"Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before."
— Mae West

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it...always."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house."
— George Carlin

"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent"
— Mahatma Gandhi

"Darkness has always had its part to play. Without it, how would we know when we walked in the light?"
— Clive Barker (Abarat)

"Man is the cruelest animal."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"I'm not mad. I'm just...well, differently moralled, that's all."
— Jasper Fforde (The Eyre Affair)

"'I told him I was going to betray you, and betray Lyra, and he believed me because I was corrupt and full of wickedness; he looked so deep I felt sure he'd see the truth. But I lied too well. I was lying with every nerve and fiber and everything I'd ever done...I wanted him to find no good in me, and he didn't. There is none.'"
— Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass)

"It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings)

"In the end, following the Dark Road is no less honorable than following the Light, as long as it is done with a clear purpose."
— Clive Barker (Abarat)

""Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.""
— Napoleon Bonaparte

"So you see, Good and Evil have the same face; it all depends on when they cross the path of each individual human being."
— Paulo Coelho (The Devil and Miss Prym: A Novel of Temptation)

"There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence."
— Flannery O'Connor (Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose)

"No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency."
— Theodore Roosevelt

"All evil is good become cancerous."
— Isaac Asimov

"There's only one great evil in the world today. Despair."
— Evelyn Waugh (Vile Bodies)

"In the beginning there was only a small amount of injustice abroad in the world, but everyone who came afterwards added their portion, always thinking it was very small and unimportant, and look where we have ended up today."
— Paulo Coelho (The Devil and Miss Prym: A Novel of Temptation)

"True and baseless evil is as rare a the purest good--and we all know how rare that is..."
— Jasper Fforde (The Eyre Affair)

"'Animals don't behave like men,' he said. 'If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill they kill. But they don't sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures' lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality.'"
— Richard Adams (Watership Down: A Novel)

"We often do good in order that we may do evil with impunity."
— Duc de La Rochefoucauld

"Evil must always be fought."
— Patricia Briggs (Raven's Shadow)

"There is nothing inhuman, evil, or irrational which does not give some comfort, provided it is shared by a group."
— Erich Fromm (Psychoanalysis and Religion: The Terry Lectures Series)

"Sin, death, and hell have set their marks on him,
And all their ministers attend on him."
— William Shakespeare (The Tragedy of King Richard III)

"The proper function of a government is to make it easy for the people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil. "
— Daniel Webster (The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster: Diplomatic Papers And Miscellaneous Letters)

"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Eph. 6:12 (NIV)"
— Various

"All the cunning of the devil is exercised in trying to tear us away from the word."
— Martin Luther

"The world we suggest is a new wild west. A sensuous evil world. Strange and haunting, the path of the sun…"
— Jim Morrison

"How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself."
— Will Durant (The Story of Philosophy)

"Poor Hayduke: won all his arguments but lost his immortal soul."
— Edward Abbey (The Monkey Wrench Gang)

"Evil requires no reason."
— Alberto Manguel (The Library at Night)

"'The bad things don't seem to happen to bad people.'
'That's because they already did. There's no original evil left in the world.'"
— Keith Ablow (Denial)

"While I was an honorable man in her eyes, she did not love me. But the minute she understood what I was, when she breathed the true and foul odor of my soul, love was born in her – for she does love me! Well, well! There is nothing real, then, except evil."
— Octave Mirbeau

"But see you, we should travel by night. Dark times for dark business, as they says. No sun to bother Valeriana or you, Kaylana's surely no' disadvantaged, and I know I work better in darkness. Anybody looking for us will have a harder time of it. Besides, marching in daylight is for the heroes. If we're going to do this, we may as well go all out."
— Eve Forward (Villains by Necessity)

"The greater evil who is in-
When both in wayward paths are straying?
The poor sinner for the pain
Or he who pays for the sin?"
— Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

"Evil begets evil. Shooting it only makes it stronger."
— Priest Vito Cornelius - The Fifth Element

"The roots of any evil deed can be traced to the perpetrator's refusal to experience pain."
— Keith Ablow (Denial)

"If there was such evil in the world, was it possible that there was good, too?"
— Patricia Briggs (Raven's Strike)

"All that evil requires is an absence of virtue, where somebody didn't make a stand."
— Terry Darlington

"In thy foul throat thou liest."
— William Shakespeare (The Tragedy of King Richard III)