Necessarily Evil/Quotes

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Let me tell you what's gonna happen. This way you can prepare yourself. Okay. Soon there's gonna be a knock on that door and you will be called outside. In the hall there will be a man who outranks you. First, he'll compliment you on the fine job you've done, that you're making the world a safer place, that you're to receive a commendation and a promotion. And then he's going to tell you that I am to be released. You're going to protest. You'll probably threaten to resign. But in the end I will be released. The reason I'll be released is the same reason you think I'll be convicted. I do rub shoulders with some of the most vile, sadistic men calling themselves leaders today. But some of those men are the enemies of your enemies. And while the biggest arms dealer in the world is your boss, the President of the United States, who ships more merchandise in a day than I do in a year... sometimes it's embarrassing to have his fingerprints on the guns. Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me to supply forces he can't be seen supplying. So... you call me evil. But unfortunately for you, I'm a necessary evil.
Yuri Orlov, Lord of War
I sometimes fancy myself an evil that exists to oppose other evils . . . On that day when the world is completely cleansed of evil, then I, too, will go down into darkness, swallowing curses. Perhaps even sooner than that, I now judge. But whatever . . . Until that time, I shall not wash my hands nor let them hang useless.

The Operative: I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin.
Mal: So me and mine gotta lay down and die... so you can live in your better world?

The Operative: I'm not going to live there. There's No Place for Me There... any more than there is for you. Malcolm... I'm a monster. What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it, but it must be done.

Szeth: You are a monster.

Taravangian: Yes, but I am the monster who will save this world.

There'll be times when my crimes
Will seem almost unforgivable
I give in to sin

Because you have to make this life livable
Depeche Mode, "Strangelove"
"I must protect the galaxy at any cost. I abandoned the moral high ground many years ago. It's not as if the rachni or krogan would show mercy out of a sense of morality. I will pay for taking the low ground after I die, but there always has to be someone that is willing to make such a sacrifice for the sake of something far greater than themselves. It's part of the order of things."
Tyrin Lieph, the Villain Protagonist of The Council Era.
In the battleground, there is no place for hope. What lies there is just cold despair and a sin called victory, built on the pain of the defeated. The world as is, the human nature as always, it is impossible to eliminate the battles. In the end, killing is necessary evil - and if so, it is best to end them in the best efficiency and at the least cost, least time. Call it not foul nor nasty. Justice cannot save the world. It is useless.
Kiritsugu Emiya, Fate/Zero

Yesterday,
I watched three men die because one man sneezed in a room full of blood and shit and light.
Today,
three more men go in, cheap mops and each other's lives in their hands.
Yesterday,
I watched a man I admired gunned down for leaving a rose for a girl whose life was tattered by trauma she never deserved.
Today,
she doesn't remember, and three halls down I can hear her screaming.
Yesterday,
I watched a group of soldiers go down fighting against the corpses of comrades who'd died before them.
Today,
we test another sample, this time on children.
Yesterday,
I watched five men and women gunned down in an abandoned factory no one cares about.
Today,
it happens again and again. Every eleven seconds. Forever.
Yesterday,
I watched a man sit comfortably in a nice armchair, sipping scotch and laughing as he ordered a woman to simply stop breathing.
Today,
he gets the day off of work detail for good behavior.
Yesterday,
I watched hundreds of men and women in orange jumpsuits herded like animals into empty rooms that filled with gas and fire.
Today,
hundreds more are told they have a chance for a lighter sentence, and a chance to serve their country.
Yesterday,
I watched the world nearly die in a thousand thousand terrible ways. Sometimes we would have had time to scream.
Today,
I'm alive to write about it. You want happy endings? Fuck you.
You're alive to read it.
God help us all.

Secure. Contain. Protect.

Secretary Bishop: How long before we're ready?
Brandon Fayette: It should be within the hour. Sir, history may never fully know what we've done here. How we've saved our universe. I'm proud to be a part of it.

Secretary Bishop: Oppenheimer saved us too. But at what cost? He couldn't bear the nightmares... the screams of all the innocents he had killed. "Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds." Only in our case, that really is true. We destroyed their world to save ours. May God have mercy on us.
You think because I'm willing to use the enemy's tactics, that they're no longer my enemy?
The Illusive Man, Mass Effect 3