This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil." - Anna Jameson
"In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil." - Anna Jameson
"No evil man is happy." - Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL
"We deem those happy who, from the experience of life, have learned to bear its ills, without being overcome by them. A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands. But a mother’s love endures through all; in good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world’s condemnation, a mother still loves on and still hopes that her child may turn from his evil ways, and repent; still she remembers the infant smiles that once filled her bosom with rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of his childhood, the opening promise of his youth; and she can never be brought to think him all unworthy." - Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL
"We cannot freely and wisely choose the right way for ourselves unless we know both good and evil." - Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor
"A man can look upon his life and accept it as good or evil; it is far, far harder for him to confess that it has been unimportant in the sum of things." - Murray Kempton, fully James Murray Kempton
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction... The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Our actions are judged good or evil according to our intentions." - Edward Lane
"We may say that we are immune from bondage in so far as we act with a distinct knowledge, but that we are the slaves of passion in so far as our perception are confused... In truth we will only that which pleases us: but unhappily what pleases us now is often a real evil, which would displease us if we had the eyes of understanding open." -
"Who is a righteous man and who is an evil man? Many people think a righteous man is one who does not transgress, and the evil person is one who constantly transgresses. But even the very righteous also transgress and even the very wicked perform good deeds. The essential difference between the two is that a righteous person tries to overcome his desires to do wrong and the evil person does not." - Yeruchem Levovitz, aka The Mashgiach
"Whether happiness or unhappiness, freedom or slavery, in short whether good or evil results from an improved environment depends largely upon how the change has been brought about, upon the methods by which the physical results have been reached, and in what spirit and for what purpose the fruits of that change are used. Because a higher standard of living, a greater productiveness and a command over nature are not good in and of themselves do not mean that we cannot make good of them, that they cannot be a source of inner strength." -
"Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guided." - John Locke
"The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good." - John Locke
"Prejudice is the conjurer of imaginary wrongs, strangling truth, overpowering reason, making strongmen weak and weak men weaker. God give us the large-hearted charity which "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things," which "thinketh no evil."" - John Macduff
"It is the evil that lives in ourselves that is ever least tolerant of the evil that dwells within others." - Maurice Maeterlinck, fully Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck
"An ardent love and admiration of virtue seems to imply the existence of something opposite to it, and it seems highly probably that the same beauty of form and substance, the same perfection of character could not be generated without the impressions of disapprobation which arise from the spectacle of moral evil." - Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
"Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity." - Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
"There is not a vice which more effectually contracts and deadens the feelings, which more completely makes a man’s affections center in himself, and excludes all others from partaking in them, than the desire of accumulating possessions. When the desire has once gotten hold of the heart, it shuts out all other considerations, but such as may promote its views. In its zeal for the attainment of its end, it is not delicate in the choice of means. As it closes the heart, so also it clouds the understanding. It cannot discern between right and wrong; it takes evil for good, and good for evil; it calls darkness light, and light darkness. Beware, then, of the beginning of covetousness, for you know not where it will end." - Richard Mant
"Sorrow is not evil, since it stimulates and purifies." - Guiseppe Mazzini
"Every duty brings its peculiar delight, every denial its appropriate compensation, every thought its recompense, every love its elysium, every cross its crown; pay goes with performance as effect with cause. Meanness overreaches itself; vice vitiates whoever indulges it; the wicked wrong their own souls; generosity greatens; virtue exalts; charity transfigures; and holiness is the essence of angelhood. God does not require us to live on credit; he pays us what we earn as we earn it, good or evil, heaven or hell, according to our choice." - Arundell Charles St. John-Mildmay
"Do good; avoid evil. That is the first step in all religions." - Stephen Mitchell
"Men fear death, as if unquestionably the greatest evil, and yet no man knows that it may not be the greatest good." - William Mitford
"If we have need of a strong will in order to do good, it is more necessary still for us in order not to do evil; from which it often results that the most modest life is that where the force of will is most exercised." - Louis-Mathieu Molé, aka Count Molé , Comte Molé or Mathieu Molé
"The oldest and best known evil is always more tolerable than a new and unexperienced one." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"We can never be despised as much as we deserve. Pity and commiseration are mingled with some esteem for the thing we pity; the things we laugh at we consider worthless. I do not think there is as much unhappiness in us as vanity, nor as much malice as stupidity. We are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are not as wretched as we are worthless." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"The first idea that the child must acquire, in order to be actively disciplined, is that of the difference between good and evil, and the task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility, and evil with activity." - Maria Montessori
"Life is a short day; but it is a working day. Activity may lead to evil, but inactivity cannot lead to good." - Alberto Moravia, Pen name of Alberto Pincherle
"Good has but one enemy, the evil; but the evil has two enemies, the good and itself." - Johanes von Müller
"Life is given for wisdom, and yet we are not wise; for goodness, and we are not good; for overcoming evil, and evil remains; for patience and sympathy and love, and yet we are fretful and hard and weak and selfish. We are keyed not to attainment, but to struggle toward it." - Theodore T. Munger