Profoundly inspirational good and evil quotes will encourage you to think a little deeper than you usually would and broaden your perspective.
Famous Good And Evil Quotes
I don’t think good and evil are polarized. — Sam Mendes
I’ll shout it if they want: Down with isms! Up with a Left that is capable of thinking outside the box! In other words, I am more than completely cured of simplifications, of dividing the world into good and evil, of thinking in black and white. I have repented! — Jose Mujica
When I sit down to write a novel, I am exploring my own relationship with God, with the struggle between good and evil, my own purpose. — Ted Dekker
I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph. — Margaret Thatcher
It felt very fresh to me, and it feels very contemporary – this idea that conflict’s not being about good and evil and not necessarily being black and white. If you dig deep enough, you’ll often find that people do things because they feel that they have to as opposed to because they are evil. — Duncan Jones
I believe there is meaning in life. I believe there is good and evil. — Min Jin Lee
All human beings are commingled out of good and evil. — Robert Louis Stevenson
Frank Castle knows only two sides: Good and Evil. There is no grey zone for him. — Lexi Alexander
The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil. — Marcus Tullius Cicero
I liked the clear morality of 1941, when you had no doubt about good and evil. There was a lot of idealism, people fighting for a cause. People are searching for morality today. — David L. Wolper
Even the crudest, most derivative novel is an expression of the author’s hopes and fears and ideas about good and evil. — Steven Saylor
I don’t believe so much in good and evil. — Lotte Verbeek
Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. — Eric Hoffer
What ‘True Blood’ does really well is that it balances on the line between good and evil – you blur the distinction between the two. — Robert Kazinsky
I’m a fan of the sensibility of comics, and I love the escapism of them and the defining of good and evil. They’re just so creative, too. — David Leitch
Videogames tell stories on good and evil, and so does the WWE, so that’s the core of both things. — Xavier Woods
While many alternate reality stories ask, ‘What might have been?’ parallel universe stories literalize the war between good and evil that plays inside each of us every day. It’s what makes this type of story so perfect for many fantasy tales: we’re all just a coin flip away from being entirely different people. — Kameron Hurley
What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant, marvelous and awful, good and evil. — Norman Mailer
We can no more tolerate neutrality and benevolence toward every conceivable form of discourse, including that of magical thinking, than we can lump together executioner and victim, good and evil. — Michel Onfray
Within a culture possessed by the myth of feminine evil, the naming, describing, and theorizing about good and evil has constituted a maze/haze of deception. The journey of women becoming is breaking through this maze – springing into free space, which is an a-mazing process. — Mary Daly
While time lasts there will always be a future, and that future will hold both good and evil, since the world is made to that mingled pattern. — Dorothy L. Sayers
If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion. — Hermann Hesse
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who also happens to be the 10th richest person in America, with a personal fortune of some $18 billion, likes to pick a fight – especially fights where the line between good and evil is particularly stark. — Jeff Goodell
Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires. — Bertrand Russell
Fantasy is an area where it is possible to talk about right and wrong, good and evil, with a straight face. In mainstream fiction and even in a good deal of mystery, these things are presented as simply two sides of the same coin. Never really more than a matter of where you happen to be standing. — Robert Jordan
I do not believe in the concept of good and evil in my personal life, in the real world. I just don’t believe it. I never try to judge. — Warren Spector
‘Star Wars’ or ‘The Lord of the Rings’ deal with great big Joseph Campbell-style myths, good and evil. — Peter Dinklage
I shot a pilot for ABC, which I’m a bit confused about what the actual title is – I heard it was called ‘Chosen.’ It’s directed by Roland Emmerich – the master of disaster himself – and it’s his idea and concept for the show that’s a supernatural thriller about good and evil set in contemporary modern day New York. — Linus Roache
What ‘Twilight Zone’ did was show we all have a great capacity for good and evil. — Lin-Manuel Miranda
The apple which tempts my characters is the one that will remove the knowledge of good and evil. I suppose it’s something of a reversal of the conventional Eden story: Freedom of thought is perhaps the greatest good, and needs to be fought for and sacrificed for. — John Christopher
People like to say that the conflict is between good and evil. The real conflict is between truth and lies. — Don Miguel Ruiz
Some things must be good in themselves, else there could be no measure whereby to lay out good and evil. — Benjamin Whichcote
People’s character is their behaviour – we’re all capable of good and evil. — Bertie Carvel
‘Breaking Bad’ is great at blurring the line between good and evil. It makes you feel compassion for Walter White so you’re with him throughout this descent into the darker parts of his psyche. The bad that we’re capable of is all circumstantial. — Jesse Plemons
