Talk:Evil
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I just moved the Pascal quote from Unsourced to Sourced, adding the source.
As I note, the quote is misleading. Minor point, the translator suppressed one pensée, so the French (Brunschvicg) number is 895, not 894.(794 in Pléiade.) Important point, the last words are NOT "religious conviction" but simply "conscience": "Jamais on ne fait le mal si pleinement et si gaiement que quand on le fait par conscience."
Hence, the French original gets 12 Google hits, but the Trotter improvement 2690.
[edit] Unsourced
- Published sources should be provided before moving these back into the article
- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
- At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.
- The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
- But goodness alone is never enough. A hard cold wisdom is required, too, for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom invariably accomplishes evil.
- Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.
- The evil doer is ever anxious.
- Evil unchecked grows, evil tolerated poisons the whole system.
- The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.
- He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
- I feel pity for those fools that prayed for the annihilation of evil, Their efforts are worthy but nonetheless still futile.
- If your heart acquires strength, you will be able to remove blemishes from others without thinking evil of them.
- It is always good men who do the most harm in the world.
- It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
- It is told that Buddha, going out to look on life, was greatly daunted by death. "They all eat one another!" he cried, and called it evil. This process I examined, changed the verb, said, "They all feed one another," and called it good.
- The smallest grains of evil are our rude, careless touches on the sensitive, subtly organized soul of a child who, we think, doesn't understand anything, and therefore, will tolerate everything.
- Simon Soloveychik Parenting for Everyone (1989)
- The moral sense reappears today with the same morning newness that has been from of old the fountain of beauty and strength. You say there is no religion now. 'Tis like saying in rainy weather, There is no sun, when at that moment we are witnessing one of its superlative effects.
- No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
- Nothing worse than a monster who thinks he's right with God.
- Captain Malcolm Reynolds, Firefly
- The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
- 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.
- Our repentance is not so much regret for the evil we have done, as fear of its consequences.
- There surely is in human nature an inherent propensity to extract all the good out of all the evil.
- They say, "Evil prevails when good men fail to act." What they ought to say is, "Evil prevails."
- Yuri Orlov, Lord of War
- To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as morals.
- Truly, if there is evil in this world, it lies within the heart of mankind.
- Yoshiharu Gotanda, Edward D. Morrison, Tales of Phantasia
- We ought always to deal justly, not only with those who are just to us, but likewise to those who endeavor to injure us; and this, for fear lest by rendering them evil for evil, we should fall into the same vice.
- What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.
- When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before.
- When good people in any country cease their vigilance and struggle, then evil men prevail.
- The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
- Yield not to evils, but attack all the more boldly.
- Kira: "That's what's so frightening. People can find a way to justify any action, no matter how evil"
- Ziyal:"You think my father's evil?"
- Kira: "I think... You can't judge people by what they think or say, only by what they do"
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine By inferno's light
- The dark side retains its power by imposing a blackout.
- His belief that evil was an illusion did not save him.
- Vergere, on the death of Magister Hal, "Star Wars"
