being amusing. ~ Sydney Biddle Barrows

God is passionate about good happening in this world, not evil. I'm convinced of that. God hates what happened here, Rae, the same way He hates divorce, and He hates injustice. But He won't destroy people to proactively prevent them from doing evil things, nor will He destroy them today after they have done evil things. Not until His great patience has extended to them every chance and opportunity there is to change and become good again. ~ Dee Henderson

Fools, their wisdom weak,
are their own enemies
as they go through life,
doing evil
that bears
bitter fruit. ~ Juan Mascaro

It is indeed probable that more harm and misery have been caused by men determined to use coercion to stamp out a moral evil than by men intent on doing evil. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

I would rather die doing good than live doing evil. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

War is always a matter of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it. ~ B.H. Liddell Hart

It's better to die doing good than to live doing evil. ~ Brigham Young

Some are so carried away that they contentiously assert that the flock of errors arising from them is sufficiently compensated by the publication of some book which defends religion and truth. Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again? ~ Anonymous

The psychological analysis of any normal development will make it clear that, if he is to grow up, it is not merely unavoidable but actually essential that the individual should do and assimilate a certain amount of evil, and that he should be able to overcome the conflicts involved in this process. The achievement of independence involves the capacity of the ego not only to adopt the values of the collective but often also to secure the fulfilment of those needs of the individual which run counter to collective values – and this entails doing evil. ~ Erich Neumann

We do wrong because people do it, never realizing that we are the people. ~ Raheel Farooq

Plato in both the Gorgias and the Republic looked back to Socrates and asserted that "it is better to suffer tortures on the rack than to have a soul burdened with the guilt of doing evil." Aristotle does not confront this position directly: he merely emphasizes that it is better still both to be free from having done evil and to be free from being tortured on the rack. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

What is worse than doing evil, is being evil" (Ethics, p.67). To lie is wrong, but what is worse than the lie is the liar, for the liar contaminates everything he says, because everything he says is meant to further a cause that is false. The liar as liar has endorsed a world of falsehood and deception, and to focus only on the truth or falsity of his particular statements is to miss the danger of being caught up in his twisted world. This is why, as Bonhoeffer says, that "(i)t is worse for a liar to tell the truth than for a lover of truth to lie" (Ethics, p.67). ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

When you feel you cannot do good, at least desist from doing evil. ~ Sathya Sai Baba

17For l it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil. ~ Anonymous

SOCRATES: For doing evil to another is the same as injuring him? CRITO: Very true. SOCRATES: Then we ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil to anyone, whatever evil we may have suffered from him. ~ Plato

Some people are doing evil and bad things.
To ease their conscious they are always blame others, because they don't want to
to be accountable of what they are doing.
Blaming others makes them feel like they are good people or doing something good. ~ De Philosopher DJ Kyos

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. ~ Steven Weinberg

I think that Americans should gradually begin to adopt positive behavior rather than doing evil. They should not expect an immediate reaction in return for their positive measures. It will take time. ~ Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

Goodness was not a trait you acquired; it was a value you practiced when you were on the verge of doing evil. ~ Julius Lester

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Playing evil is just not interesting. I don't think anyone who does evil stuff thinks they're doing evil stuff. That's the scary part. ~ Carice Van Houten

The aim of the sinless One consists in acting without causing sorrow to others, although he could attain to great power by ignoring their feelings. The aim of the sinless One lies in not doing evil unto those who have done evil unto him. If a man causes suffering even to those who hate him without any reason, he will ultimately have grief not to be overcome. The punishment of evil doers consists in making them feel ashamed of themselves by doing them a great kindness. Of what use is superior knowledge in the one, if he does not endeavour to relieve his neighbour's want as much as his own? If, in the morning, a man wishes to do evil unto another, in the evening the evil will return to him. ~ Leo Tolstoy

To give up doing evil is more important than making merit. ~ Ajahn Chah

As the Nobel Prize-winning American physicist Steven Weinberg said, 'Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion. ~ Richard Dawkins

