91 Evil Quotes To Reflect On

We all encounter moments that challenge our perceptions of morality and goodness. In such times, it can be insightful to ponder the nature of evil, a concept as old as humanity itself. To aid in this reflection, we’ve compiled a curated collection of the top 91 evil quotes. These thought-provoking excerpts span literature, philosophy, and history, offering diverse perspectives that may deepen your understanding or provoke further contemplation. Whether you seek to comprehend the darker aspects of human nature or simply wish to explore a different facet of human expression, this collection promises to be both enlightening and compelling.

1. “May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.” - George Carlin

2. “SEPTEMBER 1, 1939 I sit in one of the divesOn Fifty-second StreetUncertain and afraidAs the clever hopes expireOf a low dishonest decade:Waves of anger and fearCirculate over the brightAnd darkened lands of the earth,Obsessing our private lives;The unmentionable odour of deathOffends the September night.Accurate scholarship canUnearth the whole offenceFrom Luther until nowThat has driven a culture mad,Find what occurred at Linz,What huge imago madeA psychopathic god:I and the public knowWhat all schoolchildren learn,Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return.Exiled Thucydides knewAll that a speech can sayAbout Democracy,And what dictators do,The elderly rubbish they talkTo an apathetic grave;Analysed all in his book,The enlightenment driven away,The habit-forming pain,Mismanagement and grief:We must suffer them all again.Into this neutral airWhere blind skyscrapers useTheir full height to proclaimThe strength of Collective Man,Each language pours its vainCompetitive excuse:But who can live for longIn an euphoric dream;Out of the mirror they stare,Imperialism's faceAnd the international wrong.Faces along the barCling to their average day:The lights must never go out,The music must always play,All the conventions conspireTo make this fort assumeThe furniture of home;Lest we should see where we are,Lost in a haunted wood,Children afraid of the nightWho have never been happy or good.The windiest militant trashImportant Persons shoutIs not so crude as our wish:What mad Nijinsky wroteAbout DiaghilevIs true of the normal heart;For the error bred in the boneOf each woman and each manCraves what it cannot have,Not universal loveBut to be loved alone.From the conservative darkInto the ethical lifeThe dense commuters come,Repeating their morning vow;'I will be true to the wife,I'll concentrate more on my work,'And helpless governors wakeTo resume their compulsory game:Who can release them now,Who can reach the dead,Who can speak for the dumb?All I have is a voiceTo undo the folded lie,The romantic lie in the brainOf the sensual man-in-the-streetAnd the lie of AuthorityWhose buildings grope the sky:There is no such thing as the StateAnd no one exists alone;Hunger allows no choiceTo the citizen or the police;We must love one another or die.Defenseless 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

3. “Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.” - Mae West

4. “The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.” - Ursula K. LeGuin

5. “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” - Blaise Pascal

6. “He didn't have a single clue what was going on with these two strangers, but every instinct told him Master George equaled good, Mistress Jane equaled bald- he blinked-uh, bad. ” - James Dashner

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

8. “True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good--and we all know how rare that is...” - Jasper Fforde

9. “In the beginning there was only a small amount of injustice abroad in the world, but everyone who came afterwards added their portion, always thinking it was very small and unimportant, and look where we have ended up today.” - Paulo Coelho

10. “I know [Umbridge] by reputation and I'm sure she's no Death Eater—''She's foul enough to be one…''Yes, but the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters', said Sirius with a wry smile. 'I know she’s a nasty piece of work though'.” - J.K. Rowling

11. “Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil -- or else an absolute ignorance.” - Graham Greene

12. “The answer to the problem of evil does not lie in trying to establish its point of origin, for that is simply not revealed to us. Rather, in the moment of the cross, it becomes clear that evil is utterly subverted for good.... If God can take the greatest of evils and turn them for the greatest of goods, then how much more can he take the lesser evils which litter human history, from individual tragedies to international disasters, and turn them to his good purpose as well.” - Carl R. Trueman

