Skip to content

Out of many evils the evil which is least is the least of evils.

E malis multis, malum, quod minimum est, id minimum est malum.

Original text (Latin)

Another quote →

Topics

Good and Evil

More quotes by Plautus

Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt.

One eyewitness weighs more than ten hearsays. Seeing is believing, all the world over.

To blow and to swallow at the same time is not easy; I cannot at the same time be here and also there.

Oh, are not the pleasures in life, in this daily round, trifling compared with the pains!

He whom the gods love dies young, whilst he is full of health, perception, and judgment.

All Plautus quotes →

You may also like

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

Socrates

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: Plautus (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.