He who is bent on doing evil can never want occasion. ~ Publilius Syrus

But there's also an upside-down sort of happiness, a black happiness, that comes from doing evil to others. ~ Amos Oz

During this journey it was as if he again thought over his whole life and reached the same old comforting and hopeless conclusion: that there was no need for him to start anything, that he had to live out his life without doing evil, without anxiety, and without wishing for anything. ~ Leo Tolstoy

To me, this world is nothing but evil, and my own evil just happened to come out cause of the circumstances of what I was doing. ~ Aileen Wuornos

28People did not think it was important to have a true knowledge of God. So God left them and allowed them to have their own worthless thinking and to do things they should not do. 29They are filled with every kind of sin, evil, selfishness, and hatred. They are full of jealousy, murder, fighting, lying, and thinking the worst about each other. They gossip 30and say evil things about each other. They hate God. They are rude and conceited and brag about themselves. They invent ways of doing evil. They do not obey their parents. 31They are foolish, they do not keep their promises, and they show no kindness or mercy to others. 32They know God's law says that those who live like this should die. But they themselves not only continue to do these evil things, they applaud others who do them. ~ Max Lucado

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, a doing evil deeds, 22he has now reconciled b in his body of flesh by his death, c in order to present you holy and blameless and d above reproach before him, 23 e if indeed you continue in the faith, f stable and steadfast, not shifting from g the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed h in all creation [7] under heaven, i and of which I, Paul, became a minister. ~ Anonymous

Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good. ~ Philip Pullman

God seldom suspends the laws of nature, just as God does not remove free will to keep evil people from doing evil things. ~ Adam Hamilton

Once sin is allowed to settle in your heart, it will not be turned out at your bidding. Custom becomes second nature, and its chains are not easily broken. The prophet has well said, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil" (Jeremiah 13:23). Habits are like stones rolling down hill--the further they roll, the faster and more ungovernable is their course. Habits, like trees, are strengthened by age. A boy may bend an oak when it is a sapling--a hundred men cannot root it up, when it is a full grown tree. A child can wade over the Thames River at its fountain-head--the largest ship in the world can float in it when it gets near the sea. So it is with habits: the older the stronger--the longer they have held possession, the harder they will be to cast out. ~ J.C. Ryle

What I say is that the supreme and singular joy of making love resides in the certainty of doing evil. ~ Charles Baudelaire

Evil is important for us to look at, in my opinion, only insofar as it makes us look at our own actions and make us wonder, 'Am I participating in some kind of human evil that I really should stop doing?' ~ John Carroll Lynch

Multitudes think they like to do evil; yet no man ever really enjoyed doing evil since God made the world. ~ John Ruskin

It is curious how fatal it is, either to a situation or to an individual, or even to a name, if in an evil moment it becomes funny. ~ Margaret Deland

There's two of him?"
Chelsea grins. "If that's your way of asking if Rory has a twin, then the answer is yes."
"I see you've met my brother," the boy says, apparently used to this reaction. "Don't judge me just because we share the same DNA. You've heard the term 'evil genius'?"
"Yeah."
"Rory's the evil. I'm the genius. ~ Emma Chase

Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult. ~ Anne Rice

In terms I hope you'll understand, darling, in fairytales, the prince vanquishes the wicked queen. The evil stepmother. The malicious goblin. In real life, Daisy, to avenge wrong done to his princess, if the need arises, the prince puts a bullet in somebody's brain. ~ Kristen Ashley

Perhaps this is the only real evil left. ~ Anne Rice

Karika's hands aren't just stained with blood. They aren't just dirty. They're laden with the devil's fingerprints. ~ K. Weikel

People call Kong "a monster." He's not. There's nothing evil about Kong. He's just another creature who has opened up a little bit of his heart to Ann and it proves to be his undoing. ~ Peter Jackson

