This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I cannot be certain not to meet with evil company, but I will be careful not to keep with evil company. I would willingly sort myself with such as should either teach or learn goodness; and if my companion cannot make me better, nor I him good, I will rather leave him ill than he shall make me worse.
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
The world is full of wickedness and misery precisely because it is based on freedom – yet that freedom constitutes the whole dignity of man and of his world. Doubtless at the price of its repudiation evil and suffering could be abolished, and the world forced to be “good” and “happy”; but man would have lost his likeness to God, which primarily resides in his freedom.
Dignity | Evil | Freedom | God | Good | Happy | Man | Price | Suffering | Wickedness | World |
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
The good may prove to be a hidden form of evil. The evil may prove to be a new and not yet recognized form of good.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is Good steadily hastening towards immortality. And the vast all that is call'd Evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead.
Evil | Good | Immortality | Little | Thought | Universe | Wisdom | Thought |
Peter Abelard, Latin: Petrus Abaelardus or Abailard; French: Pierre Abélard
For as a picture is often more beautiful and worthy of commendation if some colors in themselves are included in it, than it would be if it were uniform and of a single color, so from an admixture of evil the universe is rendered more beautiful and worthy of commendation.
Abū al-Hasan Alī ibn Ismā'īl al-Ash'arī
Nothing can be evil on the part of God. For a thing is evil on our part only because we transgress the limit and bound set for us and do what we have no right to do. But the creator is subject to no one and bound by no command.