These necessary evil quotes will inspire you. A necessary evil is an evil that someone believes must be done or accepted because it is necessary to achieve a better outcome—especially because possible alternative courses of action or inaction are expected to be worse. It is the “lesser evil” in the lesser of two evils principle, which maintains that given two bad choices, the one that is least bad is the better choice.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging necessary evil quotes, necessary evil sayings, and necessary evil proverbs.
Best Necessary Evil Quotes
- “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.” ~ Thomas Paine
- “The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” ~ Albert Einstein
- “War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.” ~ Jimmy Carter
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“Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.” ~ C. S. Lewis
- “It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.” ~ Margaret Mead
- “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- “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.” ~ Annie Besant
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“Dialogue is a necessary evil.” ~ Fred Zinnemann
- “There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.” ~ Andrew Jackson
- “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” ~ Hannah Arendt
- “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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“Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a necessary evil.” ~ Richard Whately
- “The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” ~ Plato
- “Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.” ~ Mark Twain
- “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.” ~ Thomas Paine
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“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Marriage, if one will face the truth, is an evil, but a necessary evil.” ~ Menander
- “The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.” ~ Franz Kafka
- “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.” ~ Christy Mathewson
- “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.” ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley
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“The world is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil.” ~ F. H. Bradley
- “There are necessary evils. Money is an important thing in terms of representing freedom in our world. And now I have a daughter to think about. It’s really the first time I’ve thought about the future and what it could be.” ~ Johnny Depp , Money is a necessary evil quotes
- “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.” ~ Thomas Paine
- “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.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
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“A baseball manager is a necessary evil.” ~ Sparky Anderson
- “Politics is a way of ruling in divided societies without undue violence…politics is not just a necessary evil; it is a realistic good.” ~ Bernard Crick
- “There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing.” ~ Andrew Jackson
- “The existence of poverty in the US should not be accepted as a necessary evil or insoluble problem, but should be considered a crisis requiring emergency measures. It is a matter of will and priorities, not a matter of resources.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“A critic is a necessary evil, and criticism is an evil necessity.” ~ Carolyn Wells
- “Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.” ~ Baltasar Gracian
- “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.” ~ Helen Keller
- “The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.” ~ Joseph Conrad
- “The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.” ~ Joseph Conrad
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“We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.” ~ Jimmy Carter
- “The editing process is a necessary evil. I can write until the cows come home but it is all garbage until it gets edited.” ~ Kim Smith
- “Woman is a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a deadly fascination, and a painted ill.” ~ Saint John Chrysostom
- “When you start with a necessary evil, and then over time the necessity passes away, what’s left?” ~ Matthew Scully
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“Generalities are intellectually necessary evils.” ~ Aldous Huxley
- “It is impossible! It has never happened – it cannot happen in the very nature of things. Marriage is something against nature. Marriage is an imposition, an invention of man – certainly out of necessity, but now even that necessity is out of date. It was a necessary evil in the past, but now it can be dropped. And it should be dropped: man has suffered enough for it, more than enough. It is an ugly institution for the simple reason that love cannot be legalized. Love and law are contradictory phenomena.” ~ Rajneesh
- “And now, what has Anarchism to say to all this, this bankruptcy of republicanism, this modern empire that has grown up on the ruins of our early freedom? We say this, that the sin our fathers sinned was that they did not trust liberty wholly. They thought it possible to compromise between liberty and government, believing the latter to be ‘a necessary evil,’ and the moment the compromise was made, the whole misbegotten monster of our present tyranny began to grow. Instruments which are set up to safeguard rights become the very whip with which the free are struck.” ~ Voltairine de Cleyre
- “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.” ~ Huey Long
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“Isn’t killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?” ~ Arthur C. Clarke
- “The right-of-centre parties still often compete with left-of-centre ones to proclaim their attachment to all the main programmes of spending, particularly spending on social services of one kind or another. But this foolish as well as muddled. It is foolish because left-of-centre parties will always be able to outbid right-of-centre ones in this auction – after all, that is why they are on the left in the first place. The muddle arises because once we concede that public spending and taxation are than a necessary evil we have lost sight of the core values of freedom.” ~ Margaret Thatcher
- “Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a “necessary evil”, it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.” ~ Sydney J. Harris\
- “I think the paparazzi is a necessary evil…and if ya don’t like it, and ya don’t want to do this, go to Iowa and do some community theatre. It’s all about self-promotion and it’s not always the fun part of it.” ~ Gail O’Grady
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“Rock music is, is a necessary evil, like beating my children with penny loafers” ~ Thom Yorke
- “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?” ~ Arthur C. Clarke
- “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.” ~ Lois McMaster Bujold
- “Yeah, I don’t think you can live anywhere else – it’s such a great city [New York]. L.A. is kind of a necessary evil, but man, I love going back to New York.” ~ Will Arnett
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“The State is said by some to be a necessary evil; it must be made unnecessary.” ~ Benjamin Tucker
- “I hate to shop. I consider it one of life’s necessary evils, like brussels sprouts and high-heeled shoes.” ~ Laurell K. Hamilton
- “Conventional wisdom, fooled by our misleading “physical intuition”, is that the real world is “continuous”, and that discrete models are necessary evils for approximating the “real” world, due to the innate discreteness of the digital computer.” ~ Doron Zeilberger
- “the fateful equating of power with violence, of the political with government, and of government with a necessary evil has begun.” ~ Hannah Arendt
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“Most “necessary evils” are far more evil than necessary.” ~ Richard Branson
- “While in some quarters it is felt that the critic is just a necessary evil, most serious-minded, decent, talented theater people agree that the critic is an unnecessary evil.” ~ Jean Kerr
- “My poems – like my family life, my life with friends, my teaching – these things express who I am. I don’t feel any extra responsibilities or relishes or necessary evils in them. They are part of who I am, with all of those customary desires and doubts, purposes and confusions that come along with being a particular person.” ~ Robert Pinsky
- “Government is only a necessary evil, like other go-carts and crutches. Our need of it shows exactly how far we are still children. All governing overmuch kills the self-help and energy of the governed.” ~ Wendell Phillips
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“Thus does a ‘necessary evil’ become an idol. Maybe we’re stuck with it. But do we have to worship it?” ~ Joseph Sobran
- “The law is an expression of God ‘s holy will and as such must be honored and loved,” said the preacher piously. “Rubbish,” said the Master. “The law is a necessary evil and as such must be cut down to the barest minimum. Show me a lover of the law and I will show you a muttonheaded tyrant .” ~ Anthony de Mello
- “Doubtless there are times when controversy becomes a necessary evil. But let us remember that it is an evil.” ~ Arthur Penrhyn Stanley
- “In order to forgive reason for the evil it has wrought on the majority of men, we must imagine for ourselves what man would be without his reason. ‘Tis a necessary evil.” ~ Nicolas Chamfort
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“Woman -a foe of friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil.” ~ Saint John Chrysostom
- “For particulars, as everyone knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.” ~ Aldous Huxley
- “For particulars, as everyone knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.” ~ Aldous Huxley
- “I believe you can divide the people in to two basic groups, those who believe government is a necessary good and those who believe it is a necessary evil, those who want government to take care of them, those who want government to leave them alone.” ~ Lyn Nofziger