My mind is where evil comes to play.- Tonisa Draconvieh ~ Manner Hall

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me. ~ Anonymous

Your daughter is delightful!" Sejanus was saying to Aelia. I gripped the edge of the bench and bit my tongue as he spoke. "She is a living testament to the good looks that seem to follow the gens Aelia."
Aelia smiled. "Cousin, you flatter me."
Sejanus had set the tone for the evening with the clear slight against the Gavia clan. "It's only a shame I share the name through adoption- not blood- or who knows how much more attractive I might have been!" Nearby guests laughed at the joke but to me it seemed the true intent was to point out that Apicius had, at least at one time, found him attractive. Sejanus looked directly at Apicius directly as he spoke, a smile on his face.
Apicius gave away nothing. He waved a boy over with a tray. "Have you tried the fried hare livers, Sejanus?"
Apicata jumped up and down and smiled at her father. "May I? May I?"
Her father smiled. Apicata could always melt his heart. "Only one and don't share with Perseus!"
The serving boy lowered the tray so she could reach for the liver but not so low that the jumping puppy could steal treats for himself. She snatched a morsel and popped it into her mouth. I knew what she tasted, a sublime mixture of textures, the crispy breaded exterior and the smooth, sumptuous richness of the liver itself. The combination is unexpected. When I first introduced the recipe, it immediately became a family favorite.
Apicata turned to Sejanus. She did not appear to recognize him from the ma ~ Crystal King

Mankind without truth, without God-given morals...has strength...can think...can feel things emotionally–but if he isn't given a good, solid standard for right and wrong, then there's nothing to keep him from using strength and reason and feelings in selfish...even destructive ways...We wonder why people do such evil things, why there's so much violence in the world, why people rob and cheat and betray each other. But when we erase truth from our thinking and say there's no right or wrong except for what each person thinks is right or wrong, well, we get the world we deserve...when there's no truth that applies to everyone, then there's no way to argue for the rightness or wrongness of anything... ~ Frank E. Peretti

In countries of more advanced civilisation and of a more insurrectionary spirit, the public, accustomed to expect everything to be done for them by the State, or at least to do nothing for themselves without asking from the State not only leave to do it, but even how it is to be done, naturally hold the State responsible for all evil which befalls them, and when the evil exceeds their amount of patience, they rise against the government and make what is called a revolution; whereupon somebody else, with or without legitimate authority from the nation, vaults into the seat, issues his orders to the bureaucracy, and everything goes on much as it did before; the bureaucracy being unchanged, and nobody else being capable of taking their place. A very different spectacle is exhibited among a people accustomed to transact their own business. In France, a large part of the people ~ John Stuart Mill

I shall endeavor to marshal British opinion against a course of action which would bring in my opinion the greatest evils upon the people of India, upon the people of Great Britain and upon the British Empire itself. ~ Winston Churchill

The word "sin" is just a way for a person not to take responsibility for their "bad" actions; actions that might not necessarily be evil- because evil is subjective- but are deemed evil by society. ~ Menna Anwar

He thought of the jungle, already regrowing around him to cover the scars they had created. He thought of the tiger, killing to eat. Was that evil? And ants? They killed. No, the jungle wasn't evil. It was indifferent. So, too, was the world. Evil, then, must be the negation of something man had added to the world. Ultimately, it was caring about something that made the world liable to evil. Caring. And then the caring gets torn asunder. Everybody dies, but not everybody cares. ~ Karl Marlantes

I'm still the King of the East, you're still married to me, and the world's still at war. Good and evil have little to do with it." Now I lean forward, until there are only inches between our faces. "They have everything to do with it. So which are you?" He leans forward, closing the last of the distance between us, and just as his lips meet mine, he says, "Both. ~ Laura Thalassa

Hating life, despising life - even for the genuine pain that life inflicts - merely serves to make life itself worse, unbearably worse. There is no genuine protest in that. There is no goodness in that, only the desire to produce suffering, for the sake of suffering. That is the very essence of evil. People who come to that kind of thinking are one step from total mayhem. ~ Jordan B. Peterson

