Quotes on Necessary Evil

Any communitys arm of force - military, police, security - needs people in it who can do necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it. To do only the necessary and no more. To constantly question the assumptions, to stop the slide into atrocity.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

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

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings.

The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins ... Society is in every state a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.

Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a "necessary evil", it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.

I suspect that religion is a necessary evil in the childhood of our particular species. And that's one of the interesting things about contact with other intelligences: we could see what role, if any, religion plays in their development. I think that religion may be some random by-product of mammalian reproduction. If that's true, would non-mammalian aliens have a religion?

For centuries the leaders of Christian thought spoke of women as a necessary evil, and the greatest saints of the Church are those who despise women the most.

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.

Many baseball fans look upon an umpire as a sort of necessary evil to the luxury of baseball, like the odor that follows an automobile.

You will find that you cannot do without politicians. They are a necessary evil in this day and time. You may not like getting money from one source and spending it for another. But the thing for the school people to do is that if the politicians are going to steal, make them steal for the schools.

Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.

Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.

Government is a necessary evil

The State is said by some to be a necessary evil; it must be made unnecessary.

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

THE TEACHER AS A NECESSARY EVIL. Let us have as few people as possible between the productive minds and the hungry and recipient minds! The middlemen almost unconsciously adulterate the food which they supply. It is because of teachers that so little is learned, and that so badly.

Politics is a way of ruling in divided societies without undue violence...politics is not just a necessary evil; it is a realistic good.