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The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957
US (Russian-born) novelist (1905 - 1982)

The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.

Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 1966
US (Russian-born) novelist (1905 - 1982)

Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, 1947
French social philosopher (1909 - 1943)

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
US essayist & poet (1803 - 1882)

Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.

Eric Hoffer
(1902 - 1983)

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

H. L. Mencken
US editor (1880 - 1956)

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Edmund Burke
Irish orator, philosopher, & politician (1729 - 1797)

I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.

C. S. Lewis
English essayist & juvenile novelist (1898 - 1963)

We are here to add to the sum of human goodness. To prove the thing exists. And however futile each individual act of courage or generosity, self-sacrifice or grace-it still proves the thing exists. Each act adds to the fund. It needs replenishment. Not only because evil flourishes, and is, most indefensibly, defended. But because goodness is no longer a respectable aim in life. The hound of hell, envy, has driven it from the house.

Josephine Hart, "Sin"

Nothing feebler than a man does the earth raise up, of all the things which breathe and move on the earth, for he believes that he will never suffer evil in the future, as long as the gods give him success and he flourishes in his strength; but when the blessed gods bring sorrows too to pass, even these he bears, against his will, with steadfast spirit, for the thoughts of earthly men are like the day which the father of gods and men brings upon them.

Homer, The Odyssey
Greek epic poet (800 BC - 700 BC)

Often an entire city has suffered because of an evil man.

Hesiod
Greek didactic poet (~800 BC)

He harms himself who does harm to another, and the evil plan is most harmful to the planner.

Hesiod
Greek didactic poet (~800 BC)

Do not seek evil gains; evil gains are the equivalent of disaster.

Hesiod
Greek didactic poet (~800 BC)

I know indeed what evil I intend to do,
but stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury,
fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils.

Euripides, Medea, 431 B.C.
Greek tragic dramatist (484 BC - 406 BC)

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

Plato, Dialogues, Apology
Greek author & philosopher in Athens (427 BC - 347 BC)

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Plato, Dialogues, Phaedo
Greek author & philosopher in Athens (427 BC - 347 BC)

Have I inadvertently said some evil thing?

Phocion, from Plutarch, Apothegms
Greek general & politician in Athens (402 BC - 318 BC)

Such evil deeds could religion prompt.

Lucretius, De Rerum Natura
Roman Epicurean poet, philosopher, & scientist (96 BC - 55 BC)

Let a good man do good deeds with the same zeal that the evil man does bad ones.

The Belzer Rabbi

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

Martin Luther King Jr., Accepting Nobel Peace Prize, Dec. 10, 1964
US black civil rights leader & clergyman (1929 - 1968)

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