I hope you haven't given up on the S.Q.'s of the world, Reynie. As you see, there are a great many sheep in wolves' clothing. If not for S.Q.'s good nature, we'd never have escaped. ~ Trenton Lee Stewart

It is an evil (...), that here a man of large purse has usually a very little soul which he keeps in it. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Danger lies in the extreme. A man who is always cruel is evil, a man who is always compassionate will be taken advantage of. It is more a question of balance, or harmony, if you will. ~ David Gemmell

Evil has no need to bother with eliminating Good. It's far simpler to let Good fight against itself. ~ Sergei Lukyanenko

At drama school, I always picked the really evil roles. It's a great way to deal with your everyday emotions. ~ Eva Green

Dear human,
modern incarnate
for a brief moment.
Neither of the angels,
neither of the demons.

Dear human,
you, where evil and light wrangle,
on some daybreak, will awaken
to remember the reason
of this existence.

Meanwhile, dear human,
through the twists and turns
you belong here
and through this wounded lifetime,
teach others to heal...

Tara Estacaan, 'Dear Human ~ Tara Estacaan

Spare me therefore, your good intentions, your inner sensitivities, your unarticulated and unexpressed love. And spare me also these tedious psycho-historians which, by exposing the goodness inside the bad man, and the evil in the good-invariably establish a vulgar and perverse egalitarianism, as if the arrangement of what is outside and what inside makes no moral difference. ~ Willard Gaylin

They ate the apple, and knew good and evil, and became 'as gods.' And they still go on eating it. But little children have not eaten anything and are not yet guilty of anything ... If they, too, suffer terribly on earth, it is, of course, for their fathers; they are punished for their fathers who ate the apple
but that is reasoning from another world; for the human heart here on earth it is incomprehensible. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

This concept of the afterlife really functions as a substitute for wisdom. It functions as a substitute for really absorbing our predicament, which is that everyone is going to die; there are circumstances that are just catastrophically unfair; evil sometimes wins and injustice sometimes wins, and that the only justice we are going to find in the world is the justice we make.
We have an ethical responsibility to absorb this, really down to the soles of our feet. And this notion of an afterlife, of how it's all going to work out and its all part of god's plan, is a way of shirking that responsibility. ~ Sam Harris

Okay, Gat,' says Mirren. 'What's [your life motto]?'

'Don't have one.'

'Come on.'

'Okay, maybe.' Gat looks down at his fingernails. 'Do not accept an evil you can change.'

'I agree with that,' I say. Because I do.

'I don't,' says Mirren.

'Why not?'

'There's very little you can change. You need to accept the world as it is.'

'Not true,' says Gat.

'Isn't it better to be a relaxed, peaceful person?' Mirren asks.

'No.' Gat is decisive. 'It is better to fight evil.'

'Don't eat yellow snow,' says Johnny. 'That's another good motto. ~ E. Lockhart

This is where you first failed us. You gave us minds and told us not to think. You gave us curiosity and put a booby-trapped tree right in front of us. You gave us sex and told us not to do it. You played three-card monte with our souls from day one, and when we couldn't find the queen, you sent us to Hell to be tortured for eternity. That was your great plan for humanity? All you gave us here was daisies and fairy tales and you acted like that was enough. How were we supposed to resist evil when you didn't even tell us about it? ~ Richard Kadrey

You cannot contain evil by shaming it, or making people feel guilty, but only by revealing it toward it is, and then seeing the good as better. ~ Richard Rohr

Sin is a personal act. Moreover, we have a responsibility for the sins committed by others when we cooperate in them: by participating directly and voluntarily in them; by ordering, advising, praising, or approving them; by not disclosing or not hindering them when we have an obligation to do so; by protecting evil-doers. [1868] ~ The Catholic Church

Come and let the healing, cleansing rays of Calvary play upon your hearts until the very seed of evil is sterilized. ~ Stuart Holden

When you've crawled through the darkness, the light is so much more glorious. ~ Rita Stradling

What is evil?-Whatever springs from weakness. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche