76 Thought-Provoking Evil Quotes

In the vast realm of literature and philosophy, the concept of evil has always captivated minds with its complexity and depth. From ancient texts to modern musings, the exploration of evil challenges us to reflect on human nature, morality, and the shadows lurking within society. This carefully curated collection of 76 thought-provoking evil quotes invites you to delve into the darker side of human experience. Each quote offers a unique perspective, prompting introspection and a deeper understanding of the forces that shape our world. As you journey through these powerful words, prepare to confront unsettling truths and explore the timeless struggle between good and evil.

1. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” - Edmund Burke

2. “Man is the cruelest animal.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

3. “Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.” - Voltaire

4. “Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.” - Baltasar Gracian

5. “So you see, Good and Evil have the same face; it all depends on when they cross the path of each individual human being.” - Paulo Coelho

6. “I learned the bad guys are not always bad, the good guys are not always good, and to quote Captain Barbossa, the parameters are like rules, mostly guidelines. And that it takes a little bit of bad boy to fight the evil in the world.--Terri Mitchell” - Sherrilyn Kenyon

7. “I believe in the devil, in the Powers of Darkness, Lawford, as firmly as I believe he and they are powerless – in the long run. They – what shall we say? - have surrendered their intrinsicality. You can just go through evil, as you can go through a sewer, and come out on the other side. A loathsome process too.” - Walter de la Mare

8. “Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.” - H.P. Lovecraft

9. “I am the spirit that negates.And rightly so, for all that comes to beDeserves to perish wretchedly;'Twere better nothing would begin.Thus everything that that your terms, sin,Destruction, evil represent—That is my proper element.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

10. “The wacky thing about those bad guys is that you can't count on them to be obvious. They forget to wax their mustaches and goatees, leave their horns at home, send their black hats to the dry cleaner's. They're funny like that.” - Jim Butcher

11. “That’s the problem with you nearly immortal types,” I said. “You couldn’t spot a pop culture reference if it skittered up and implanted an embryo down your esophagus.” - Jim Butcher

12. “In this treacherous worldNothing is the truth nor a lie.Everything depends on the colorOf the crystal through which one sees it” - Pedro Calderón de la Barca

13. “There's a point at which when I start to know a man well--this isn't true of women--I wonder whether there's something in him that's evil. Something that's pure and can't be touched. This quality of evil may be related to the quality of artistry, for an artist has the same characteristics.” - Kathy Acker

14. “We are much beholden to Machiavelli and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do . For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with the columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent; his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil. For without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced. Nay, an honest man can do no good upon those that are wicked, to reclaim them, without the help of the knowledge of evil.” - Frances Bacon

15. “Hell is paved with good intentions.” - Samuel Johnson

16. “It was a haunting feeling, the sort of sensation you get when you wonder whether you are two people, the other of which does things you can't explain, bad and terrible things.” - Donald Miller

17. “When people see some things as beautiful,other things become ugly.When people see some things as good,other things become bad.” - Lao Tzu

18. “Once evil is individualized, becoming part of everyday life, the way of resisting it also becomes individual. How does the soul survive? is the essential question. And the response is: through love and imagination.” - Azar Nafisi

19. “(The presence of evil) in his life provokes him into either overcoming it or yielding to it. If the first, it has led him to work for his own improvement; if the second it has led him to acknowledge his own weakness. Sooner or later, the unpleasant consequences of such weakness will lead him to grapple with it, and develop his power of will...Immediately and directly, it may either strengthen him or weaken him. Ultimately, it can only strengthen him.” - Paul Brunton

20. “All evil begins with this belief: that another’s existence is less precious than mine.” - Tony Hendra

21. “War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other's children.” - Jimmy Carter

22. “Evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin.” - G.K. Chesterton

23. “Hell is the impossibility of reason.” - Oliver Stone

24. “As a convinced atheist, I ought to agree with Voltaire that Judaism is not just one more religion, but in its way the root of religious evil. Without the stern, joyless rabbis and their 613 dour prohibitions, we might have avoided the whole nightmare of the Old Testament, and the brutal, crude wrenching of that into prophecy-derived Christianity, and the later plagiarism and mutation of Judaism and Christianity into the various rival forms of Islam. Much of the time, I do concur with Voltaire, but not without acknowledging that Judaism is dialectical. There is, after all, a specifically Jewish version of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, with a specifically Jewish name—the Haskalah—for itself. The term derives from the word for 'mind' or 'intellect,' and it is naturally associated with ethics rather than rituals, life rather than prohibitions, and assimilation over 'exile' or 'return.' It's everlastingly linked to the name of the great German teacher Moses Mendelssohn, one of those conspicuous Jewish hunchbacks who so upset and embarrassed Isaiah Berlin. (The other way to upset or embarrass Berlin, I found, was to mention that he himself was a cousin of Menachem Schneerson, the 'messianic' Lubavitcher rebbe.) However, even pre-enlightenment Judaism forces its adherents to study and think, it reluctantly teaches them what others think, and it may even teach them how to think also.” - Christopher Hitchens

