Greater Evil Quotes

For the lesser evil is reckoned a good in comparison with the greater evil, since the lesser evil is rather to be chosen than the greater. .

There is no greater evil than anarchy.

Slavery is an evil, a deep, detestable, damnable evil; an evil in all its aspects; an evil to the blacks and a greater evil to the whites …

Submit to the present evil, lest a greater one befall you.

Civil strife is as much a greater evil than a concerted war effort as war itself is worse than peace.

He has no right to his life when his duty calls him to resign it. Other men are bound ... to deprive him of life or liberty, if that should appear in any case to be indispensably necessary to prevent a greater evil.

There is no greater evil for men than the constraint of fortune.

The people of Palestine are the most oppressed people and live in constant fear by the rule of the Jewish oppressors. Their extreme frustration and hardships have led them to behave likewise - to resort to suicide bombings. Assuming the suicide bombing is evil but this evil is opposed by a greater evil for which there is no adequate substitute, therefore, their act will also be justified as lesser of the two evils in terms of the Shari'ah.

In this enlightened age there are few, I believe, but what will acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil in any country.... I think it, however, a greater evil to the white than to the black race, and while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former.

We leave it to the [local] bishops to weigh the circumstances in deciding whether or not to exercise restraint, ad maiora mala vitanda [to avoid greater evil]. This would be advisable if the danger of retaliatory and coercive measures would be imminent in cases of public statements of the bishop. Here lies one of the reasons we ourselves restrict our public statements. The experience we had in 1942 with documents which we released for distribution to the faithful gives justification, as far as we can see, for our attitude.

so long as it promises to exclude some greater possible evils.

The potential of greater good goes right along with the potential for greater evil.

The violence complained of would without question have constituted a battery if the subject of it had not been the defendant's wife …. It will be observed that the ground upon which we have put this decision is not that the husband has the right to whip his wife much or little; but that we will not interfere with family government in trifling cases… We will not inflict upon society the greater evil of raising the curtain upon domestic privacy, to punish the lesser evil of trifling violence.

The issue is not whether there are serious moral and practical costs to employing torture—of course there are for torture is evil. That is precisely why the choice of whether employ it to avert a greater evil is a tragic one.

You cannot cure a lesser evil by a greater evil.

Larger deficits are necessary and proper means to mitigate unemployment as the far greater evil in terms of human welfare.

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.

I think there's a fundamental moral issue about whether it's right for a machine to decide to kill a person. It's bad enough that people are deciding to kill people, but at least they have perhaps some moral argument that they're doing it to ultimately defend their families or prevent some greater evil.

When there is question of saving souls, or preventing greater harm to souls, We feel the courage to treat with the devil in person.

I think we are only going to get it by standing up and voting our values, understanding that the lesser evil doesn't solve the problem. It just prolongs the problem and it paves the way to the greater evil. That the policies of the Clintons, the Wall Street deregulation and NAFTA, created the economic misery that becomes very fertile territory for demagogues like Donald Trump.

There's nothing more dangerous than than someone trying to act for the greater good.