The values by which we are to survive are not rules for just and unjust conduct, but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline. — Jacob Bronowski
The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason. — Immanuel Kant
This is a struggle of good and evil. And we’re the good. — Howard Dean
I’ve never been specifically attached to westerns, but there are those I like – one of the best westerns I’ve seen is ‘Unforgiven.’ I think the genre has something extremely powerful that can allow them to talk about good and evil in a very straight way. — Mads Mikkelsen
Christ shared our experience; he suffered as we suffer; he died as we shall die, and for forty days in the desert he underwent the struggle between good and evil. — Basil Hume
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
I believe you can make forces of good and evil work for you, to get what you want. — GG Allin
In this life, we have to make many choices. Some are very important choices. Some are not. Many of our choices are between good and evil. The choices we make, however, determine to a large extent our happiness or our unhappiness, because we have to live with the consequences of our choices. — James E. Faust
I’ve learned a lot about good and evil. They are not always what they appear to be. — Charles Van Doren
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
There is nothing in nature wherein there is not good and evil; everything moveth and liveth in this double impulse, working or operation, be it what it will. — Jakob Bohme
One should see the world, and see himself as a scale with an equal balance of good and evil. When he does one good deed the scale is tipped to the good – he and the world is saved. When he does one evil deed the scale is tipped to the bad – he and the world is destroyed. — Maimonides
The line between good and evil is permeable and almost anyone can be induced to cross it when pressured by situational forces. — Philip Zimbardo
You can compromise between good, better, and best, and you can compromise between bad and worse and terrible. But you can’t compromise between good and evil. And now people look at the other side as a completely different kind of animal and say, ‘They are taking the country down the road to purgatory.’ It’s complete intolerance. — Gary Ackerman
If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil. — Baruch Spinoza
I have always regarded global development as a struggle between the forces of good and evil. Not to be simplified as a struggle between Jesus and Satan, since I do not consider that the process is restricted to our own sphere of culture. — Alva Myrdal
People desire to separate their worlds into polarities of dark and light, ugly and beautiful, good and evil, right and wrong, inside and outside. Polarities serve us in our learning and growth, but as souls we are all. — Joy Page
It has been rightly said that nothing is unimportant, nothing powerless in the universe; a single atom can dissolve everything, and save everything! What terror! There lies the eternal distinction between good and evil. — Gerard De Nerval
Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil. — Friedrich Nietzsche
I experience for the American officers and soldiers that friendship which arises from having shared with them for a length of time dangers, sufferings, and both good and evil fortune. — Marquis de Lafayette
Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil. — Marcus Aurelius
The most painful moral struggles are not those between good and evil, but between the good and the lesser good. — Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
I was looking to explore the theme of good and evil, so what better inspiration than the comics? I’d developed a relationship with DC and Warner Bros. when I donated a sculpture of Catwoman to the ‘We Can Be Heroes’ campaign a few years ago. That’s what started it. — Nathan Sawaya
Classical tragedy was the war between good and evil. We wanted evil to be defeated and good to be victorious. But the battle in modern tragedy is between good and good. And no matter which side wins, we’ll still be heartbroken. — Asghar Farhadi
Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil. — Anatole France
We’re all caught up in circumstances, and we’re all good and evil. When you’re really hungry, for instance, you’ll do anything to survive. I think the most evil thing – well, maybe that’s too strong – but certainly a very evil thing is judgment, the sin of ignorance. — Anthony Hopkins
I almost stand in awe when I think of Joseph Smith. The angel appeared to him in 1823 – he said to this simple little boy, ‘Your name should be known for good and evil throughout the entire world.’ — Gordon B. Hinckley
Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell. — George Orwell
I’d like to write a series that, in an adventurous and fun way, teaches kids a way to discern between good and evil, to establish a foundation on moral absolutes. — Frank Peretti
It is not true that good can only follow from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true. — Max Weber
I don’t write about good and evil with this enormous dichotomy. I write about people. I write about people doing the kinds of things that people do. — Octavia E. Butler
I have been brought up open-minded. If I didn’t know any people from other countries, I’d think everyone was evil based on news stories. But I know a lot of people, and know that there is no such thing as stark good and evil. Isn’t it possible there is the same amount of evil everywhere? — Marjane Satrapi
