The Greatest Evil Quotes

Hope is the greatest gift and the greatest evil...Hope saved us and hope might yet kill us. ~ Nalini Singh

Apathy is the greatest evil. ~ C.B. Smith

The greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons ~ Hannah Arendt

When the world's on the Way,
they use horses to haul manure.
When the world gets off the Way,
they breed warhorses on the common.

The greatest evil: wanting more.
The worst luck: discontent.
Greed's the curse of life.

To know enough's enough
is enough to know. ~ Lao Tzu

Despite my admiration for scientific knowledge, I am not an adherent of scientism. For scientism dogmatically asserts the authority of scientific knowledge; whereas I do not believe in any authority and have always resisted dogmatism; and I continue to resist it, especially in science. I am opposed to the thesis that the scientist must believe in his theory. As far as I am concerned "I do not believe in belief," as E. M. Forster says; and I especially do not believe in belief in science. I believe at most that belief has a place in ethics, and even here only in a few instances. I believe, for example, that objective truth is a value - that is, an ethical value, perhaps the greatest value there is - and that cruelty is the greatest evil. ~ Karl R. Popper

I ran across the following thought that I JUST LOVE & I thought of you ...
"I do not know where we will sit at the final banquet, but I suspect who will sit beside us - on our right will sit the person whom we have harmed the most. On our left will sit the person who has done the greatest evil to us. We will be seated between grace received and grace required". ~ Philip Gulley

Elie Wiesel says that the greatest evil in the world is not anger or hatred, but indifference. If that is true, then the opposite is also true: that the greatest love we can show our children is the attention we pay them, the time we take for them. Maybe we serve children the best simply by noticing them. ~ Mumia Abu-Jamal

Of all the things of a man's soul which he has within him, justice is the greatest good and injustice the greatest evil. ~ Plato

There is no worse discriminator than envy. No worse traitor than envy. Even those who are seemingly righteous, are brought down low by their envy. A true man will be known by his absence of envy. An evil man will be known by the presence of envy within him. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope. ~ William Hazlitt

The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of evil that Dickens loved to paint ... but is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. ~ C.S. Lewis

Ask the majority of Christians what they consider the greatest evil from which Christ freed humanity and they will say: from Hell, from eternal fire, from punishment in the next world. As a corollary to this they think that salvation is something that someone else can achieve for us. The word hell, which is seldom met in the Holy Scriptures, has done much harm to Christianity as a result of false interpretations. People run away from external hell which they are made to fear most of all. The salvation that man needs most and that which gives him freedom is redemption from the evil within his soul. There is something far worse than external punishment. It is the sin of the soul being in rebellion against God; the soul, endowed with God's strength, yielding itself to the force of bestial instinct; the soul which exists before God, yet fears the threats and fury of men, preferring human glory to its own peaceful awareness of virtue. There is no fate worse than this. And it is this that the unrepentant person carries with him to the grave. And it is this we ought to fear.

To gain salvation, in the highest meaning of the word, means to raise your fallen spirit, cure the sick soul, give it back its freedom of thought, conscience and love. In this lies the salvation for which Christ died. It is for this salvation that we have been given the Holy Spirit, and it is towards this salvation that the Christian teaching should be directed. ~ William Ellery Channing

This unresting anxiety is the greatest evil which can happen to the soul, sin only excepted. ~ Francis De Sales

If a man were to place himself in an attitude to bear manfully the greatest evil that can be inflicted on him, he would find suddenly that there was no such evil to bear; his brave back would go a-begging. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Cultivation is at least one of the greatest natural improvements ever made by human invention. It has given to created earth a tenfold value. But the landed monopoly that began with it has produced the greatest evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before. ~ Thomas Paine

Simonides of Amorgos says, "Women are the greatest evil God ever created: if they sometimes seem useful, they soon change into trouble for their masters." For Hipponax: "There are but two days in life when your wife brings you joy: her wedding day and her funeral. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

The greatest evil that fortune can bring to men is to endow them with feeble resources and yet to make them ambitious. ~ Luc De Clapiers

For the greater good":
the phrase that always precedes
the greatest evil. ~ Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski

For the fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretense of knowing the unknown; and no one know whether death, which men in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is not this ignorance of a disgraceful sort, the ignorance which is the conceit that a man knows that he does not know? And in this respect only I believe myself to differ from men in general, and may perhaps claim to be wiser than they are: that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know ... ~ Socrates