25. “If someone slaps you on one cheek, offer the other cheek also...but of course if you were able to stand soberly after the first slap.” - Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident]

26. “Ms. Sophia was evil bananas.” - Lauren Kate

27. “There is one fairly good reason for fighting - and that is, if the other man starts it. You see, wars are a great wickedness, perhaps the greatest wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they must not be allowed. When you can be perfectly certain that the other man started them, then is the time when you might have a sort of duty to stop them. ” - T.H. White

28. “Evil is the moment when I lack the strength to be true to the Good that compels me.” - Alain Badiou

29. “A ja myślę, że całe zło tego świata bierze się z myślenia. Zwłaszcza w wykonaniu ludzi całkiem ku temu nie mających predyspozycji. ” - Andrzej Sapkowski

30. “The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?” - Arthur Conan Doyle

31. “Dad, will they ever come back?""No. And yes." Dad tucked away his harmonica. "No not them. But yes, other people like them. Not in a carnival. God knows what shape they'll come in next. But sunrise, noon, or at the latest, sunset tomorrow they'll show. They're on the road.""Oh, no," said Will."Oh, yes, said Dad. "We got to watch out the rest of our lives. The fight's just begun."They moved around the carousel slowly."What will they look like? How will we know them?""Why," said Dad, quietly, "maybe they're already here."Both boys looked around swiftly.But there was only the meadow, the machine, and themselves.Will looked at Jim, at his father, and then down at his own body and hands. He glanced up at Dad.Dad nodded, once, gravely, and then nodded at the carousel, and stepped up on it, and touched a brass pole.Will stepped up beside him. Jim stepped up beside Will.Jim stroked a horse's mane. Will patted a horse's shoulders.The great machine softly tilted in the tides of night.Just three times around, ahead, thought Will. Hey.Just four times around, ahead, thought Jim. Boy.Just ten times around, back, thought Charles Halloway. Lord.Each read the thoughts in the other's eyes.How easy, thought Will.Just this once, thought Jim.But then, thought Charles Halloway, once you start, you'd always come back. One more ride and one more ride. And, after awhile, you'd offer rides to friends, and more friends until finally...The thought hit them all in the same quiet moment....finally you wind up owner of the carousel, keeper of the freaks...proprietor for some small part of eternity of the traveling dark carnival shows....Maybe, said their eyes, they're already here.” - Ray Bradbury

32. “I believe in good and evil," said Jem. "And I believe the soul is eternal. But I don't believe in the fiery pit, the pitchforks, or endless torment. I do not believe you can threaten people into goodness.” - Cassandra Clare

33. “The problem with evil people is that they can see only evil in others. It is one of the worst curses of being evil, that you can no longer experience good. ” - Michael Gruber

34. “Defenceless under the nightOur world in stupor lies;Yet, dotted everywhere,Ironic points of lightFlash out wherever the JustExchange their messages:May I, composed like themOf Eros and of dust,Beleaguered by the sameNegation and despair,Show an affirming flame.” - W.H. Auden

35. “There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. ” - Ayn Rand

36. “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

37. “Shortly after we were in bed I began my story, but made it so absurd, so long, and so tiresome, that, as my intention was, I sent her to sleep, and should have gone to sleep myself - but dark plots are ever wakeful. (“The Story of Prince Barkiarokh”)” - William Beckford

38. “One question in my mind, which I hardly dare mention in public, is whether patriotism has, overall, been a force for good or evil in the world. Patriotism is rampant in war and there are some good things about it. Just as self-respect and pride bring out the best in an individual, pride in family, pride in teammates, pride in hometown bring out the best in groups of people. War brings out the kind of pride in country that encourages its citizens in the direction of excellence and it encourages them to be ready to die for it. At no time do people work so well together to achieve the same goal as they do in wartime. Maybe that's enough to make patriotism eligible to be considered a virtue. If only I could get out of my mind the most patriotic people who ever lived, the Nazi Germans.” - Andy Rooney

39. “Evil people rely on the acquiescence of naive good people to allow them to continue with their evil.” - Stuart Aken

40. “The sole social evil is darkness; humanity is identity, for all men are made of the same clay.” - Victor Hugo

