Good And Evil Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old good and evil quotes, good and evil sayings, and good and evil proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

Inside each of us, there is the seed of both good and evil. It's a constant struggle as to which one will win. And one cannot exist without the other. Eric Burdon
Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is good... Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place. Pope Francis
Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil. Marcus Aurelius
The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I like to see the difference between good and evil as kind of like the foul line at a baseball game. It's very thin, it's made of something very flimsy like lime, and if you cross it, it really starts to blur where fair becomes foul and foul becomes fair. Harlan Coben
There is no good and evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it. J.K. Rowling
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. Edmund Burk
To see evil and call it good, mocks God. Worse, it makes goodness meaningless. A word without meaning is an abomination, for when the word passes beyond understanding the very thing the word stands for passes out of the world and cannot be recalled. Stephen R. Lawhead
Good and Evil are very hard to explain or understand. I'm sure that evil exists, but it is hard to isolate. Good and evil are intertwined and impossible to separate. They are not completely opposites and in fact are often one and the same. Keith Haring
Men who believe in good and evil, and who believe that good should win, should watch for those moments when it is possible to play God John Irving
People aren't evil and people aren't good. They live how they can one day at a time. They come out of dust they go back to dust, dusty feet, no wings, and whose fault is that? Caryl Churchill
In many cases, it is very hard to fix the bounds of Good and Evil, because these part, as Day and Night, which are separated by Twilight. Benjamin Whichcote
There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult. Anne Rice
Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil. Anatole France
Let no man be sorry he has done good, because others have done evil. Henry Fielding
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. St. Paul
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. Plato
In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. Ayn Rand
He who chases monsters must see that he not become a monster himself. Rafael Perez
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke
Goodness is the only investment which never fails. Henry David Thoreau
The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance. Socrates
The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together. William Shakespeare
Them meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor. Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good. Mahatma Gandhi
What would our world be like if we ceased to worry about 'right' and 'wrong,' or 'good' and 'evil,' and simply acted so as to maximize well-being, our own and that of others? Would we lose anything important? Sam Harris
For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity. Joyce Cary
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 really difficult moral issues arise, not from a confrontation of good and evil, but from a collision between two goods Irving Kristol
Willing or preferring is the same with respect to good and evil, that judging is with respect to truth or falsehood. Samuel Butler
All good ends can be worked out by good means. Those that cannot, are bad; and may be counted so at once, and left alone. Charles Dickens
She was beginning to understand that evil is not absolute, and that good is often an occasion more than a condition. Gilbert Parker
Are there, infinitely varying with each individual, inbred forces of Good and Evil in all of us, deep down below the reach of mortal encouragement and mortal repression -- hidden Good and hidden Evil, both alike at the mercy of the liberating opportunity and the sufficient temptation? Wilkie Collins
A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. Joseph Conrad
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means. Oscar Wilde
Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can. John Wesley
I see the triumph of good over evil as a manifestation of the error-correcting process of evolution. Jonas Salk
Evil spreads with the wind; truth is capable of speading even against it. Paramahansa Yogananda
Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable. Gilbert Keith Chesterton
War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children. Jimmy Carter
There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it. Buddha
To know the difference between good and evil, you need to have been through good and evil, therefor be good and evil. Magdalena Leska
For every life and every act consequence of good and evil can be shown and as in time results of many deeds are blended so good and evil in the end become confounded. T.S. Eliot
Life is neither a good nor an evil: it is a field for good and evil Seneca
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil. Hannah Arendt
Remember only the good, the bad will never forget you. Doug Horton
To rid ourselves of our shadows -- who we are -- we must step into either total light or total darkness. Goodness and evil. Jeremy P. Johnson
The Supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things -- the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit. Samuel Johnson
Good and evil appear to be joined in every culture at the spine. Flannery O'Connor
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. Socrates
What is done out of love always occurs beyond good and evil. Friedrich Nietzsche
When you feel you cannot do good, at least desist from doing evil. Sai Baba
The tree of Knowledge is a Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. Henry David Thoreau
All governments are in equal measure good and evil. The best ideal is anarchy. Leo Tolstoy
I could not understand why men who knew all about good and evil could hate and kill each other. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph. Margaret Thatcher
Good and evil, right and wrong were invented for the ordinary average man, the inferior man, because he needs them. John Dall
If your religion doesn't teach you the difference between good and evil, your religion is worse than useless. Dennis Prager
Everyone has the power of choosing good and evil. Origen
A good End cannot sanctify evil Means, nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it. William Penn
Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to choose between the two. John Cheever
The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil. Cicero
Life's neither a good nor an evil, it's a field for good and evil. Seneca The Younger
If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil. Benedict de Spinoza
The most painful moral struggles are not those between good and evil, but between the good and the lesser good. Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. Eric Hoffer
It was from out the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. John Milton
We are what we are. Nothing more, nothing less. There is good and evil among every kind of people. It's the evil among us who rule now. Anne Bishop
You can't be afraid to do good in case evil results. Nadine Gordimer
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant. Martin Luther King
No man chooses evil because it's evil. He only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. Mary Wollstonecraft
Good people know about both good and evil. Bad people do not know about either. C. S. Lewis
God didn't give Adam and Eve the right to decide what was good and evil. He gave them the right to choose between good and evil. Mark Hart
The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it. Albert Einstein
There is an old illusion, which is called good and evil. Friedrich Nietzsche
To reject this inhuman Communist ideology is simply to be a human being. Such a rejection is more than a political act. It is a protest of our souls against those who would have us forget the concepts of good and evil. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Good and evil exist only in terms of the happiness or suffering they create in ourselves or in other people. Matthieu Ricard
I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary, the evil it does is permanent. Mahatma Gandhi
Good and evil both increase at compound interest. C. S. Lewis
The battle between good and evil is endlessly fascinating because we are participants every day. Stephen King
Good and evil thoughts are each a potent power, and they fill the universe. Swami Vivekananda
Good and evil are polar concepts, one can't exist without the other. Bruno Dumont
I think that one of the compelling themes of fiction is this confrontation between good and evil. William Styron
All names of good and evil are images, they do not speak out, they only hint. He is a fool who seeks knowledge from them. Friedrich Nietzsche
If there is no God, the labels good and evil are merely opinions. They are substitutes for I like it and I don't like it. They are not objective realities. Dennis Prager
Everything good is the transmutation of something evil, every god has a devil for a father. Friedrich Nietzsche
A good thing which prevents us from enjoying a greater good is in truth an evil. Baruch Spinoza
Let us keep courage and try to be patient and gentle. And let us not mind being eccentric, and make distinction between good and evil. Vincent Van Gogh