That free will was demonstrated in the placing of temptation before man with the command not to eat of the fruit of the tree which would give him a knowledge of good and evil, with the disturbing moral conflict to which that awareness would give rise. — Kenneth Scott Latourette
I feel that a world in which you only see what you want to see is incomplete. And as a game creator, I am only here to prepare a game that will expand the breadth of your thinking, and leave the decision between good and evil up to the players. — Yoko Taro
Religion as a human phenomenon is as riddled through with potential for both good and evil as any other phenomenon. — Richard John Neuhaus
If your religion doesn’t teach you the difference between good and evil, your religion is worse than useless. — Dennis Prager
Rather than dividing the world between good and evil, the Left divided the world in terms of economics. Economic classes, not moral values, explained human behavior. Therefore, to cite a common example, poverty, not one’s moral value system, or lack of it, caused crime. — Dennis Prager
The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
All my books deal with the effect of intent upon action, how our understanding of good and evil depends heavily on context. — Jesse Kellerman
Good and evil do not exist for me any more. The fear of evil is merely a mass projection here and on Earth. — Hans Bender
Moral authority has been laid to rest, world opinion is no more than a game show and the difference between good and evil is about as relevant as changing channels. — Ralph Steadman
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
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
The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil. — Georges Bataille
Everyone spends their lives trying to balance their world between good and evil. — Laurell K. Hamilton
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
The Book of Revelation is all about the conflict, the contest between the forces of Good and Evil. — Elaine Pagels
‘The Gambler’ by Dostoevsky. It was the first time I realised that it was possible to have good and evil in one person. It led me to read a lot of Russian literature. — Sue Townsend
Thrillers provide the reader with a safe escape into a dangerous world where the stakes are as high as can be imagined with unpredictable outcomes. It’s a perfect genre in which to explore hard issues of good and evil, a mirror that allows the reader to see both the good and not so good in themselves. — Ted Dekker
Conservatives divide the world in terms of good and evil while liberals do it in terms of the rich and poor. — Dennis Prager
The power of choosing good and evil is within the reach of all. — Origen
Good and evil. Right and wrong.Those are two fundamental opposing concepts that define the nature of humankind. — Wayne LaPierre
I want to show people how there are variations and different interpretations of good and evil. — Hideo Kojima
I tend to think that good and evil exist and that the quantity in each of us is unchangeable. The moral character of people is set, fixed until death. — Michel Houellebecq
Art is built on the deepest themes of human meaning: good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death, love and hate. No other story has incarnated those themes more than the story of Jesus. — John Ortberg
Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. — Nathaniel Hawthorne
I am perhaps a late follower of Zoroaster and I believe that the foundation of life is built upon the struggle between the two opposing forces of Good and Evil. — Eugenio Montale
Wisdom is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to choose between the two. — John Cheever
There’s good and evil going on. We have cops. We have robbers. — Joe Mantegna
What bothers most critics of my work is the goofiness. One reviewer said I need to make up my mind if want to be funny or serious. My response is that I will make up my mind when God does, because life is a commingling of the sacred and the profane, good and evil. To try and separate them is fallacy. — Tom Robbins
The side of fairytales I don’t like is that they always have happy endings, that there’s just good and evil, and things are perfect. But life is a little more complicated, and that’s what I try to teach my kids. — Angelina Jolie
Scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man’s struggle for good and evil seems inadequate. — Richard P. Feynman
Religious ideas about good and evil tend to focus on how to achieve well-being in the next life, and this makes them terrible guides to securing it in this one. Of course, there are a few gems to be found in every religious tradition, but insofar as these precepts are wise and useful they are not, in principle, religious. — Sam Harris
The failure to readily identify the battle between good and evil is a nagging, ongoing, dangerous pattern that shows no sign of easing up any time soon. — Mike Gallagher
Behind the man is the Tree of Life, bearing twelve fruits, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is behind the woman; the serpent is twining round it. — A. E. Waite
No writer besides Shakespeare has created more memorable characters attached to vices and virtues. In even their least sympathetic characters, one senses a kind of helplessness to passion quivering between the poles of good and evil. — Roger Rosenblatt
Most of my favorite fictional couples are distinctly different. Light and dark, good and evil, boring and wild… whatever! They’re more fun to experience and definitely more fun to write. You have all these levels, and you know they’re not going to react to situations the same way. — Kate Leth
