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A good End cannot sanctifie evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it. Some Folks think they may Scold, Rail, Hate, Rob and Kill too; so it be but for God's sake. But nothing in us unlike him, can please him.

— William Penn Fruits of Solitude (1682)

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Good and Evil

More quotes by William Penn

They have a Right to censure, that have a Heart to help: The rest is Cruelty, not Justice.

Fruits of Solitude (1682)

True religion does not draw men out of the world but enables them to live better in it and excites their endeavors to mend it.

No Cross, No Crown (1682)

He that does good for good's sake seeks neither praise nor reward, though sure of both at last.

Some Fruits of Solitude in Reflections and Maxims (1682)

Lest, selling that noble inheritance for a poor mess of perishing pottage, you never enter into His eternal rest.

True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.

All William Penn quotes →

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False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

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I believe in evil. It is the property of all those who are certain of truth. Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil.

Edward Teller

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis God in the Dock (1970)

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.

Henry David Thoreau Walden (1854)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: William Penn (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.