EVIL
The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.
The Bible, Genesis 6:5
Do not fret because of evil men or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away.
The Bible, Psalm 37:1, 2
If a man pays back evil for good, evil will never leave his house.
The Bible, Proverbs 17:13
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil.
The Bible, Isaiah 5:20 kjv
Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
The Bible, John 16:33 kjv
Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.
The Bible, Romans 12:9
Avoid every kind of evil.
The Bible, 1 Thessalonians 5:22
Let no man be called good who mixes good with evil.
Author unknown
For, were it not good that evil things should also exist, the omnipotent God would almost certainly not allow evil to be, since beyond doubt it is just as easy for Him not to allow what He does not will, as for Him to do what He will.
Augustine of Hippo
God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.
Augustine of Hippo
Sin is not confined to the evil things we do. It is the evil within us, the evil which we are.
Karl Barth
The truth of Christ’s supremacy over all the powers in the universe is one which modern man sorely needs to learn … To be united to Christ by faith is to throw off the thraldom of hostile powers, to enjoy perfect freedom, to gain the mastery over the dominion of evil – because Christ’s victory is ours.
F.F. Bruce
Let a man avoid evil deeds as a man who loves life avoids poison.
Buddha
One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.
Edmund Burke
If you cannot hate evil, you cannot love good.
Struthers Burt
There is no permanent place in [this universe] for evil … Evil may hide behind this fallacy and that, but it will be hunted from fallacy to fallacy until there is no more fallacy for it to hide behind.
Thomas Carlyle
God is the author of the author of sin, but he cannot be the author of sin itself, for sin is the result of a rebellion against God. Can God rebel against himself?
E.J. Carnell
The cross of Christ is God’s final answer to the problem of evil because the problem of evil is in the cross itself.
E.J. Carnell
Only if man can do evil is there any meaning to doing good.
Cherbonnier
It is hard for the good to suspect evil as it is hard for the bad to suspect good.
Cicero
They do more harm by their evil example than by their actual sin.
Cicero
We cannot do evil to others without doing it to ourselves.
Joseph Francois Eduard Desmahis
My child, flee from every evil and everything that resembleth it.
Didache
It is a Christian conviction that evil is permitted by a sovereign God in some way that is ultimately compatible with his goodness.
William Dyrness
Evil is but an illusion, and it has no real basis. Evil is a false belief.
Mary Baker Eddy
The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is not a problem of physics but of ethics. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil from the spirit of man.
Albert Einstein
Against the dark background of man’s failure and sin, the cross shows us the measure of God’s passion against evil and the measure of God’s passion to redeem his sinful children.
W.H.T. Gairdner
Darkness is not nothing; it is the absence of light. Likewise, sickness is the absence of health, and death is the absence of life which belongs to a being. All these are real lacks. Similarly, evil is just as real, although it has no more being of its own than does darkness or sickness.
Norman L. Geisler
While we do not believe that personal freedom is the ultimate explanation of the origin of evil, we do believe that freedom was the means by which sin did come into the world.
John Gerstner
Man does not rule over evil except when he refuses to do it. When he has truly done evil, he is its servant.
Hildegard of Bingen
Today, I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.
Adolf Hitler
If our hearing were sufficiently acute to catch every note of pain, we would be deafened by one continuous scream.
Thomas Huxley
To me, at any rate, the view of evil implied by Marxism, expressed by Shaw and maintained by modern psychotherapy, a view which regards evil as the by-product of circumstances which circumstances can, therefore, alter and even eliminate, has come to seem intolerably shallow.
C.E.M. Joad
No man ever became extremely wicked all at once.
Juvenal
We believe no evil till the evil’s done.
La Fontaine
Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.
Francis, Duc de La Rochefoucauld
Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled.
C.S. Lewis
Evil is a parasite, not an original thing.
C.S. Lewis
It is men, not God, who have produced racks, whips, prisons, slavery, guns, bayonets, and bombs; it is by human avarice or human stupidity, not by the churlishness of nature, that we have poverty and overwork.
C.S. Lewis
The descent to hell is easy, and those who begin by worshiping power soon worship evil.
C.S. Lewis
The teaching of the New Testament is that the whole time the world has been “lying in the wicked one.”
M. Lloyd-Jones
Evil is only good perverted.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Why is it any easier to account for goodness without God than it is to account for evil with him? That the problem of evil generates more fury than the problem of goodness may be more a matter of psychology than philosophy.
Ed. L. Miller
To create only those who “must” (in any sense) choose good is to create automata; and to whisk away evil effects as they are produced is to whisk away evil itself, for an act and its consequences are bound together.
John W. Montgomery
Good had but one enemy, the evil; but the evil has two enemies, the good and itself.
Johannes von Muller
Many have puzzled themselves about the origin of evil. I am content to observe that there is evil, and that there is a way to escape from it, and with this I begin and end.
John Newton
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he doesn’t become a monster.
Frederick Nietzsche
A wayfarer takes shelter under a rock which, loosened by rain, comes tumbling down, killing him. That is natural evil. A wayfarer takes shelter in a little hut, but a wicked robber stabs him to death. That is moral evil.
J. Edwin Orr
Why suppose that if God does have a good reason for permitting evil, the theist would be the first to know? Perhaps God has a good reason, but that reason is too complicated for us to understand.
Alvin Plantinga
Two wrongs do not make a right.
English proverb
Every evil comes to us on wings and goes away limping.
French proverb
Avoid the evil, and it will avoid thee.
Gaelic proverb
One does evil enough when one does nothing good.
German proverb
No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.
Theodore Roosevelt
Evil often triumphs, but never conquers.
Joseph Roux
It is in our hearts that evil lies, and it is from our hearts that it must be plucked out.
Bertrand Russell
He [Christ] did not stop the crucifixion; He rose from the dead.
Dorothy Sayers
There is no evil that does not promise inducements. Avarice promises money; luxury, a varied assortment of pleasures; ambition, a purple robe and applause. Vices tempt you by the rewards theyoffer.
Seneca
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Of two evils choose neither.
C.H. Spurgeon
Often in this present world, the most wicked men are the most prosperous, while the most holy are the most afflicted.
C.H. Spurgeon
Every renewed heart is anxious to be free from even a speck of evil.
C.H. Spurgeon
There is no evil in the atom – only in men’s souls.
Adlai Stevenson
The blessed person is not him who simply declines the evil, but he who does what is good.
Symeon the New Theologian
Never do evil for anything in the world, or for the love of any man.
Thomas à Kempis
The Christian has abundant reason to believe in God in the full theistic sense. If, then, he runs into some difficulty, even a difficulty as great as the problem of evil, he does not, for that reason, give up his faith. The reasons for his faith are so great that they can weather a few storms.
David Elton Trueblood
If all evil, whether moral, natural or intellectual, is truly illusory, we are foolish indeed to fight it; it would be far preferable to forget it.
David Elton Trueblood
He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.
Leonardo da Vinci
There is more evil in a drop of sin, than in a sea of affliction.
Thomas Watson
All the miseries and evils which men suffer from – vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.
Noah Webster
At the heart of the story stands the cross of Christ where evil did its worst and met its match.
John W. Wenham
When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I’ve never tried before.
Mae West
Evil indulged in eventually becomes evil that controls us.
John White