The greatest lie of the greatest evil is that it doesn't exist. ~ G. Norman Lippert

War is the greatest evil Satan has invented to corrupt our hearts and souls. We should honor our soldiers, but we should never honor war. ~ Dean Hughes

Is death the greatest evil that can happen to anyone? ~ Agatha Christie

How do we pick and choose where to get involved? Canada and other peacekeeping nations have become accustomed to acting if, and only if, international public opinion will support them - a dangerous path that leads to a moral relativism in which a country risks losing sight of the difference between good and evil, a concept that some players on the international stage view as outmoded. Some governments regard the use of force itself as the greatest evil. Others define "good" as the pursuit of human rights and will opt to employ force when human rights are violated. As the nineties drew to a close and the new millennium dawned with no sign of an end to these ugly little wars, it was as if each troubling conflict we were faced with had to pass the test of whether we could "care" about it or "identify" with the victims before we'd get involved. ~ Romeo Dallaire

Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. ~ Plato

Most ill-doers do not think of themselves as evil; indeed, most conceive themselves the heroes of the stories they tell. I once thought that the greatest evil in this world was done in the name of the greater good. I was wrong. Terribly wrong. There is evil in this world which knows itself for evil, and hates the good with all its strength. All fair things does it desire to destroy. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

People shouldn't be afraid of monsters. They're predictable, and always follow their instincts. It's men we should fear because they are so easily swayed by evil, and they follow no pattern. The best of men could suddenly snap and be the enemy. It's for this reason that the greatest evil in my stories is never the scariest or most detestable of creatures; it's the hearts of men and the terrible struggle to remain good in an evil world. ~ Ari Ryder

The capitalist system was termed "capitalism" not by a friend of the system, but by an individual who considered it to be the worst of all historical systems, the greatest evil that had ever befallen mankind. That man was Karl Marx. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

We frail humans are at one time capable of the greatest good and, at the same time, capable of the greatest evil. Change will only come about when each of us takes up the daily struggle ourselves to be more forgiving, compassionate, loving, and above all joyful in the knowledge that, by some miracle of grace, we can change as those around us can change too. ~ Mairead Corrigan

The greatest evil in our country today is...ignorance...We need to be taught to study rather than to believe. ~ Septima Poinsette Clark

Clever lies become matters of self-congratulation. Solemn pledges become a farce - laughable for their very solemnity. The Nation, with all its paraphernalia of power and prosperity, its flags and pious hymns, its blasphemous prayers in the churches, and the literary mock thunders of its patriotic bragging, cannot hide the fact that the Nation is the greatest evil for the Nation, that all its precautions are against it, and any new birth of its fellow in the world is always followed in its mind by the dread of a new peril. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

The presence of the blacks is the greatest evil that threatens the United States. They increase, in the Gulf States, faster than do the whites. They cannot be kept for ever in slavery, since the tendencies of the modern world run strongly the other way. They cannot be absorbed into the white population, for the whites will not intermarry with them, not even in the North where they have been free for two generations. Once freed, they would be more dangerous than now, because they would not long submit to be debarred from political rights. A terrible struggle would ensue. ~ James Bryce

No man can be brave who thinks pain the greatest evil; nor temperate, who considers pleasure the highest good. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

The greatest evil which fortune can inflict on men is to endow them with small talents and great ambition. ~ Luc De Clapiers

During Snow White's story, her mother had somehow survived sharing a castle with the Greatest Evil the World Has Ever Known and come out of it not only okay but Happily Ever After. What advice would her mother give?
Apple knew because Snow White had cross-stitched the words on a pillow and propped it up in the informal receiving room: When Life Is All Dark Woods And Poisoned Apples, Remember You Have Friends. Snow White had stitched messages on other pillows, too, such as: Squirrels Will Never Let You Down, Unless They're Hibernating; There Are Always Birds; Nature Loves A Broom; Love Is Knowing A rabbit Needs You; Hugs Are How It's Done; Double Hugs Are For The Grumpy; Trees And Dogs Are Happy, So Start Barking; and others. Honestly, it was hard to find a sofa in the enormous White Castle that didn't sport a cross-stitched pillow. But the "Remember You Have Friends" one offered the most insight to Apple at the moment. ~ Shannon Hale