13. “Make (the reader) think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications. My values are positively all blanks, save so far as an excited horror, a promoted pity, a created expertness... proceed to read into them more or less fantastic figures.” - Henry James

14. “And now tell me, why is it that you use me words "good people" all the time? Do you call everyone that, or what?- Everyone, - the prisoner replied. - There are no evil people in the world.(- А теперь скажи мне, что это ты все время употребляешь слова добрыелюди"? Ты всех, что ли, так называешь?- Всех, - ответил арестант, - злых людей нет на свете.)” - Mikhail Bulgakov

15. “My question is, do you believe in an evil possessed of its own purity? or does every act intend some good?...” - Brent Weeks

16. “If you try to cure evil with evilyou will add more pain to your fate.” - Sophocles

17. “Evil doesn't die. It never dies. It just takes on a new face, a new name. Just because we've been touched by it once, it doesn't mean we're immune to ever being hurt again. Lightning can strike twice.” - Tess Gerritsen

18. “There are sacraments of evil as well as of good about us, and we live and move to my belief in an unknown world, a place where there are caves and shadows and dwellers in twilight. It is possible that man may sometimes return on the track of evolution, and it is my belief that an awful lore is not yet dead.” - Arthur Machen

19. “Demons are like obedient dogs; they come when they are called.” - Remy De Gourmont

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

21. “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

22. “God never talks. But the devil keeps advertising, Father. The devil does a lot of commercials.” - William Peter Blatty

23. “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

24. “The evil that men do lives after them;The good is oft interred with their bones.” - William Shakespeare

25. “Reforms will come as all great reforms have always come in ridding us of evils against both man and animal--not as we change our moral principles but as we discern and accept the implications of principles already held.” - Matthew Scully

26. “- You take evil for good. It's a passing crisis. It's the result of your illness, perhaps.- You do despise me! It's simply that I don't want to do good, I want to do evil, and it has nothing to do with illness.- Why do evil?- So that everything will be destroyed. Oh, how nice it would be if everything were destroyed! You know, Alyosha, I sometimes think of doing a lot of harm. I would do it for a long while secretly and then suddenly everyone would find out. Everyone will stand around and point their fingers at me and I will look at them all. That would be awfully nice.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

27. “A perfectly evil Devil makes even less sense than a perfect God.” - Anne Rice

28. “George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism. What the president should have done, in the unlikely event that he wanted the support of America's peace-mongers, was to describe a confrontation with Saddam as the 'lesser evil.' This is a term the Left can appreciate. Indeed, 'lesser evil' is part of the essential tactical rhetoric of today's Left, and has been deployed to excuse or overlook the sins of liberal Democrats, from President Clinton's bombing of Sudan to Madeleine Albright's veto of an international rescue for Rwanda when she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Among those longing for nuance, moral relativism—the willingness to use the term evil, when combined with a willingness to make accommodations with it—is the smart thing: so much more sophisticated than 'cowboy' language.” - Christopher Hitchens

29. “How easy it is to judge rightly after one sees what evil comes from judging wrongly.” - Elizabeth Gaskell

30. “...That insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him, and deposed him out of life.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

31. “Some loves have to be given up, others have to be forgotten. Strange as it may sound, if you think of me as a monster, but I can love most passionately. I do not think of myself as evil.” - Christopher Pike

32. “Complacency delivered us into the hands of evil greedy men like Cheney.” - Sonia Rumzi

33. “Evil may be 'unscientific' but so is a song or a smile.” - Terry Eagleton

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. “Darkness dwells within even the best of us. In the worst of us, darkness not only dwells but reins.” - Dean Koontz

36. “The thinnest thing in the world is the border between good and evil... my next The Opposite Of Magic.” - Ivan Stoikov - Allan Bard

37. “So... Boris. Are you evil?' [said the Doctor].'Not at all, my dear sir,' chuckled Boris.'You just chuckled,' groaned the Doctor. 'Chuckling's a dead givaway in my books. Along with putting your hands on your hips and snogging another man's wife.” - James Goss