Democracy is not static. It is a living force. Every new idea, every new invention offers opportunity for both good and evil. — Herbert Hoover
I’m enormously interested to see where neuroscience can take us in understanding these complexities of the human brain and how it works, but I do think there may be limits in terms of what science can tell us about what does good and evil mean anyway, and what are those concepts about? — Francis Collins
The conscience of children is formed by the influences that surround them; their notions of good and evil are the result of the moral atmosphere they breathe. — Jean Paul
Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to choose between the two. — John Cheever
If you take a look at history, you will find that the understanding of what is good and evil has always existed before the individual religions. The religions were only invented by people afterwards, in order to express this idea. — Salman Rushdie
Reducing everything immediately to good and evil is bad history – not only because it isn’t true, but because reductionism is unpersuasive; it is boring. Good history, on the other hand, demands that one talk socratically – that one can present alternate viewpoints, not strawman arguments. — Ben Sasse
Our modern world, though infinitely more complex than that of ancient Greece, is also far more superficial. Where the Greeks offered simple psychological training, we live in an age of style and spin in which perceptions of good and evil slither and shift with the political view of the moment. — David Gemmell
The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it. — Samuel Butler
People are looking for a simplicity in their fictional worlds where good and evil are clearly delineated, that you can’t find in the real world, and that provides an enormous comfort – and that, I think, has an awful lot to do with the reason fantasy is so popular. — Robert J. Sawyer
I’m very interested in good and evil and the moral natures of people. — Antonia Fraser
If we’re not compelled to gain a deeper understanding of good and evil, how can we make the world a better place? How can we find ourselves at the end of our lives and know that our lives were significant? Those things would be impossibilities. — Scott Derrickson
All things, good and evil, come out, it seems, of the East. The Illuminati, like the Ismailites, dealt in allegories; and like the Mazdakites, they played with fire. — Ameen Rihani
I suspect that here theists and atheists would agree: Human beings have within them the ability to choose evil or good. We wake up each day facing the age-old struggle of good and evil. In some situations, mental illness clouds our judgment. — Adam Hamilton
World War II is the greatest drama in human history, the biggest war ever and a true battle of good and evil. I imagine writers will continue to get stories from it, and readers will continue to love them, for many more years. — Ken Follett
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
In very general terms ‘Top Of The Lake’ is about good and evil. It’s a deep dark mystery. It also deals with lots of fascinating human relationships, and it’s also about the battle of the sexes. — David Wenham
I define a ‘good person’ as somebody who is fully conscious of their own limitations. They know their strengths, but they also know their ‘shadow’ – they know their weaknesses. In other words, they understand that there is no good without bad. Good and evil are really one, but we have broken them up in our consciousness. We polarize them. — John Bradshaw
I think that fiction is an excellent place for us to struggle with questions of good and evil, and humanity and inhumanity. — Brent Weeks
The first idea the child must acquire is that of the difference between good and evil. — Maria Montessori
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
To begin with myself, then, the utterances of men concerning me will differ widely, since in passing judgment almost every one is influenced not so much by truth as by preference, and good and evil report alike know no bounds. — Petrarch
As the culture war is about irreconcilable beliefs about God and man, right and wrong, good and evil, and is at root a religious war, it will be with us so long as men are free to act on their beliefs. — Pat Buchanan
The world is made up of good and evil, and everybody has their own take, and everybody thinks they are on the good side, and a very few, select group of us will admit that we come from the dark side. — Shane Douglas
One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good. — Edmund Burke
The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual – for it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost. — M. Scott Peck
If I play a villain, I try to find his lightness and his good side. And if I play a hero or a good guy, I’ll try to find his darkness or his flaws. Because I don’t believe in good and evil. I believe in grays. — Joel Kinnaman
Humans are born with a hard-wired morality: a sense of good and evil is bred in the bone. I know this claim might sound outlandish, but it’s supported now by research in several laboratories. — Paul Bloom
Zoroastrianism is about the opposition of good and evil. For the triumph of good, we have to make a choice. We can enlist on the side of good by prospering, making money and using our wealth to help others. — Rohinton Mistry
Willing or preferring is the same with respect to good and evil, that judging is with respect to truth or falsehood. — Anthony Collins
