Social Evils Quotes

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  The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

  Edmund Burke

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Witty

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• Inequality is the root of social evil.

  Pope Francis

  Roots, Evil, Social

  Pope Francis‏ @Pontifex, twitter.com. April 28, 2014.

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• I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Inspirational, Peace, War

  Mahatma Gandhi, Dennis Dalton (1996). “Gandhi: Selected Political Writings”, p.43, Hackett Publishing

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• No man chooses evil because it's evil. He only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Happiness, Mistake, Men

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2008). “A Vindication of the Rights of Women & a Vindication of the Rights of Men”, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

  Blaise Pascal

  Inspirational, Sad, Religious

  Pensees no. 894 (1670 ed.)

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• The remedy for our social evils does not consist so much in changing the system of government as it does in increasing the general intelligence of the people so that they may learn how to govern.

  Charles Lindbergh

  Government, People, Evil

  Charles Lindbergh (1913). “Banking and Currency and the Money Trust”, p.71, Lulu.com

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• One social evil for which the New Testament is clearly in part responsible is anti-Semitism.

  Steve Allen

  Evil, Religion, Social

  Steve Allen (1990). “Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, & Morality”, Buffalo, N.Y. : Prometheus Books

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• I think of it all as a test. This is a moral examination that one has to pass... to stand up against such social evils.

  Kailash Satyarthi

  Thinking, Evil, Humanity

  "Kailash Satyarthi's crusade to save childhood continues; 60 mn still need him" by Kumkum Das Gupta, www.hindustantimes.com. October 10, 2014.

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• I hold with Henry George, that at the back of every great social evil will be found a great political wrong

  Alfred Russel Wallace

  Evil, Political, Social

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• What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.

  Robert Kennedy

  Overcoming Evil, Political, Atheism

  Robert F. Kennedy (1967). “The quotable Robert F. Kennedy”

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• Can you blame me if I am pursued by the thought of how much we could do to remedy social evils, if only we had an honest and disinterested press?

  Upton Sinclair

  Media, Evil, Honest

  Upton Sinclair (2015). “The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism”, p.101, Open Road Media

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• Family . . . the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.

  August Strindberg

  Family, Wisdom, Children

  1886 The Son of a Servant.

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• There is no social evil, no form of injustice whether of the feudal or the capitalist order which has not been sanctified in some way or other by religious sentiment and thereby rendered more impervious to change.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Religious, Order, Evil

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• ... social evils are dangerously contagious. The fixed policy of persecution and injustice against a class of women who are weak and defenseless will be necessarily hurtful to the cause of all women.

  Fannie Barrier Williams

  Class, Racism, Evil

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• Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Character, Animal, Evil

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• I have long gone about with a conviction on my mind that I had a work to do-a Work, if you like, with a great W; a Purpose to fulfil; ... a Great Social Evil to Discover and to Remedy.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Long, Evil, Mind

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1869). “The Works: In Twenty-two Volumes. ¬The book of snobs; and Sketches and travels in London”, p.2

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• This attempt to ban smoking is an example of social engineering on a vast scale. Such massive intervention in the private lives and choices of one quarter of our adult population recalls the extremism of Prohibition, the last national crusade against a supposed social evil.

  Charles Orville Whitley

  Engineering, Evil, Choices

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• Socialism may be worthless as a scheme, but it is not meaningless as a symptom. Rousseau's theory of the origin of society, of the social contract, and of a cure for all the social evils by a return to a state of nature, had, as we all know now, no more relation to fact than the dreams of an illiterate drunkard; but they were not without value as a vague and symbolical expression of certain evils from which the France of his day was suffering.

  William Hurrell Mallock

  Dream, Expression, Evil

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• I would be the last to condemn the thousands of sincere and dedicated people outside the churches who have labored unselfishly through various humanitarian movements to cure the world of social evils, for I would rather a man be a committed humanist than an uncommitted Christian.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Christian, Men, People

  Martin Luther King Jr. (1963). “Strength to Love”

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• Jesus was a revolutionary, who did not become an extremist, since he did not offer an ideology, but Himself. He was also a mystic, who did not use his intimate relationship with God to avoid the social evils of his time, but shocked his milieu to the point of being executed as a rebel. In this sense he also remains for nuclear man the way to liberation and freedom.

  Henri Nouwen

  Jesus, Men, Intimate Relationships

  "The Wounded Healer". Book by Henri Nouwen, 1972.

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• You do not settle whether an argument is justified by merely showing that it is of some use. The distinction is not between useful and useless experiments but between barbarous and civilized behaviour. Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Character, Evil, Doe

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• But my belief is growing that our political and social evils are remediable, if only all of us who want a change for the better just get up and work for it, all the time, with as much knowledge and intelligence as we can muster for it. Half the wrongs of human life exist because of the inertia of people who simply will not use their energies in fighting for what they believe in. And finally the wrongs roll up into world catastrophes and millions of deaths and a terrible set-back for all mankind.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Believe, Fighting, People

  Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.291, Atlantic Monthly Press

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• What we are accustomed to decry as great social evils, will, for the most part, be found to be only the out-growth of our own perverted life; and though we may endeavor to cut them down and extirpate them by means of law, they will only spring up again with fresh luxuriance in some other form, unless the conditions of human life and character are radically improved.

  Samuel Smiles

  Spring, Character, Mean

  Samuel Smiles (2014). “Self-Help”, p.2, Cambridge University Press

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• It is tempting to believe that social evils arise from the activities of evil men and that if only good men (like ourselves, naturally) wielded power, all would be well. That view requires only emotion and self-praise - easy to come by and satisfying as well. To understand why it is that 'good' men in positions of power will produce evil, while the ordinary man without power but able to engage in voluntary cooperation with his neighbors will produce good, requires analysis and thought, subordinating emotions to the rational.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Believe, Men, Position Of Power

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