Nature of evil quotes:

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The true nature of evil is that it is so very casual. -- James St. James
I tell myself I write because I want to say something true and original about the nature of evil. That is very ambitious - to say something about the human condition that hasn't been written before. Probably I will never succeed but that is what I strive to do. -- Jo Nesbo
..to change something you do not understand is the true nature of evil. -- Jeanette Winterson
Whoever originated the cliche that money is the root of all evil knew hardly anything about the nature of evil and very little about human beings. -- Eric Hoffer
The judge should not be young, he should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others. -- Plato
The whole tradition of cinema is dominated, really, by films about good guys versus bad guys, good versus evil. But we have very few films about the nature of evil itself. -- Joshua Oppenheimer
The sick-room becomes the scene of intense convictions; and among these, none, it seems to me, is more distinct and powerful than that of the permanent nature of good, and the transient nature of evil. -- Harriet Martineau
When it comes to judging individuals, I do not like remarks such as 'too good to be true.' They speak as though one is rewarding the nature of evil. Yet, ironically, we still wonder where all the good people have gone. -- Criss Jami
I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I've come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy. -- G. M Gilbert
The nature of evil, the nature of it, it exists. It exists and I think within us we have the tools. If we have the will, we can combat it. I think the power is within us and it lies in our own conceptualization of God and positivity and compassion and love. -- Vera Farmiga
Certainly, it includes that. I want the story to be interpreted in as many ways as possible, and of course, the bad blood aspect of it included. For instance, perhaps this is a story not about the hereditary nature of evil, but rather you could interpret it from a different perspective, too. -- Park Chan-wook
I'm very interested in good and evil and the moral natures of people. -- Antonia Fraser
There surely is in human nature an inherent propensity to extract all the good out of all the evil. -- Benjamin Haydon
God seldom suspends the laws of nature, just as God does not remove free will to keep evil people from doing evil things. -- Adam Hamilton
Man's nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature. -- Mahatma Gandhi
It is a governing principle of nature, that the agency which can produce most good, when perverted from its proper aim, is most productive of evil. -- James F. Cooper
Umpires are necessary evils. That's just the nature of the beast. For years, people have looked on umpiring as a job they could get any postman to do. -- Doug Harvey
The essence of the Hebrew Bible, transmitted by Christianity, is separation: between life and death, nature and God, good and evil, man and woman, and the holy and the profane. -- Dennis Prager
I don't believe in evil, I believe only in horror. In nature there is no evil, only an abundance of horror: the plagues and the blights and the ants and the maggots. -- Isak Dinesen
Nothing in the nature around us is evil. This needs to be repeated since one of the human ways of talking oneself into inhuman acts is to cite the supposed cruelty of nature. -- John Berger
To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less. -- Plato
There is something mean in human nature that prefers to think evil, that gives a willing ear and a ready welcome to calumny, a sort of jealousy of goodness and greatness and things of good report. -- Richard Le Gallienne
I'm all in favor of looking deeply into as much as we possibly can. I'm not afraid of knowledge... With all new technology, weapons inevitably emerge... Evil comes out of the human heart. It doesn't come out of nature. -- Richard Preston
Nature, more of a stepmother than a mother in several ways, has sown a seed of evil in the hearts of mortals, especially in the more thoughtful men, which makes them dissatisfied with their own lot and envious of another's. -- Desiderius Erasmus
The problem of good as it faces the atheist is this: Nature, which is the nuts-and-bolts reality for the atheist, has no values and thus can offer no grounding for good and evil. Values on the atheist view are subjective and contingent. -- William A. Dembski
Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another. -- Joseph Addison
Is human nature basically good or evil? No economist can embark upon his profession without considering this question, and yet they all seem to. And they all seem to think human nature is basically good, or they wouldn't be surprised by the effects of deregulation. -- Jane Smiley
For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocence, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced. -- Francis Bacon
I have an interest in understanding evil. Who is the bad guy - the vampire who kills people and sucks their blood, or the survivalists who kill people to save their own lives? Is evil merely a creation of people? Or is there an evil nature? Or is it in the eye of the beholder? I really like these questions. -- Lois Tilton
This is part of the involuntary bargain we make with the world just by being alive. We get to experiences the splendor of nature, the beauty of art, the balm of love and the sheer joy of existence, always with the knowledge that illness, injury, natural disaster, or pure evil can end it in an instant for ourselves or someone we love. -- Jeff Greenfield
The process of nature cannot be evil. -- Joseph Campbell
Nothing is evil which is according to nature. -- Marcus Aurelius
