There were real people who carried the gasoline to the church. A real person ignited it. What is there in human nature that allows an individual to act without any restraints whatsoever, so he can act inhumanly, harshly, severely and in no way limited by feelings of compassion or conscience? These are questions which concern me. Stanley Milgram, BBC Horizon 2007
The main thing of course is that the person does not see himself as responsible for his own actions. He sees himself rather as an agent executing the wishes of another person. ibid.
What have I learned from my investigations? It doesn’t take an evil person to serve an evil system. Ordinary people are easily integrated into malevolent systems. ibid.
If a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would be able to find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium sized American town. Stanley Milgram
Evil? ... Does Evil even exist? Or is it just a point of view? Curiosity: How Evil Are You? Discovery 2011
Where does it come from exactly? Are we born Evil? ibid.
1961 Psychologist Stanley Milgram ... the shocks were fake but the participants didn’t know that. ibid.
There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia. Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan
When does Evil start reversing itself? Alex Jones
Ladies and gentlemen, this country is in the greatest crisis that it’s ever seen. If it falls it will be a greater engine of evil than Nazi Germany was. It’s already fallen under the Bush regime, and they’ve destroyed our name, they’ve destroyed our currency, they’ve destroyed our treasury, the bill of rights, the constitution’s been dismantled ... Evil is moving across the face of the world. Alex Jones, the Alex Jones Show
Yield not to evils, but attack all the more boldly. Virgil, Aeneid
The men who does evil to another does evil to himself, and the evil counsel it most evil for him who counsels it. Hesiod c.700 B.C. Works and Days
An evil deed, when done, does not – like ready milk – come out right away. It follows the fool, smouldering like a fire hidden in ashes. Dhammapada
The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken or we will be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. Martin Luther King
A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible. Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd
To discover evil in a new friend is to most people only an additional experience. Thomas Hardy, Desperate Remedies
The small man thinks that small acts of goodness are of no benefit, and does not do them; and that small deeds of evil do no harm, and does not refrain from them. Hence, his wickedness becomes so great that it cannot be concealed, and his guilt so great that it cannot be pardoned. Confucius, The Wisdom of Confucius
All evils are equal when they are extreme. Pierre Corneille
As for myself, I walk abroad o’ nights
And kill sick people groaning under walls:
Sometimes I go about and poison wells. Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta
Barnadine: Thou hast committed –
Barabas: Fornication? But that was in another country: and besides, the wench is dead. ibid.
Evil will always be present in the world. Its eradication is not in the power of men; yet if there ever was an action by men that aimed to eradicate evil it is in that war waged upon Nazi Germany by Britain and America. World War II: The Complete History: The Presence of History, Discovery 2000
As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore. Reverend Nathan Baxter, cited Barbara Lee, Congress debate on extended executive powers
When I despair I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it – always. Mahatma Gandhi
Non-cooperation with evil is a sacred duty. Mahatma Gandhi
I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent. Mahatma Gandhi
People who claim that they’re evil are usually no worse than the rest of us ... It’s people who claim that they’re good, or any way better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of. Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house. George Carlin
Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference. Jim Butcher, Vignette
If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
When one with honeyed words but evil mind
Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state. Euripides, Orestes
The notion that evil is non-rational is a more significant claim for Eagleton than at first appears, because he is (in this book On Evil as in others of his recent ‘late period’ prolific burst) anxious to rewrite theology: God (whom he elsewhere tells us is non-existent, but this is no barrier to his being lots of other things for Eagleton too, among them Important) is not to be regarded as rational: with reference to the Book of Job Eagleton says, ‘To ask after God's reasons for allowing evil, so [some theologians] claim, is to imagine him as some kind of rational or moral being, which is the last thing he is.’ This is priceless: with one bound God is free of responsibility for ‘natural evil’ – childhood cancers, tsunamis that kill tens of thousands – and for moral evil also even though ‘He’ is CEO of the company that purposely manufactured its perpetrators; and ‘He’ is incidentally exculpated from blame for the hideous treatment meted out to Job. A C Grayling
Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings. Soren Kierkegaard
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. Joseph Conrad
The war between Good and Evil is really just the war between two evils. Richard Dawkins, Root of All Evil? Channel 4 2006
It is certainly true that Islam in the world is probably the major evil. Richard Dawkins, lecture I’m an Atheist But
I’m pessimistic about the Islamic world. I regard Islam as one of the great evils in the world. Richard Dawkins
But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil. Robert A Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
We’re all caught up in circumstances, and we’re all good and evil. When you’re really hungry, for instance, you’ll do anything to survive. I think the most evil thing – well, maybe that’s too strong – but certainly a very evil thing is judgment, the sin of ignorance. Anthony Hopkins
The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil. Marcus Tullius Cicero