38. “More evil gets done in the name of righteousness than any other way.” - Glen Cook

39. “The people come from everywhere, from five hundred miles, to find their fortunes. By fortune is an ugly, two-faced goddess. When you have lived with her handiwork for half a generation, you hardly notice anymore. You forget that this is not the way life has to be. You cease to marvel at just how much evil man con conjure by existing.” - Glen Cook

40. “What's to be believed? Or does it matter at all? When mass murder's been answered with mass murder, rape with rape, hate with hate, there's no longer much meaning in asking whose ax is bloodier. Evil, on evil, piled on evil. Was there any justification for what they did—or was there? We only know what that thing says, and that thing is a captive. The Asian radio has to say what will least displease it's government; ours has to say what will least displease our fine patriotic opinionated rabble, which is what, coincidentally, the government wants it to say anyhow, so where's the difference?” - Walter M. Miller

41. “O, lack and doubt and fear can only comeBecause of plenty, confidence, and love!They are the shadow-forms about their feet,Because they are not perfect crystal-clearTo the all-searching sun in which they live.Dread of its loss is Beauty’s certain seal!” - George MacDonald

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

43. “Boy, you're good at figuring things out. Isn't he? Except that if anybody's the devil in this room it's _you_, buster." An extraordinary bitterness came into his face. "I've seen you before. I know you, all right, preacher man. Age after age, you come back. You always lead the crusades. You're so damned golden-tongued, other people just flock to die for your causes. You die with them, it's true, because you're stupid enough to believe your own great lies; but you always come back again somehow. Oh, I know _you_.” - Kage Baker

44. “Because the horror of Communism, Stalinism, is not that bad people do bad things — they always do. It's that good people do horrible things thinking they are doing something great."[Six Questions for Slavoj Žižek, Harper's Magazine, November 11, 2011]” - Slavoj Žižek

45. “Men who give up the common goal of all things that exist, thereby cease to exist themselves. Some may perhaps think it strange that we say that wicked men, who form the majority of men, do not exist; but that is how it is. I am not trying to deny the wickedness of the wicked; what I do deny is that their existence is absolute and complete existence. Just as you might call a corpse a dead man, but couldn't simply call it a man, so I would agree that the wicked are wicked, but could not agree that they have unqualified existence.” - Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

46. “WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MEN?The Death of Rats looked up from the feast of the potato. SQUEAK, he said.Death waved a hand dismissively. WELL, YES, OBVIOUSLY ME, he said. I JUST WONDERED IF THERE WAS ANYONE ELSE.” - Terry Pratchett

47. “Evil draws its power from indecision and concern for what other people think.” - Pope Benedict-XVI

48. “I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centred, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.” - Haruki Murakami

49. “Their lives revolved around evil acts; some within their control, and some not. Some of them weren’t born with the capacity for kindness, and others found it better to spare no compassion for anyone in this cruel world because they felt none would be given to them. Fate deals a bad hand to some folks. Some people are just doomed to be no good.” - Ramsey Isler

50. “Don’t misunderstand me. The terrorist actions of Al-Qaeda were and are unmitigatedly evil. But the astonishing naivety which decreed that America as a whole was a pure, innocent victim, so that the world could be neatly divided up into evil people (particularly Arabs) and good people (particularly Americans and Israelis), and that the latter had a responsibility now to punish the former, is a large-scale example of what I’m talking about - just as it is immature and naive to suggest the mirror image of this view, namely that the western world is guilty in all respects and that all protestors and terrorists are therefore completely justified in what they do. In the same way, to suggest that all who possess guns should be locked up, or (the American mirror-image of this view) that everyone should carry guns so that good people can shoot bad ones before they can get up to their tricks, is simply a failure to think into the depths of what’s going on.” - N.T. Wright

51. “Possibility, or what we refer to as imagination, is 99% imitation. The real deal is only 1%. The problem is, this 1% is simultaneously referred to as Evil.” - Kouhei Kadono

52. “But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep - into evil.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

