Top 50 Evil Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”

— Stephen King

Also featured in: Fiction Quotes, Winning Quotes, Real Quotes, Fear Quotes

2. “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

— George Orwell

Also featured in: Sarcastic Quotes, Freedom Quotes, Quotes About War, Government Quotes

3. “People should either be caressed or crushed. If you do them minor damage they will get their revenge; but if you cripple them there is nothing they can do. If you need to injure someone, do it in such a way that you do not have to fear their vengeance.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

Also featured in: Hard Hitting Quotes, Trust No One Quotes

4. “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Also featured in: Hard Hitting Quotes, Philosophical Quotes, Philosophy Quotes, Darkness Quotes

5. “I began to see what people were capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.”

— William Golding

Also featured in: Human Nature Quotes

6. “Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”

— Leo Tolstoy

Also featured in: Integrity Quotes, Morality Quotes, Truth Quotes, Justice Quotes

7. “It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

Also featured in: Powerful Quotes, Witty Quotes, Fear Quotes, Government Quotes

8. “For the night is dark and full of terrors.”

— George R.R. Martin

Also featured in: Fiction Quotes, Fear Quotes, Darkness Quotes

9. “An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.”

— Buddha

Also featured in: Deep Quotes, Friendship Quotes, Quotes About Trust, Hurt Quotes

10. “Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil.”

— Plato

Also featured in: Morality Quotes, Knowledge Quotes, Ignorance Quotes

11. “A lie doesn’t become truth, wrong doesn’t become right and evil doesn’t become good, just because it’s accepted by a majority.”

— Rick Warren

Also featured in: Integrity Quotes, Morality Quotes, Truth Quotes, Virtue Quotes

12. “Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”

— Terry Pratchett

Also featured in: Morality Quotes, Quotes About Humanity, Quotes About People, Respect Quotes

13. “Power corrupts. Knowledge is power. Study hard. Be evil.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

Also featured in: Learning Quotes, Study Quotes

14. “Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.”

— Thomas Jefferson

15. “Don’t be evil is a load of crap.”

— Steve Jobs

16. “Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

Also featured in: Positive Inspirational Quotes, Positive Life Quotes, Make A Difference Quotes, Helping Others Quotes

17. “Let them hate me, so long as they fear me!”

— Caligula

18. “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Also featured in: Taking Action Quotes, Resistance Quotes, Fighting Quotes, Powerful Quotes, Responsibility Quotes

19. “Silence in the face of evil is evil itself.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Also featured in: Morality Quotes, Resistance Quotes, Conscience Quotes, Justice Quotes

20. “Premature optimization is the root of all evil.”

— Donald Knuth

Also featured in: Programming Quotes, Performance Quotes, IT Quotes, Engineering Quotes

21. “But a lie is a lie, and in itself intrinsically evil, whether it be told with good or bad intents.”

— Immanuel Kant

Also featured in: Integrity Quotes, Morality Quotes, Liars Quotes

22. “If shaytan has entered into your heart – evil will look beautiful to you and good will seem tiring and exhausting.”

— Nouman Ali Khan

Also featured in: Beautiful Quotes

23. “Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need.”

— Voltaire

Also featured in: Boredom Quotes

24. “Before you think good or evil, who are you?”

— Huineng

25. “Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid.”

— Ronald Reagan

Also featured in: Peace Quotes

26. “When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

Also featured in: Make A Difference Quotes, Morality Quotes, Changing the World Quotes, Peace Quotes

27. “Evil is just a point of view.”

— Anne Rice

28. “I refuse to apologize for my ability – I refuse to apologize for my success – I refuse to apologize for my money. If this is evil, make the most of it.”

— Ayn Rand

Also featured in: Prosperity Quotes, Financial Success Quotes, Quotes About Money, Individuality Quotes

29. “If Christ has died for me, I cannot trifle with the evil that killed my best Friend.”

— Charles H. Spurgeon

Also featured in: Christian Quotes, Morality Quotes, Salvation Quotes, Sacrifice Quotes

30. “To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

Also featured in: Morality Quotes, Changing the World Quotes, Conscience Quotes, Rights Quotes

31. “Love is evil, spell it backwards, I’ll show ya.”

— Eminem

Also featured in: Love Is Quotes, Toxic Relationship Quotes

32. “Polish your wisdom: learn public justice, distinguish between good and evil, study the ways of different arts one by one.”

— Miyamoto Musashi

Also featured in: Quotes About War

33. “There’s a terrible danger in voting for the lesser of two evils because the parties can set it up that way.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

34. “If one knows what is right, he will do it; nobody wants to be evil.”

— Socrates

35. “Evil may have its hour, but God will have His day.”

— Fulton J. Sheen

36. “Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence, and enjoy it to the full.”

— Leon Trotsky

37. “The greatest evil is physical pain.”

— Saint Augustine

38. “Man’s basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know.”

— Ayn Rand

Also featured in: Ignorance Quotes

39. “God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.”

— Saint Augustine

Also featured in: Judging Quotes

40. “Find the best in everybody. Just keep waiting no matter how long it takes. No one is all evil. Everybody has a good side, just keep waiting, it will come out.”

— Randy Pausch

41. “Terrorism is the preferred weapon of weak and evil men.”

— Ronald Reagan

42. “To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime.”

— Romain Rolland

Also featured in: Quotes About Veganism

43. “When we forgive evil we do not excuse it, we do not tolerate it, we do not smother it. We look the evil full in the face, call it what it is, let its horror shock and stun and enrage us, and only then do we forgive it.”

— Lewis B. Smedes

Also featured in: Letting Go Quotes

44. “Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength. It does not enable us to escape evil. It makes us unfit to face evil when it comes. It is the interest you pay on trouble before it comes.”

— Corrie ten Boom

Also featured in: Mental Strength Quotes, Mental Health Quotes, Peace of Mind Quotes, Stay Strong Quotes

45. “The alienation of man thus appeared as the fundamental evil of capitalist society.”

— Karl Marx

46. “Do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it.”

— Ludwig von Mises

47. “A hard headed woman, a soft hearted man, been the cause of trouble ever since the world began.”

— Elvis Presley

48. “It is the duty of every true Deist to vindicate the moral justice of God against the evils of the Bible.”

— Thomas Paine

Also featured in: Justice Quotes

49. “Riches and honor are what everyone desires, but if they can be gained only by doing evil, they must not be held. Don’t worry about not being in office, worry about qualifying yourself for office. Don’t worry that no one knows you, but seek to be worthy of being known.”

— Confucius

Also featured in: Integrity Quotes, Morality Quotes, Worry Quotes

50. “To abolish war it is necessary to abolish patriotism, and to abolish patriotism it is necessary first to understand that it is an evil. Tell people that patriotism is bad and most will reply, ‘Yes, bad patriotism is bad, but mine is good patriotism.’”

— Leo Tolstoy

Also featured in: Quotes About War