The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good.
John Locke

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Richard Dawkins

Where there is mystery, it is generally suspected there must also be evil.
Lord Byron

Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself.
Soren Kierkegaard

Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.
Soren Kierkegaard

Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.
Soren Kierkegaard

Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.
Douglas MacArthur

It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.
Margaret Mead

If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.
Swami Vivekananda

The war is coming to the streets of America and if you are not keeping and bearing and practicing with your arms then you will be helpless and you will be the victim of evil.
Ted Nugent

War is good when good survives and evil is crushed. If you don't crush evil then evil will get you.
Ted Nugent

A vigorous temper is not altogether an evil. Men who are easy as an old shoe are generally of little worth.
Charles Spurgeon

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.
Epictetus

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.
Epictetus

Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit.
Epictetus

The man who promises everything is sure to fulfil nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition.
Carl Jung

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.
Carl Jung

Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness.
Carl Jung

Evil is not to be traced back to the individual but to the collective behavior of humanity.
Reinhold Niebuhr

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.
Jean-Paul Sartre