53. “True evil is always petty and often incompetent.” - Claire Chilton

54. “Kent steepled his fingers in consideration. Blood-red rubies flashed in the sunlight, like the eyes of a demon clutched in his hands.” - V.S. Carnes

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

56. “What is discovered may be abused, but that does not mean the discovery was evil.” - Fulton J. Sheen

57. “If you throw stones on my way to stumble and I fall, you try to put extra care when passing my way, lest you stumble and fall.” - Miguel Ángel Sáez Gutiérrez

58. “Never underestimate the power of good but never ignore evil lurking in the hearts of men.Rose of Life” - Sonia Rumzi

59. “The symbol of a drama, a symphony, or a dance is useful to correct a certain absurdity which may arise if we talk too much of God planning and creating the world for good and then being frustrated by the free will of the creatures. This may raise the ridiculous idea that the Fall to God by surprise and upset His plan, or else – more ridiculous still – that God planned the whole thing for conditions which, He well knew, were never going to be realized. In fact, of course, God saw the crucifixion in the act of creating the first nebulae. The world is a dance in which good, descending from God, is disturbed by evil arising from the creatures, and the resulting conflict is resolved by God's own assumption of the suffering nature which evil produces.” - C.S. Lewis

60. “Society wants to believe it can identify evil people, or bad or harmful people, but it's not practical. There are no stereotypes.” - Ted Bundy

61. “I left the warehouse at 8.00am. I don't believe in 8.00am. It exists, though. 8.00am is incontrovertible evidence that evil dwells in the world.” - Andrew Masterson

62. “The real thing about evil… you figure out one side of it - the human side, say - and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of evil to be secret.” - Gregory Maguire

63. “You're a Dark One," said Anton. "All you see in everything is evil, treachery, trickery.""All I do is not close my eyes to them," Edgar retorted. "And that's why I don't trust Zabulon. I distrust him almost as much as I do Gesar. I can even trust you more—you're just another unfortunate chess piece who happens by chance to be painted a different color from me. Does a white pawn hate a black one? No. Especially if the two pawns have their heads down together over a quiet beer or two.""You know," Anton said in a slightly surprised voice, "I just don't understand how you can carry on living if you see the world like that. I'd just go and hang myself.""So you don't have any counterarguments to offer?"Anton took a gulp of beer too. The wonderful thing about this natural Czech beer was that even if you drank lots of it, it still didn't make your head or your body feel heavy... Or was that an illusion?"Not a single one," Anton admitted. "Right now, this very moment, not a single one. But I'm sure you're wrong. It's just difficult to argue about the colors of the rainbow with a blind man. There's something missing in you... I don't know what exactly. But it's something very important, and without it you're more helpless than a blind man.” - Sergei Lukyanenko

64. “And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone or that's an evil one because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.” - Philip Pullman

65. “God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can't. If a thing is free to be good it's also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata -of creatures that worked like machines- would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they've got to be free.Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk. (...) If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will -that is, for making a real world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings- then we may take it it is worth paying.” - C.S. Lewis

66. “Like sin itself, Satan appeals to the senses. He originated and perfected the art of disguising evil as good.” - Swindoll Charles R.

67. “The only thing necessary for evil to conquer is for us and those like us to do nothing.” - Julie Kagawa

68. “Seems to me people are mean or evil because they're scared, mostly, or in pain, or afraid they're going to lose something.” - Barbara Samuel

69. “…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

70. “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

71. “Doing nothing is even worse than doing the wrong thing.” - Michel Templet

72. “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

73. “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

74. “It is often said that mankind needs a faith if the world is to be improved. In fact, unless the faith is vigilantly and regularly checked by a sense of man's fallibility, it is likely to make the world worse. From Torquemada to Robespierre and Hitler the men who have made mankind suffer the most have been inspired to do so have been inspired to do so by a strong faith; so strong that it led them to think their crimes were acts of virtue necessary to help them achieve their aim, which was to build some sort of an ideal kingdom on earth.” - David Cecil

