Does Evil Exist Quotes & Sayings

Sly and reckless, compulsive and bold. The goat-god, with hoof and smile and hairy ears, satyr at the helm of the Play Pen. Love him, understand him, forgive him, lead him shyly to Freud, or Jesus. Or else take the contemporarily untenable position that evil, undiluted by any hint of childhood trauma, does exist in the world, exists for its own precise sake, the pustular bequest from the beast, as inexplicable as Belsen. — John D. MacDonald

And what constitutes evil, real evil, is the taking of a single human life. Whether a man would die tomorrow or the day after or eventually ... it doesn't matter. Because if God does not exist, then life ... every second of it ... Is all we have. — Anne Rice

Why does IPCA use them if they're evil?" he asked, confused.
"They aren't evil. They aren't even really immoral, per se. They're amoral. They don't operate on the same level that we do. For a faerie, the only thing that matters is what they want. That's their good. Anything else is superfluous. So like how they kidnap people, not a big deal - they want the person, they take him. Or killing someone. If you live forever, how much does one mortal life matter in the scheme of things? When you exist outside time, cutting off the forty years a person has left is a non-issue. They don't even notice. — Kiersten White

Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them? — Henry David Thoreau

You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present. — Hermann Hesse

There is something very peculiar about this form of atheism: It tries to constantly remind us of God while maintaining He does not exist! How can you hate something that is not there? Why would you persistently prove to people the non-existence of a being really not there? — Gerard Verschuuren

In the Negro world, as in the white world, Negroes who have money band together and try to ignore the existence of their unluckier brothers. That is the way the love of money works. But neither money, nor the love of it, is the root of all evil. The importance of money is simply that power in the world does not exist without it and power in the world is what almost everyone would like to have. — James Baldwin

To accept what is bitter; acceptance must not be allowed to project itself on to the bitterness and lessen it; otherwise the force and purity of the acceptance are proportionally lessened. For the object of the acceptance is to taste what is bitter, as such, and not anything else. (St. Thomas on the suffering of Christ.) - To say like Ivan Karamazov: nothing can possibly make up for a single tear from a single child. And yet to accept all tears, and the countless horrors which lie beyond tears. To accept these things not simply in so far as they may admit of compensations, but in themselves. To accept that they should exist, simply because they do exist.
To accept that event because it exists, and by this acceptance to love God through and beyond it. To accept that it should exist, because it does exist, what exactly does this mean? Is it not simply to recognize that it is?
When one loves God through and beyond evil as such, it is indeed God whom one loves. — Simone Weil

If God can do anything, then He surely can even allow evil and call it good. Why does He have to explain it? Surely, if omnipotence means all-powerful without even logical or rational limitation, He can allow evil to exist and not see any incoherence in it. And if God can do anything He pleases why can't He simply be incoherent as well? That may be irrational to the skeptic, but does not limitless power also mean the power to be irrational without justification? — Ravi Zacharias

Nowhere in this universe does evil exist except in the mind of mankind. only man can take an idea or symbol which is so simple and innocent, and then twist it and corrupt it until it is something to hate or kill one another over. — Andrew James Pritchard

Good does not exist without the evil and right does not hold weight without knowing the wrong. — Stephanie Hudson

As a Freudian, I'm not supposed to use words like evil; my business is with instinct, memory, and desire. Nevertheless, I've been wondering, lately, whether evil might exist. If it does, I've been thinking, it might be like what Freud called the navel of the dream, the place where all the lines of meaning the analyst has so carefully traced through the patient's life vanish into the unknown. But where the navel of the dream is essentially harmless phenomenon, a point where the dream's meaning is sufficiently understood, and further interpretation would be pointless, evil is a mystery with power. It reaches up into the world and makes everything mysterious. — Paul La Farge

In my opinion the main evil of the present democratic institutions of the United States does not arise, as is often asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their overpowering strength; and I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country as at the very inadequate securities which exist against tyranny. — Alexis De Tocqueville

No sane person wants hell to exist. No sane person wants evil to exist. But hell is just evil eternalized. If there is evil and if there is eternity, there can be hell. If it is intellectually dishonest to disbelieve in evil just because it is shocking and uncomfortable, it is the same with hell. Reality has hard corners, surprises, and terrible dangers in it. We desperately need a true road map, not nice feelings, if we are to get home. It is true, as people often say, that "hell just feels unreal, impossible." Yes. So does Auschwitz. So does Calvary. — Peter Kreeft

