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Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil. Jerry Garcia
To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight. John Milton, Paradise Lost, I:159
And out of good still to find means of evil. ibid. I:165
Farewell remorse! All good to me is lost;
Evil, be thou my good. ibid. 4:109
Evil into the mind of God or Man
May come and go, so unapproved, and leave
No spot or blame behind. ibid. V: 117-119, Adam to Eve
He that has light within his own clear breast
May sit i’ the centre, and enjoy bright day,
But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts
Benighted walks under the midday sun;
Himself is his own dungeon. John Milton, Comus, 1637
Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is God both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? Epicurus
It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lessons that this long course in human wickedness had taught us – the lesson of the fearsome, word-of-thought-defying banality of evil. Hannah Ardendt, 1906-1975, American political philosopher
This is a sane man [Adolf Eichmann], and a sane man is capable of unrepentant, unlimited, planned evil. He was the genius bureaucrat, he was the powerful frozen mind which directed a gigantic organization; he is the perfect model of inhumanness; but he was not alone. Eager thousands obeyed him. Everyone could not have his special talents; many people were needed to smash a baby’s head against the pavement before the mother’s eyes, to urge a sick old man to rest and shoot him in the back of the head; there was endless work for willing hands. How many more like these exist everywhere? Martha Gelhorn, article Atlantic Monthly 1962 ‘Eichmann and the Private Conscience’
Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it 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. Professor Steven Weinberg
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. Blaise Pascal
Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion. Blaise Pascal
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. Joseph Conrad
Thus have the gods spun the thread for wretched mortals; they that live in grief while they themselves are without cares; for two jars stand on the floor of Zeus, of the gifts which he gives, one of Evils and another of Blessings. Homer, The Iliad
It doesn’t seem to me that this fantastically marvellous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil – which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama. Richard Feynman, cited James Gleick ‘Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman’, 1992
The pursuit of the good and evil are now linked in astronomy as in almost all science ... The fate of human civilization will depend on whether the rockets of the future carry the astronomer’s telescope or a hydrogen bomb. Bernard Lovell, British astronomer
How will the ships navigate
without stars? And then he remembered that the stars were
dead, long dead, and the light they shed was not to be trusted,
was false, if not an outright lie, and in any case was inadequate,
unequal to its task, which was to illuminate the evil that men did. Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis
We need to wake up and find out what freedom is all about. And start asking some very serious questions about who is leading us and where are they taking the human family. We are in serious trouble on this Earth. And the people who are guiding the destiny of this world are profoundly evil. Their agenda is so profoundly evil most men are not even able to perceive it. Jordan Maxwell, Forbidden Knowledge
The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing. Albert Einstein, attributions & variations
The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are. Karl Kraus
Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell. George Orwell
I hate purity. Hate goodness. I don’t want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone corrupt. George Orwell, 1984 starring John Hurt & Richard Burton & Gregor Fisher & Suzanna Hamilton & Cyril Cusack & James Walker & Andrew Wilde & Corina Seddon & Rupert Baderman & John Boswall & Phyllis Logan et al, director Michael Radford, him to her
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke, attributions & variations, but cf. John Stuart Mill, University of St Andrew 1st February 1867
cf.
Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends than that good men should look on and do nothing. John Stuart Mill, address University of St Andrews 1st February 1867
The triumph of the Confederacy would be a victory of the powers of evil which would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the spirits of friends all over the civilised world. The American Civil War is destined to be a turning point for good or evil of the course of human affairs. John Stuart Mill
A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions, but by his inaction, and in either case, he is justly accountable to them for the injury. John Stuart Mill