41. “It can certainly be misleading to take the attributes of a movement, or the anxieties and contradictions of a moment, and to personalize or 'objectify' them in the figure of one individual. Yet ordinary discourse would be unfeasible without the use of portmanteau terms—like 'Stalinism,' say—just as the most scrupulous insistence on historical forces will often have to concede to the sheer personality of a Napoleon or a Hitler. I thought then, and I think now, that Osama bin Laden was a near-flawless personification of the mentality of a real force: the force of Islamic jihad. And I also thought, and think now, that this force absolutely deserves to be called evil, and that the recent decapitation of its most notorious demagogue and organizer is to be welcomed without reserve. Osama bin Laden's writings and actions constitute a direct negation of human liberty, and vent an undisguised hatred and contempt for life itself.” - Christopher Hitchens

42. “In account after account of exorcisms the demonic voices will propound nihilism of one variety or another.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

43. “Most people are good and occasionally do something they know is bad. Some people are bad and struggle every day to keep it under control. Others are corrupt to the core and don’t give a damn, as long as they don’t get caught. But evil is a completely different creature, Mac. Evil is bad that believes it’s good.” - Karen Marie Moning

44. “Kötü, hemen hemen her defasında, niçin 'iyi'den daha güçlü olarak ortaya çıkıyor ?” - Chingiz Aitmatov

45. “The nose can’t help catchin’ what the ears get sick with. Yessir, rock bands just sweat evil. Evil’s been around for a long time, ever since rocks started getting real hot and making a lot of noise as they exploded out o’ the ground and evil spirits wisped out of hell. If a band ever uses a fog machine, hold your breath so you don’t become possessed by one.” - M.C. Humphreys

46. “There is no abstract Evil; you have to understand that! Its roots are here, all around us, in this herd that goes on chewing and having a good time only an hour after a murder! That's what you have to fight for. For people. Evil is a hydra with many heads, and the more of them you cut off, the more it grows! Hydras have to be starved to death, do you understand that? Kill a hundred Dark Ones, and a thousand more will take their place.” - Sergei Lukyanenko

47. “What do we find God 'doing about' this business of sin and evil?...God did not abolish the fact of evil; He transformed it. He did not stop the Crucifixion; He rose from the dead.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

48. “The concept of portraying evil and then destroying it - I know this is considered mainstream, but I think it is rotten. This idea that whenever something evil happens someone particular can be blamed and punished for it, in life and in politics is hopeless.” - Hayao Miyazaki

49. “Evil doesn't always have one face, Ethan.” - Kami Garcia

50. “We all have a Monster within; the difference is in degree, not in kind.” - Douglas Preston

51. “... true evil needs no reason to exist, it simply is and feeds upon itself.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

52. “The whole thing becomes like this evil enchantment from a fairy tale, but you're made to believe the spell can never be broken.” - Jess C. Scott

53. “Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.Even now I curse the day—and yet, I think,Few come within the compass of my curse,—Wherein I did not some notorious ill,As kill a man, or else devise his death,Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it,Accuse some innocent and forswear myself,Set deadly enmity between two friends,Make poor men's cattle break their necks;Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night,And bid the owners quench them with their tears.Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,And set them upright at their dear friends' doors,Even when their sorrows almost were forgot;And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.'Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful thingsAs willingly as one would kill a fly,And nothing grieves me heartily indeedBut that I cannot do ten thousand more.” - William Shakespeare

54. “Wherever you find the greatest good, you will find the greatest evil, because evil loves paradise as much as good.” - Wallace Stegner

55. “When men follow justice the city blooms, the earth bears rich harvests, and children and flocks increase; but for the unjust all nature is hostile, the people waste away from famine, and a whole city may reap the evil fruit of one man's ill deeds.” - Christopher Henry Dawson

56. “The gross evil of our time defies all labels.” - Edward Abbey

57. “Why did I, like thousands of others, have to carry a cross I hadn't chosen, a cross which was not made for my shoulders and which didn't concern me? Who decided to come rummaging around in my obscure existence, invade my gray anonymity, my meager tranquility, and bowl me like a little ball in a great game of skittles? God? Well, in that case, if He exists, if He really exists, let Him hide His face. Let Him put His two hands on His head, and let Him bow down. It may be, as Peiper used to teach us, that many men are unworthy of Him, but now I know that He, too, is unworthy of most of us, and that if the creature is capable of producing horror, it's solely because his Creator has slipped him the recipe for it.” - Philippe Claudel

58. “I cannot think why we should be astonished at all the evils which exist in the Church, when those who ought to be models on which all may pattern their virtues are annulling the work wrought in the religious Orders by the spirit of the saints of old.” - Santa Teresa de Jesús