I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake, evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have stopped Hitler's armies. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism - it is a recognition of history, the imperfections of man and the limits of reason. — Mark Bowden

God is all-powerful. God is perfectly good. Evil exists. If God exists, there would be no evil. Therefore God does not exist. — Epicurus

If God does not exist and there is no immortality, then all the evil acts of men go unpunished and all the sacrifices of good men go unrewarded. But who can live with such a view? Richard Wurmbrand, who has been tortured for his faith in communist prisons, says,
The cruelty of atheism is hard to believe when man has no faith in the reward of good or the punishment of evil. There is no reason to be human. There is no restraint from the depths of evil which is in man. The communist torturers often said, 'There is no God, no Hereafter, no punishment for evil. We can do what we wish.' I have heard one torturer even say, 'I thank God, in whom I don't believe, that I have lived to this hour when I can express all the evil in my heart.' He expressed it in unbelievable brutality and torture inflicted on prisoners. — William Lane Craig

The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing. — Aleister Crowley

Abstractions do us much harm by impelling us to the quest of the absolute in all things. Joy does not exist, but there are joys: and these joys may not be folly felt unless they are detached from neutral or even painful conditions. The idea of continuity is almost self-negating. Nature makes no leaps; but life makes only bounds. It is measured by our heartbeats & these may be counted. That there should be, amid the number of deep pulsations that scan the line of our existence, some grievous ones, does not permit the affirmation that life is therefore evil. Moreover, neither a continuous joy would be perceived by consciousness. — Remy De Gourmont

Tayla cursed under her breath. "I was just explaining to Eidolon that Sin is a Smurfette."
Wraith swung his big body around to study Sin with blue eyes that were very different from Shade's, E's. and Lore's. Sin's, too. "Nah. Smurfette is way hotter."
"What the fuck is a Smurfette?" Eidolon was seriously getting annoyed now.
"There's this cartoon called The Smurfs," Tayla explained, slowly, as though Eidolon were the child here.
"They're these little blue people, and they're all male. But one day a female shows up. She shouldn't exist, but she does."
Eidolon considered that for a second. "How did she get there?"
"An evil wizard named Gargamel made her," Tayla said. "In a lab or something."
"So you're suggesting that an evil wizard made Sin?"
"Of course not, silly. I'm just saying she's a Smurfette. A lone female amongst males."
Eidolon frowned. "Did the Smurfette mate with the males?"
"Dude." Wraith grimaced. "It's a cartoon. — Larissa Ione

If goodness does exist, then I'm the opposite of it. I'm evil, and I revel in it — Anne Rice

For many reasons, Dear," Delia said in a soothing voice. "We are tired of running , tired of traveling. It is time for us to be together in a world where your kind of evil does not exist." Lucan growled at her, but she continued, "And I could not let my daughter or my son feel responsible for the lives you planned to take today. They are good and strong, and they will rule this kingdom after they destroy you. They will restore our immortality; they will bring peace and life again. You may take my life today, I will grant you this, but soon, very soon they will take yours and my sacrifice will be for the greater good of my people. — Rachel Higginson

The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are able and willing.
If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can but will not, then they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing, they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent.
Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, why does it exist? — Epicurus

No society can exist if respect for the law does not to some extent prevail; but the surest way to have the laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality are in contradiction, the citizen finds himself in the cruel dilemma of either losing his moral sense or of losing respect for the law, two evils of which one is as great as the other, and between which it is difficult to choose. — Frederic Bastiat

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. — Saint Augustine

By the way, leafing through my dictionary I am struck by the poverty of language when it comes to naming or describing badness. Evil, wickedness, mischief, these words imply an agency, the conscious or at least active doing of wrong. They do not signify the bad in its inert, neutral, self-sustaining state. Then there are the adjectives: dreadful, heinous, execrable, vile, and so on. They are not so much as descriptive as judgmental. They carry a weight of censure mingled with fear. Is this not a queer state of affairs? It makes me wonder. I ask myself if perhaps the thing itself - badness - does not exist at all, if these strangely vague and imprecise words are only a kind of ruse, a kind of elaborate cover for the fact that nothing is there. Or perhaps words are an attempt to make it be there? Or, again, perhaps there is something, but the words invented it. Such considerations make me feel dizzy, as if a hole had opened briefly in the world. — John Banville

