Quotes: Evil. Evolution.

The idea in bold-face print is a summary of the quote. The number after the topic is the page on which the quote was found.

Evil
Evil 180 You don't have to believe in the devil as a source of wickedness; men do well enough as the source of wickedness. "The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. Joseph Conrad." 1911. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Evil 181 People who do evil to others say they do it for the victim's own good. "The common excuse of those who bring misfortune on others is that they desire their good." Vauvenargues. 1746. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Evil 181 Few people recognize all the evil they do. "Few men are sufficiently discerning to appreciate all the evil they do." La Rochefoucauld. 1665. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Evil 182 Criminals are like other men in many respects. "A wonder is often expressed that the greatest criminals look like other men; the reason is that they are like other men in many respects." Hazlitt. 1822. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Evil 182 "Bad men do what good men only dream." Gavin Ewart. 1968. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Evil 100 "One evil always succeeds another." Homer. Greek. Dictionary of Foreign Terms

Evil 3 People do wrong in order to gain something for themselves. "There is no man doth a wrong for the wrong’s sake; but thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honor, or the like." F. Bacon, “Of Revenge.” 1625.

Evil thoughts 175 We are not responsible for our evil thoughts so long as we don't carry them out. "We are no more responsible for the evil thoughts which pass through our minds, than a scarecrow for the birds which fly over the seed plot he has to guard; the sole responsibility in each case is to prevent them from settling." Churton Collins. 1914. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.


Evolution
Evolution 540 Species capable of adaptation cause evolution. "I think it was the great nineteenth-century paleontologist Cope who first clearly enunciated what he called the ‘law of the unspecialized,’ the contention that it was not from the most highly organized and dominant forms of a given geological era that the master type of a succeeding period evolved, but that instead the dominant forms tended to arise from more lowly and generalized animals which are capable of making new adaptations, and which were not narrowly restricted to a given environment." Loren Eiseley. ‘The Snout.” 1957. Gross, ed. Essays.

Evolution 74 From a formless blob to man, that's the course of evolution. "Evolution: the majestic poem that tells of life, starting as a formless stuff stirring in a steamy ooze of a million years ago, unfolding through a stately procession of living beings until it gets to monkeys and at last—triumphantly—to men." DeKruif, Microbe Hunters.