No one has ever adequately described either in verse or prose the true essential nature of either of them abiding in the soul, and invisible to any human or divine eye; or shown that of all the things of a man's soul which he has within him, justice is the greatest good, and injustice the greatest evil. Had this been the universal strain, had you sought to persuade us of this from our youth upwards, we should not have been on the watch to keep one another from doing wrong, but every one would have been his own watchman, because afraid, if he did wrong, of harbouring in himself the greatest of evils. ~ Plato

The holy dark over the manger gives way to the heinous dark over the Messiah and the slamming hammer and the tearing vein and the piercing thorn - the created murdering the Creator. The Cross stands as the epitome of evil. And God takes the greatest evil ever known to humanity and turns it into the greatest Gift you have ever known. "If the worst things work for good to a believer, what shall the best things?" writes Puritan Thomas Watson. "Nothing hurts the godly . . . all things . . . shall co-operate for their good, that their crosses shall be turned into blessings."[11] If God can transfigure the greatest evil into the greatest Gift, then He intends to turn whatever you're experiencing now into a gift. You cannot be undone. Somewhere, Advent can storm and howl. And the world robed for Christmas can spin on. You, there on the edge, whispering it, defiant through the torn places: "All is grace. ~ Ann Voskamp

I think that those who would try to make you feel less than who you are, I think that's the greatest evil. ~ Fred Rogers

Shall we try to find a common basis by asking of ourselves what ought to be the chief aim of the legislator in making laws and in the organization of a State, - what is the greatest good, and what is the greatest evil, and then consider whether our previous description has the stamp of the good or of the evil? By all means. Can there be any greater evil than discord and distraction and plurality where unity ought to reign? or any greater good than the bond of unity? There cannot. And there is unity where there is community of pleasures and pains - where all the citizens are glad or grieved on the same occasions of joy and sorrow? No doubt. Yes; ~ Plato

I have seen people paralyze their entire existence around that greatest of mysteries, shaping their every movement, their every word, in a desperate attempt to find the answers to the unanswerable. They fool themselves, either through their interpretations of ancient texts or through some obscure sign from a natural event, into believing that they have found the ultimate truth, and thus, if they behave accordingly concerning that truth, they will surely be rewarded in the afterlife. This must be the greatest manifestation of that fear of death, the errant belief that we can somehow shape and decorate eternity itself, that we can curtain its windows and place its furniture in accordance with our own desperate desires.

Perhaps the greatest evil I see in this existence is when supposedly holy men prey upon the basic fears of death of the common folk to take from them. 'Give to the church!' they cry. 'Only then will you find salvation!'. Even more subtle are the many religions that do not directly ask for a person's coin, but insist that anyone of goodly and godly heart who is destined for their particular description of heaven, would willingly give that coin over.

And of course, the world is ripe with 'Doomsdayers'. people who claim that the end of the world is at hand, and cry for repentance and for almost slavish dedication.

I can only look on it all and sigh, for as death is the greatest mystery, so it is the most personal of revelations. W ~ R.A. Salvatore

Of all the frictional resistances, the one that most retards human movement is ignorance, what Buddha called 'the greatest evil in the world.' The friction which results from ignorance ... can be reduced only by the spread of knowledge and the unification of the heterogeneous elements of humanity. No effort could be better spent. ~ Nikola Tesla

Leaning down, I kissed his cheek, and as I straightened, he turned wide amber eyes on me. "I see what you don't." I ran my hand up and down his arm. "You're not selfish, even if you have moments of acting like it. We all do. You're not evil, even if you were created by the greatest evil of them all. You've proven to me and yourself that you have free will, and you've made the right decisions time and time again."
As I dragged my hand up his arm, he shuddered. "You've accepted who and what I am from the beginning. You've never tried to change me or...or hide me. You've always trusted me, even when you probably shouldn't have." I laughed at that, thinking of the time he'd left me alone in the Palisades club with explicit instructions not to roam off. "You've...you've celebrated what I am, and very few can claim that. Like I've said before, you're more than the latest Crown Prince. You're Roth."
For a moment, he didn't move or blink. Then wonderment filled his expression as he stared up at me, and finally, the tension eased out of his muscles. "And I'm yours. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

The greatest evil is that which uses others for its own gratification, which forces change on others and causes pain for nothing more than its own pleasure. ~ Anonymous