They say there is no light without dark, no good without evil, no male without female, no right without wrong. That nothing can exist if it's direct opposite does not also exist. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Ask yourself what it is that a code of moral values does to a man's life, and why he can't exist without it, and what happens to him if he accepts the wrong standard, by which the evil is the good. — Ayn Rand

The Gods being good and making all things, there is no positive evil, it only comes by absence of good; just as darkness itself does not exist, but only comes about by absence of light. — Sallust

One may say that evil does not exist for subjective man at all, that there exist only different conceptions of good. Nobody ever does anything deliberately in the interests of evil, for the sake of evil. Everybody acts in the interests of good, as he understands it. But everybody understands it in a different way. Consequently men drown, slay, and kill one another in the interests of good. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Years later, I learned an English word for the creature that Assef was, a word for which a good Farsi equivalent does not exist: sociopath. — Khaled Hosseini

Evil does not exist in guerrilla warfare but only in the unorganized and undisciplined activities that are anarchism, — Mao Zedong

It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word "God" means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist. — Thomas Aquinas

I look into the mirror for evil that just does not exist. — Sara Quin

God doesn't give us a nice tidy answer on why suffering and evil exist, but he does blatantly and explicitly show us what the reason isn't. Knowing what Jesus did on the cross, his love is too potent and too obvious for us to say he must not care. A God who hates suffering and evil just as much as we do was willing to subject himself to it in order to reconcile us to him. He got involved in our mess. He got involved in our hurt. He got involved in our pain. — Jefferson Bethke

I want to take away your sunshine, Lukas. Not because I'm evil but because the sun can't exist without shadows. I want to examine the lie that keeps you afloat
the idea that it's wonderful to be Lukas, that it's splendid to be the tsar's favorite dwarf, that there's nothing better to do than bring crackers to Menshikov like some kind of dog. When does it hurt the most, Lukas? That's what I'd like to know. What hurts you more than anything else? Is it when the tsar mocks you? Or is it when he can't remember your name? Is it when he forgets all about your for a year or two? When are you going to curse Peter Alexeyevich to Hell, Lukas? That's what I'd like to know. I want to get behind that smile of yours, and your clown's heart. And then I'll console you when you fall apart
I'll console you when you realize that you are infinitely unloved.
At that moment I'll be at your side, but no before.
Not a moment before. — Peter H. Fogtdal

Evil is the most difficult problem in the world. It is also the strongest objection to God's existence. If God does exist, it is also the most problematic challenge to his nature and power. As a Christian, it is my greatest temptation for doubt and unbelief. — Jon Morrison

Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith, or love that exist just as does light and heat. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light. — Albert Einstein

Evil does not exist; once you have crossed the threshold, all is good. Once in another world, you must hold your tongue. — Franz Kafka

Peace is not just about the absence of conflict; it's also about the presence of justice. Martin Luther King Jr. even distinguished between "the devil's peace" and God's true peace. A counterfeit peace exists when people are pacified or distracted or so beat up and tired of fighting that all seems calm. But true peace does not exist until there is justice, restoration, forgiveness. Peacemaking doesn't mean passivity. It is the act of interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice, the act of disarming evil without destroying the evildoer, the act of finding a third way that is neither fight nor flight but the careful, arduous pursuit of reconciliation and justice. It is about a revolution of love that is big enough to set both the oppressed and the oppressors free. — Shane Claiborne

Why the delay? Why does God let evil and pain so flagrantly exist, even thrive, on this planet? ... He holds back for our sakes. Re-creation involves us; we are, in fact, at the center of his plan ... the motive behind all human history, is to develop us, not God. Our very existence announces to the powers in the universe that restoration is under way. Every act of faith by every one of the people of God is like the tolling of a bell, and a faith like Job's reverberates throughout the universe. — Philip Yancey

Natural good is' so intimately connected with moral good, and natural evil with moral evil, that I am as certain as if I heard a voice from heaven proclaim it, that God is on the side of virtue. He has learnt much, and has not lived in vain, who has practically discovered that most strict and necessary connection, that does and will ever exist between vice and misery, and virtue and happiness. — Charles Caleb Colton