75. “Beauty is only skin deep but evil cuts straight through the soul.” - Lauren Hammond

76. “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

77. “Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; the female sex.” - Mahatma Gandhi

78. “The distinguishing mark of man is the hand, the instrument with which he does all his mischief.” - George Orwell

79. “Sometimes there's other reason for helping, other than personal gain or benefit," added Sam softly. "Friendship, companionship, trust and love are not confined to light alone...they are harder won, fewer seen...but no less real.” - Eve Forward

80. “The heart of a man is a small thing but it desires great matters. It is not big enough for a dog’s dinner but the whole world is not big enough for it. Man spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing. From the lamb he tears its guts and makes his harp resound; from the wolf his most deadly tooth to polish his pretty works of art; from the elephant his tusks to make a toy for his child.(...)And who will exterminate him who exterminates all others?” - Paul Hoffman

81. “Evil is inevitable,' Reuben quoted, 'in the course of a creation which develops with time.” - Rice Anne

82. “You think some are bad or evil or whatnot, but somewhere along the way they were someone's baby, suckling the teat like anybody. Then something puts a volt in 'em and they ain't the same no more.” - Alan Heathcock

83. “...it begins with isolation - demons always inhabit desolate places...” - John Geddes

84. “Why should we remain innocent of what lurks in the shadows? How can we live in the world if we don't understand how dark and brutal it can be?” - Penny Matthews

85. “Indifference to me, is the epitome of all evil.” - Elie Wiesel

86. “To light a candle is to cast a shadow...” - Ursula K. Le Guin

87. “Three kinds of people get talked about: The fascinating, the freaks and the nefarious.” - Donna Lynn Hope

88. “It is not real," he whispered. "This place is only a thought that has grabbed hold of you. It cannot harm you. You are not of this place, and it has no power over you. You do not need it, nor do you owe it your allegiance." I nodded, listening only to his words and not to the rattling of the windows, which had begun as soon as we stepped inside.” - Rita Murphy

89. “Kira is evil ... There's no denying that ... But lately I've been starting to think of it more like this ... The real evil is the power to kill people. Someone who finds himself with that power is cursed. No matter how you use it, anything obtained by killing people can never bring true happiness.” - Tsugumi Ohba

90. “Evil spawns mayhem while benevolence repairs; doing good comforts the living while prayers are extended to the one who attends to the dead.” - Donna Lynn Hope

91. “I have no idea how long Quisser was gone from the table. My attention became fully absorbed by the other faces in the club and the deep anxiety they betrayed to me, an anxiety that was not of the natural, existential sort but one that was caused by peculiar concerns of an uncanny nature. What a season is upon us, these faces seemed to say. And no doubt their voices would have spoken directly of certain peculiar concerns had they not been intimidated into weird equivocations and double entendres by the fear of falling victim to the same kind of unnatural affliction that had made so much trouble in the mind of the art critic Stuart Quisser. Who would be next? What could a person say these days, or even think, without feeling the dread of repercussion from powerfully connected groups and individuals? I could almost hear their voices asking, "Why here, why now?" But of course they could have just as easily been asking, "Why not here, why not now?" It would not occur to this crowd that there were no special rules involved; it would not occur to them, even though they were a crowd of imaginative artists, that the whole thing was simply a matter of random, purposeless terror that converged upon a particular place at a particular time for no particular reason. On the other hand, it would also not have occurred to them that they might have wished it all upon themselves, that they might have had a hand in bringing certain powerful forces and connections into our district simply by wishing them to come. They might have wished and wished for an unnatural evil to fall upon them but, for a while at least, nothing happened. Then the wishing stopped, the old wishes were forgotten yet at the same time gathered in strength, distilling themselves into a potent formula (who can say!), until one day the terrible season began. Because had they really told the truth, this artistic crowd might also have expressed what a sense of meaning (although of a negative sort), not to mention the vigorous thrill (although of an excruciating type), this season of unnatural evil had brought to their lives.("Gas Station Carnivals")” - Thomas Ligotti