There is no tragedy more woeful than the victory of hate, nor any attainment so hopelessly barren as the sterility of that achievement; for hate is finality, and finality is the greatest evil which can happen in a world of movement. ~ James Stephens

Liberty is one of the most precious gifts which heaven has bestowed on man; with it we cannot compare the treasures which the earth contains or the sea conceals; for liberty, as for honor, we can and ought to risk our lives; and, on for the other hand, captivity is the greatest evil that can befall man. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Faction is the greatest evil and the most common danger. "Faction" is the conventional English translation of the Greek stasis, one of the most remarkable words to be found in any language. ~ Moses Finley

Perhaps the greatest evil I see in this existence is when supposedly holy men prey upon the basic fears of death of the common folk to take from them. "Give to the church!" they cry. "Only then will you find salvation! Even more subtle are the many religions that do not directly ask for a person's coin, but insist that anyone of goodly and godly heart who is destined for their particular description of heaven, would willingly give that coin over. ~ R.A. Salvatore

Maybe it's just my own chronic morbidity and melancholia, but I really do think about it a great deal and quite often in the small hours of the night when, it is said, the greatest numbers of people die. ~ Brian Sibley

The greatest gift is the ability to forget - to forget the bad things and focus on the good. ~ Joe Biden

George Best was the greatest player in the world. ~ Pele

To be needed and loved were the greatest gifts in life. It gave a sense of belonging that we all yearned for. Whether with our careers, families, or friends, we needed it. Mankind was not created for us to survive on our own. I believed we had been created to work together and thrive off of one another. ~ Alicia Rae

Lies are terrible things. One could say that the greatest sins afflicting modern society are the proliferation of lies and silence. We lie through our teeth, then swallow our tongues. All the same, were we to speak only the truth all year round, then the truth might lose its value. ~ Haruki Murakami

When I was a senior, I got accepted into the Julliard School for Dance, but ultimately decided to move to L.A. to act, so that was a fun conversation with the parents. I truly have some of the greatest parents ever. ~ Jacob Artist

To have been part of a Pharaonic slave system that had at its apex a divine sun king led him to understand unreality as the greatest force in life. And his life was now, he felt, one monumental unreality, in which everything that did not matter - professional ambitions, the private pursuit of status, the colour of wallpaper, the size of an office or the matter of a dedicated car parking space - was vested with the greatest significance, and everything that did matter - pleasure, joy, friendship, love - was deemed somehow peripheral. It made for dullness mostly and weirdness generally. ~ Richard Flanagan

It's the greatest show on earth. It's unbelievable. ~ Ric Flair

People identify some of the greatest brands today with the people who revolutionized the industries of those businesses: Microsoft – Bill Gates, Apple – Steve Jobs, GE – Jack Welch, and so on. ~ Omar Al Busaidy

The greatest escape I ever made was when I left Appleton, Wisconsin. ~ Harry Houdini

I never had, or wished for, power over you. That isn't true, of course. I wanted the greatest power of all. but not advantage, or authority. ~ Shirley Hazzard

Sarah Vaughan is one of my greatest heroes. She personifies what an artist is all about, taking risks, daring to go beyond the boundaries of safety and convention. It takes courage to share your vulnerability. ~ Claron McFadden

The greatest discoveries will be along spiritual lines. This is the field where miracles are going to happen. Spiritual power is the greatest underdeveloped power and has the greatest future. ~ Thomas A. Edison

One of the greatest deterrents to successful investing is the three-letter word ego. ~ Venita VanCaspel

[Freedom] is the greatest of political goods. I do not say freedom is the greatest of all goods: the best things come from within they are such things as creative art, and love, and thought. Such things can be helped or hindered by political conditions, but not actually produced by them; and freedom is, both in itself and in its relation to these other goods the best thing that political and economic conditions can secure. ~ Bertrand Russell

Our greatest happiness comes from the experience of love & compassion. ~ Allan Lokos

You cannot become the greatest without at least a gr- and a test inside of you ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

The greatest thing about being in a band, and the strength of having companionship and collaboration, is also the thing that makes a band break up because then you begin to feel confined. Like, who am I as an individual, as a writer, as a performer? ~ Karen Fairchild

Without the element of uncertainty, the bringing off of even, the greatest business triumph would be dull, routine, and eminently unsatisfying. ~ J. Paul Getty

Mary Decker Slaney, the world greatest front runner, I shouldn't be surprised to see her at the front ~ Ron Pickering

