This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Evil is wrought by want of thought as well as by want of heart." - Edwin Paxton Hood
"The will does not choose between good and evil; it is its choice, rather, that makes it good or evil. The act of choosing either liberates it, as good will, or enchains it as ill will. In neither case is there a choice between two possibilities; my will is its own original freedom or anti-freedom." - Karl Jaspers, fully Karl Theodor Jaspers
"Intelligence is derived from two words - inter and legere - inter meaning "between" and legere meaning "to choose." An intelligent person, therefore, is one who has learned "to choose between." He knows that good is better than evil, that confidence should supersede fear, that love is superior to hate, that gentleness is better than cruelty, forbearance than intolerance, compassion than arrogance and that truth has more virtue than ignorance." - J. Martin Klotsche
"It is our right to hate an evil man for his actions, but because his deepest self is the image of God, it is our duty to honor him with love." - Abraham Isaac Kook
"Evil news flies faster still than good." - Thomas Kyd
"The Evil Will is more powerful when wrapped in the prayer-shawl of piety." - Salmon Oliver Levinson
"Joy is a delight of the mind, from the consideration of the present or assured approaching possession of a good; and we are then possessed of any good, when we have it so in our power that we can use it when we please... Sorrow is uneasiness in the mind, upon the thought of a good lost, which might have been enjoyed longer; or the sense of a present evil." - John Locke
"I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind-that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking. I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"Don't be forecasting evil unless it is what you can guard against. Anxiety is good for nothing if we can't turn it into a defense." - Samuel Meyrick, fully Sir Samuel Rush Meyrick
"It is uncertain where death awaits us; let us await it everywhere. Premeditation of death is premeditation of freedom. He who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. Knowing how to die frees us from all subjection and constraint. There is nothing evil in life for the man who has thoroughly grasped the fact that to be deprived of life is not an evil." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"In every evil thought there is a spark of divinity, which has sunk to a very low degree, and begs to be elevated." - Joseph Opatoshu
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. " - Thomas Paine
"It is vain to trust in wrong; as much of evil, so much of loss, is the formula of human history." - Joseph Parker
"If thou wouldst conquer thy weakness, thou must never gratify it. No man is compelled to evil; his consent only makes it his. It is no sin to be tempted, but to be overcome." - William Penn
"All nature is but art, unknown to thee; all chance, direction, which thou canst not see; all discord harmony, not understood; all partial evil, universal good: and, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite, one truth is clear, “Whatever is, is Right.”" - Alexander Pope
"Begin the education of the heart, not with the cultivation of noble propensities, but with the cutting away of those that are evil. When once the noxious herbs are withered and rooted out, then the more noble plants, strong in themselves, will shoot upwards. The virtuous heart, like the body, become strong and healthy more by labor than nourishment." -
"Selfishness, if but reasonably tempered with wisdom, is not such an evil trait." - Giovani Ruffini
"There is no evil in the world without a remedy." - Sannazaro, fully Jacopo Sannazaro NULL
"A writer lives, at best, in a state of astonishment. Beneath any feeling he has of the good or evil of the world lies a deeper one of wonder at it all. To transmit that feeling, he writes." - William Sansom
"There must be some supreme, universal design. Each of us comes to life and stays in the world for predestined period. Some leave forever, sometimes without a trace; others stay for a long time, both in life and in memory. We remain longest - we make a difference - when we manage to act not for ourselves but for others. It is possible to create good and evil. The greatest and most important thing a person can do is to understand that where good exists, evil also resides; what’s more, one must strive to stay on the side of righteousness, doing one’s best to promote good in the world. Only you can make this choice. You alone will be held responsible - by other people, by your progeny and by history." - Eduard Shevardnadze
"One of the principal ingredients in the happiness of childhood is freedom from suspicion - why may it not be combined with a more extensive intercourse with mankind? A disposition to dwell on the bright side of character is like gold to its possessor; but to imagine more evil than meets the eye, betrays affinity for it." - Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley
"The life of any one can by no means be changed after death; an evil life can in no wise be converted into a good life, or an infernal into an angelic life; because every spirit, from head to foot, is of the character of love, and, therefore, of his life; and to convert this life into its opposite would be to destroy the spirit utterly." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
"War mends but few, and spoils multitudes; it legitimates rapine and authorizes murder; and these crimes must be ministered to by their lesser relatives, by covetousness and anger and pride and revenge, and heats of blood, and wilder liberty, and all the evil that can be supposed to come from or run to such cursed causes of mischief." - Jeremy Taylor
"Man counts happiness in a thousand shapes; and the faster he follows it the swifter it flies from him. Almost every thing promiseth happiness to us at a distance, but when we come nearer, either we fall short of it, or it falls short of our expectation; and it is hard to say which of there is the greatest disappointment. Our hopes are usually bigger than the enjoyment can satisfy; and an evil long feared, besides that it may never come, is many times more painful and troublesome than the evil itself when it comes." -
"I cannot be certain not to meet with evil company, but I will be careful not to keep with evil company. I would willingly sort myself with such as should either teach or learn goodness; and if my companion cannot make me better, nor I him good, I will rather leave him ill than he shall make me worse." - Arthur Warwick
"The criminal law is not founded on the principle of vengeance; it uses evil only as a means of preventing greater evil." - Daniel Webster
"Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is Good steadily hastening towards immortality. And the vast all that is call'd Evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"For as a picture is often more beautiful and worthy of commendation if some colors in themselves are included in it, than it would be if it were uniform and of a single color, so from an admixture of evil the universe is rendered more beautiful and worthy of commendation." - Peter Abelard, Latin: Petrus Abaelardus or Abailard; French: Pierre Abélard
"Conceal your good deeds as you conceal your evil deeds." - Rābiʻa al-ʻAdawiyya al-Qaysiyya, aka Rabi'a of Basra or Basri, Saint Rabia of Basra
"Nothing can be evil on the part of God. For a thing is evil on our part only because we transgress the limit and bound set for us and do what we have no right to do. But the creator is subject to no one and bound by no command." - Abū al-Hasan Alī ibn Ismā'īl al-Ash'arī
"Every prudent man tolerates a lesser evil for fear of preventing a greater good." - Saint Thomas Aquinas, aka Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis or Doctor Universalis
"Anger is the foundation of every evil." - Muhammad Hussan Askari
"The good may prove to be a hidden form of evil. The evil may prove to be a new and not yet recognized form of good." - Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
"The world is full of wickedness and misery precisely because it is based on freedom – yet that freedom constitutes the whole dignity of man and of his world. Doubtless at the price of its repudiation evil and suffering could be abolished, and the world forced to be “good” and “happy”; but man would have lost his likeness to God, which primarily resides in his freedom." - Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
"How we view life is ultimately that which gives us meaning, value and purpose… Our worldview determines how we solve these problems: What are we? Where did we come from? What does it mean to be human? What is truth? What is the meaning and purpose of life? Why is there so much evil in the world? How should we live? What happens when we die? Does it matter?" - Joe Boot