59. “Someday I will understand Auschwitz. This was a brave statement but innocently absurd. No one will ever understand Auschwitz. What I might have set down with more accuracy would have been: Someday I will write about Sophie's life and death, and thereby help demonstrate how absolute evil is never extinguished from the world. Auschwitz itself remains inexplicable. The most profound statement yet made about Auschwitz was not a statement at all, but a response.The query: "At Auschwitz, tell me, where was God?"And the answer: "Where was man?” - William Styron

60. “…questioning the existence of God may begin because of one’s sense of disappointment rather than because of a line of reasoning. Disappointment can bring disillusionment, and disillusionment can get quite a grip on us. It may be the case that, next to the grip of disillusionment, whatever reasons we can think of to believe that God exists or that God is good will appear weak. So sometimes the reason we do not believe or the reason we stop believing is not the intellectual challenge to believing in God. Sometimes, the grip of disillusionment cannot be matched by things that seem to be only abstract or theoretical.” - Gregory E. Ganssle

61. “Once she exclaimed, "But I always thought that sorceresses were evil!""What do you mean 'evil'?"Lynet has never considered the question. "You know," she said, after a moment, "unfriendly to people.""People!" repeated Morgana derisively. "As if humans were all that mattered. Just once I'd like to see people judged by how friendly they are to sorceresses.” - Gerald Morris

62. “People are rarely diabolic or bent enthusiastically on evil. As a rule, they are only weak; they cannot resist temptation and thus give way to their evil drives.” - Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

63. “The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men’s eyes.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

64. “The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave.” - Mark Twain

65. “In the Garden story, good and evil are found on the same tree, not in separate orchards. Good and evil give meaning and definition to each other. If God, like us, is susceptible to immense pain, He is, like us, the greater in His capacity for happiness. The presence of such pain serves the larger purpose of God's master plan, which is to maximize the capacity for joy, or in other words, "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." He can no more foster those ends in the absence of suffering and evil than one could find the traction to run or the breath to sing in the vacuum of space. God does not instigate pain or suffering, but He can weave it into His purposes. "God's power rests not on totalizing omnipotence, but on His ability to alchemize suffering, tragedy, and loss into wisdom, understanding, and joy.” - Terryl L. Givens

66. “We all disapprove of prostitution; but we do not all approve of purity. The only way to discuss the social evil is to get at once to the social ideal. We can all see the national madness; but what is national sanity?” - G.K. Chesterton

67. “Evil never goes unpunished, Monsieur. But the punishment is sometimes secret.” - Agatha Christie

68. “Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counter-balanced by the young people's right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.” - Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

69. “Lord John: 'The court has suffered most sorely for your absence. We hardly know where to find our amusement now.' Lady Nora: 'I am sorry to hear that, I suppose it takes some wit to produce one's own entertainment. Are you often bored?” - Meredith Duran

70. “Evil does not fight against evil, rather it struggles against Good. Where as, Good does not struggle against evil, rather it overwhelmingly defeats it".~R. Alan Woods [2012]” - R. Alan Woods

71. “Halloween season. The season of the witch, so many thought. And, in legend, the night when souls could return to earth...And try to linger on.But the dead weren't really returning, the living created evil.” - Heather Graham

72. “I sat back and looked at it. It was ugly, dark, uncontrolled. Like a monster's face. Or maybe what I saw there was my own face. I couldn't quite tell. Was the face the image of something evil or the image of myself?"Both," Bea muttered, as if I'd spoken my question out loud. "Of course, it's both. But it shouldn't be. Goodness, no.” - Jennifer Brown

73. “It was dark now, and broodingly sluggish. Like something supine waiting to spring, with just the tip of its tail twitching. Leaves stood still on the trees. An evil green star glinted in the black sky like a hostile eye, like an evil spying eye.("For The Rest Of Her Life")” - Cornell Woolrich

74. “Joe knew that for some, really for most, the derivations of belladonna that blurred their vision and caused their hearts to race would, as well, hasten their forgetting of detail. They would not recall, not readily, any sense of pain or shame or doubt or threat of danger. []There were always children to be used. Members were obliged to offer their children, although not necessarily every child in a family was used. Some were found to be not suited for the rigor. Some were left alone so that if the involved children in a family were to attempt to tell, siblings could not corroborate their experience.” - Judith Spencer

75. “I reeled with giddiness - flames passed before my eyes.I remembered those precipices that drew one towards them with irresistible power - wells that have had to be filled up because of persons throwing themselves into them - trees that have had to be cut down because of people hanging themselves upon them - the contagion of suicide and theft and murder, which at various times has taken possession of people's minds, by means well understood; that strange inducement, which makes people kill themselves because others kill themselves. My hair rose upon my head with horror!("The Invisible Eye")” - Erckmann-Chatrian

76. “Evil is predicable; Good is paradoxical.” - Lara Biyuts