Good Quotes

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years.

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good--and we all know how rare that is...

~ Jasper Fforde

Why are we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that.

~ Neil Gaiman

He didn't have a single clue what was going on with these two strangers, but every instinct told him Master George equaled good, Mistress Jane equaled bald- he blinked-uh, bad.

~ James Dashner

Most people are good and occasionally do something they know is bad. Some people are bad and struggle every day to keep it under control. Others are corrupt to the core and don’t give a damn, as long as they don’t get caught. But evil is a completely different creature, Mac. Evil is bad that believes it’s good.

~ Karen Marie Moning

Governments will rise, and governments will fall, and man will do evil to man, and all we can do is turn our hearts to good.

~ Margaret Peterson Haddix

A perfectly evil Devil makes even less sense than a perfect God.

~ Anne Rice

No matter how hard Evil tries, it can never quite match up to the power of Good, because Evil is ultimately self-destructive. Evil may set out to corrupt others, but in the process corrupts itself.

~ John Connolly

I find it most remarkable that we who are so intimately involved in the battle between good and evil are even more involved with the shades of gray in between them.

~ Christopher Golden

Is there worse evil than that which goes in the mask of good?

~ Lloyd Alexander

If there was such evil in the world, was it possible that there was good, too?

~ Patricia Briggs

I have a deep-down belief that there are folks in the world who are good through and through, and others who came in mean and will go out mean. It's like coffee. Once it's roasted, it all looks brown. Until you pour hot water on it and see what comes out. Folks get into hot water, you see what comes out.

~ Nancy E. Turner

Evil people rely on the acquiescence of naive good people to allow them to continue with their evil.

~ Stuart Aken

Evil forges a tornado.But goodness battles in a straight line.

~ Caris Roane

There's a Good Book about goodness and how to be good and so forth, but there's no Evil Book about how to be evil and how to be bad. The Devil had no prophets to write his Ten Commandments, and no team of authors to write his biography. His case has gone completely by default. We know nothing about him but a lot of fairy stories from our parents and schoolmasters. He has no book from which we can learn the nature of evil in all its forms, with parables about evil people, proverbs about evil people, folklore about evil people. All we have is the living example of people who are least good, or our own intuition.

~ Ian Fleming

There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints. Victorious historians rule where good or evil lies.

~ Glen Cook

At that moment I remembered something Cal had told me: that there is beauty in darkness in everything. Sorrow in joy, life and death, thorns on the rose. I knew then that I could not escape pain and torment any more than I could give up joy and beauty

~ Cate Tiernan

Was aus Liebe getan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von Gut und Böse. (What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.)

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

It's the fools that make all the trouble in the world, not the wicked.

~ L.m. Montgomery

A rock is harder than a feather, you can talk and jabber and make exceptions, but in the end, if you have to choose which one is gonna hit you on the head, you'll choose the feather every single time.

~ Andrew Klavan

Well, evil to some is always good to others.

~ Jane Austen

It isn't hard to find evil in this world. Evil is always more easily imagined than good, somehow.

~ Gregory Maguire

I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught - in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too - in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. there is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?

~ John Steinbeck

If she knew me as I really am she would despise me, and certainly not aid or abet my evil designs. To veil their vices from the sight of the good is the only resource of those who are not blind and know themselves to be vicious.' Thus was I confirmed in habits of hypocrisy; and these, for a time, worked only too effectually to my advantage.

~ William Beckford

Poor Hayduke: won all his arguments but lost his immortal soul.

~ Edward Abbey

The deceitfulness of the heart of man appears in no one thing so much as this of spiritual pride and self-righteousness. The subtlety of Satan appears in its height, in his managing persons with respect to this sin. And perhaps one reason may be that here he has most experience; he knows the way of its coming in; he is acquainted with the secret springs of it: it was his own sin. Experience gives vast advantage in leading souls, either in good or evil.

~ Jonathan Edwards

How shall a man judge what to do in such times?''As he ever has judged,' said Aragorn. 'Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear...It is a man's part to discern them, as much in th Golden Wood as in his own house.

~ J.r.r. Tolkien

Why is it that any time we speak of temptation we always speak of temptation as something that inclines us to wrong. We have more temptations to become good than we do to become bad.

~ Fulton J. Sheen

The seeds of salvation are buried in every act of evil.

~ Shūsaku Endō

Without knowing it, Javert in his awful happiness was deserving of pity, like every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could have been more poignant or more heartrending than that countenance on which was inscribed all the evil in what is good.

~ Victor Hugo

Throughout the world what remains of the vast public spaces are now only the stuff of legends: Robin Hood’s forest, the Great Plains of the Amerindians, the steppes of the nomadic tribes, and so forth… Rousseau said that the first person who wanted a piece of nature as his or her own exclusive possession and transformed it into the transcendent form of private property was the one who invented evil. Good, on the contrary, is what is common.

~ Antonio Negri

By definition, a human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good and evil. If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange - meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State. It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil. The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities. This is what the television news is all about. Unfortunately there is so much original sin in us all that we find evil rather attractive. To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create.

~ Anthony Burgess

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

The problem with evil people is that they can see only evil in others. It is one of the worst curses of being evil, that you can no longer experience good.

~ Michael Gruber

We've heard them all talk about Dust, and they're so afraid of it, and you know what? We believed them, even though we could see that what they were doing was wicked and evil and wrong... We thought Dust must be bad too, because they were grown up and they said so. But what if it isn't? What if it's—'She said breathlessly, 'Yeah! What if it's really good...

~ Philip Pullman

you are good when you strive to give of yourself.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Heroic ambition seemed to have been the cause of much of the world's pain then - quite like it is now. No villain ever saw himself a villain: he only saw himself a hero, and this goes just as no hero ever saw himself a hero: he simply did what he had to do. No true hero initially sets out with intentions of being deemed a hero.

~ Criss Jami

Which comes first: Good or Evil? Usually evil. Good counters.

~ Steve Chapman

No doubt your sword is indeed a beautiful thing. It is a tribute to whoever forged it in bygone ages. There are very few such swords as this one left in the world, but remember, it is only a sword, Matthias! It contains no secret spell, nor holds within its blade any magical power. This sword is made for only one purpose, to kill. It will only be as good or evil as the one who wields it. I know that you intend to use it only for the good of your Abbey, Matthias; do so, but never allow yourself to be tempted into using it in a careless or idle way. It would inevitably cost you your life, or that of your dear ones. Martin the Warrior used the sword only for right and good. This is why it has become a symbol of power to Redwall. Knowledge is gained through wisdom, my friend. Use the sword wisely.

~ Brian Jacques

Good and evil keep happening in this world. It just takes a little longer for us to take the bad in our stride. And just when we think we've come to terms with bad, we're shocked to be haunted by that one query whose answer is ever as elusive - why on earth did it have to happen to me ?

~ Tuhin A. Sinha