Difficult people are the greatest teachers. ~ Pema Chodron

Art is, from any point of view, the greatest of risks. ~ Jean Helion

I possess the greatest power ever bestowed upon mankind, the power of choice. ~ Andy Andrews

I look at my father, who was in many ways an unhappy person, but who, not long before he got sick, said that the greatest source of satisfaction in his life had been going to work in the company of other workers. ~ Jonathan Franzen

I never knew why or how writing could be so important until I learned about the no-talking rule and found that writing was the only way I could talk whenever I wanted. Writing always came to the rescue when I had to keep silent, and thereby became one of the greatest and most divine comforts I knew. What I couldn't say out loud I could always say in a note, letter, or journal first. And whenever I felt totally speechless, writing always allowed me to find the necessary words. ~ Karol Jackowski

The Green Lantern is a unique superhero because it's not that he's super that is his focus; it's that he's a man. He's very human. That's his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. ~ Blake Lively

The greatest power that a person possesses is the power to choose. ~ J. Martin Kohe

Suddenly Yudhisthira saw a yaksha approaching him. The being sat in front of him and began firing questions rapidly at him.


What is bigger than the Earth? the yaksha asked.

"A mother" replied Yudhisthira.

What is taller than the sky?

"A father"

What is faster than the wind?

"The mind , of course". Yudhisthira smiled.

What grows faster than hay?

"Worry"

What is the greatest dharma in the world? queried the yaksha

"Compassion and conscience"

With who is friendship never-ending?


"With good people" responded Yudhisthira patiently.

What is the secret to never feeling unhappy?

"If one can control his or her mind, then that person will never feel sad"

The yaksha increase his pace now.
What is the greatest kind of wealth.

"Education"

What is the greatest kind of profit?

"Health"

What is the greatest kind of happiness?

"Contentment" said Yudhisthira, ever prompt with his replies.

What is man's worst enemy?

"Anger"

What disease will never have a cure?

"Greed is incurable"

The yaksha smiled again. A last question my friend. What is life's biggest irony?

"It is the desire to live eternally. Every day, we encounter people dying but we always think that death will never come to us. ~ Sudha Murty

Not for the first time I find our lives are a shadow, and I am not afraid to say that people who think they have everything figured out and are masters of logic - they are responsible for the greatest folly. No human being is happy. Strike it rich and you are luckier than your neighbor - but happy, never. ~ Euripides

Today, I want to talk about Social Security and how all of us can ensure that one of the greatest achievements of this century continues to serve our people well into the next ... For 60 years, Social Security has meant more than an ID number on a tax form; more than a monthly check in the mail. It reflects our deepest values - our respect fr our parents and our belief that all Americans deserve to retire with dignity. ~ William J. Clinton

Perhaps I am even envious of Stendhal? He robbed me of the best atheist joke which precisely I could have made: 'God's only excuse is that he does not exist' ... I myself have said somewhere: what hitherto been the greatest objection to existence? God ... ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

They've heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know. Then they get a taste of battle. ~ George R R Martin

Moreover it is one of the greatest curses of religion that it takes only the very slightest twist of a knife tip in the cloth of a shirt to turn neighbours who have loved each other into bitter enemies. ~ Louis De Bernieres

This is the greatest responsibility of literature: to find in our struggle that which has a future. Literature is a living and growing thing. We must destroy that which is dying, because it does not die by itself. ~ Carlos Bulosan

When we hold secrets it creates shame, and shame is a great barrier to success. When you carry the shame you do not allow yourself to fulfill your greatest potential, you do not honour the truth of yourself, you do not honour your highest self. When you let go of the secret, only then you live to your greatest potential. ~ Oprah Winfrey

People ask me all the time what or who my influences are. To be honest, it would take a decent set of encyclopedias to get them all down. I am here today to let the world know my greatest influence, my secret ingredient, really. What inspires me? That's simple: COFFEE. ~ Corey Taylor

Most humans, in varying degrees, are already dead. In one way or another they have lost their dreams, their ambitions, their desire for a better life. They have surrendered their fight for self-esteem and they have compromised their great potential. They have settled for a life of mediocrity, days of despair and nights of tears. They are no more than living deaths confined to cemeteries of their choice. Yet they need not remain in that state. They can be resurrected from their sorry condition. They can each perform the greatest miracle in the world. They can each come back from the dead ... ~ Og Mandino