...What you're calling evil, is part of human nature. -- Nikolas Schreck
Evil men by their own nature cannot ever prosper. -- Euripides
Nature soaks every evil with either fear or shame. -- Tertullian
Power is of its nature evil, whoever wields it. -- Jacob Burckhardt
Man's nature is evil; goodness is the result of conscious activity. -- Xun Zi
An evil nature wielding great authority brings misfortune upon the community. -- Aeschines
Human nature is evil, and goodness is caused by intentional activity. -- Xun Zi
...in the ways of Nature there is no evil to be found. -- Marcus Aurelius
Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil. -- Anatole France
The nature of man is evil; what is good in him is artificial. -- Xun Zi
By the very constitution of our nature moral evil is its own curse. -- Thomas Chalmers
To misunderstand the nature and threat of evil is to risk being blindsided by it. -- Joel C. Rosenberg
I believe in God and in nature and in the triumph of good over evil. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I feel it's in people's nature to want to stop evil and embrace the good. -- Chen Guangcheng
It is also important to understand that a hidden nature is not always an evil nature -- Alison Goodman
When we make mistakes they call it evil. When God makes mistakes they call it Nature! -- Jack Nicholson
Wisdom consists of knowing how to distinguish the nature of trouble, and in choosing the lesser evil. -- Niccolo Machiavelli
Good never come of such evil, a happier end was not in nature to so unhappy a beginning. -- Charles Dickens
Nature and literature are subjective phenomena; every evil and every good thing is a shadow which we cast -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The evil is not that you cannot change human nature. The evil is that human nature cannot change you. -- Barrows Dunham
How do we still believe that human nature is not evil when 60 years old men rape 3 years innocent girls~? -- M.F. Moonzajer
All these words, words like 'evil' and 'vicious', they meant nothing to Nature. Yes, evil was a human invention. -- John Marsden
A misery is not to be measure from the nature of the evil but from the temper of the sufferer. -- Joseph Addison
You want to eliminate your evil desires in order to reveal your Buddha nature, but where will you throw them away? -- Shunryu Suzuki
Every action that helps us manifest our divine nature more and more is good; every action that retards it is evil. -- Swami Vivekananda
Evil things are easy things: for they are natural to our fallen nature. Right things are rare flowers that need cultivation. -- Charles Spurgeon
Insight into universal nature provides an intellectual delight and sense of freedom that no blows of fate and no evil can destroy. -- Alexander von Humboldt
Nature seems to welcome defiance of conventions, and to say, with a smile, 'So, the truant has come back again!' ("Absolute Evil") -- Julian Hawthorne
There are people who believe in the basic goodness of human nature. I believe in the basic evil of human nature. ~ Aarush Kashyap -- Kirtida Gautam
Evil by its very nature opposes the purposes of God, but God, in his sovereignty, can make even this evil serve his purposes. -- David F. Wells
The way to avoid evil is not by maiming our passions, but by compelling them to yield their vigor to our moral nature. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Man is evil, by nature man is a beast. People have to be educated from childhood, from kindergarten, that there should be no hatred. -- Marek Edelman
Only humans think death is evil. But it is nature. Evil exist's only in life. There is much good and evil alloted to each life. -- Isobelle Carmody
Man's nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been know to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of your race. -- Nathaniel Hawthorne
Those who would extirpate evil from the world know little of human nature. As well might punch be palatable without souring as existence agreeable without care. -- James Boswell
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. -- Alexander Pope
Man's want of original righteousness and of holy affections toward God, and the corruption of his moral nature and his bias toward evil is called depravity -- Henry Clarence Thiessen
Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. -- Nathaniel Hawthorne
We know that it is possible to harness desire to many interests, that evil is one form of a desire, and not the nature of it. -- Walter Lippmann
From lower to the higher next, Not to the top, is Nature's text; And embryo Good, to reach full stature, Absorbs the Evil in its nature. -- James Russell Lowell
There is no such thing in man's nature as a settled and full resolve either for good or evil, except at the very moment of execution. -- Nathaniel Hawthorne
Our judgements of good and evil ... presuppose God as the standard. If there's no God, there's neither good nor evil. There's just nature doing what it does -- Peter Kreeft
The evil implanted in man by nature spreads so imperceptibly, when the habit of wrong-doing is unchecked, that he himself can set no limit to his shamelessness. -- Marcus Tullius Cicero
For all good and evil, whether in the body or in human nature, originates ... in the soul, and overflows from thence, as from the head into the eyes. -- Plato
The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit a remedy. -- Adam Smith
The nature of the world is to be calm, and enhance and support life, and evil is an absence of the inclination of matter to be at peace. -- Gregory Maguire
Dissimulation, even the most innocent in its nature, is ever productive of embarrassment; whether the design is evil or not artifice is always dangerous and almost inevitably disgraceful. -- Jean de la Bruyere

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