Villainy Quotes

“The villains were always ugly in books and movies. Necessarily so, it seemed. Because if they were attractive—if their looks matched their charm and their cunning—they wouldn't only be dangerous.

They would be irresistible.”
― Nenia Campbell, Horrorscape

“Evil turned out not to be a grand thing. Not sneering Emperors with their world-conquering designs. Not cackling demons plotting in the darkness beyond the world. It was small men with their small acts and their small reasons. It was selfishness and carelessness and waste. It was bad luck, incompetence, and stupidity. It was violence divorced from conscience or consequence. It was high ideals, even, and low methods.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“There is such a thing as the poetry of a mistake, and when you say, "Mistakes were made," you deprive an action of its poetry, and you sound like a weasel.”
― Charles Baxter, Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction

“I can certainly identify with The Villain. A Villain is someone who has a past, who is strongly opinionated, fearless, doesn't get intimated by anything, and went beyond suffering. It's an empowerment figure.”
― Nuno Roque

“But see you, we should travel by night. Dark times for dark business, as they says. No sun to bother Valeriana or you, Kaylana's surely no' disadvantaged, and I know I work better in darkness. Anybody looking for us will have a harder time of it. Besides, marching in daylight is for the heroes. If we're going to do this, we may as well go all out.”
― Eve Forward, Villains by Necessity

“May you reign supreme but never unchallenged.”
― Jeff Mach, There and Never, Ever Back Again: Diary of a Dark Lord

“The world is filled with heroes and wannabes, so let me just play the villain.”
― Ahmed Mostafa

“Just because a person is attractive/beautiful, this does not mean it is okay to villainize them. We always say that we cannot judge a person from the outside (doesn't matter if they have a handicap, are ugly, have a deformity, etc.). But this must go both ways. It also does not matter if someone is beautiful, attractive and happy. That also does not make it okay to judge them, to villainize them. There is a double standard when it comes to whom people choose to be good to, and this double standard is wrong. The outward appearance, both the grotesque and the beautiful, must not be basis for kindness and for cruelty.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by.
Richard loves Richard; that is, I and I.”
― William Shakespeare, Richard III

“In the world of so-called villains, what we need is not another hero. What we need is to stop the influx of people who dress themselves as menaces and proceed to harm others.”
― Vironika Tugaleva, The Love Mindset: An Unconventional Guide to Healing and Happiness

“The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two.”
― Mark Twain

“I think villains are not those who are blinded by their judgment and believe the acts of cruelty are justice. Those are just victims to darkness. True villains are fully rational – the ones who commit cruelty for the sake of it.”
― Tamuna Tsertsvadze, Galaxy Pirates

“If I must consort with rogues [...] I own I like them to be in the grand manner.”
― Georgette Heyer, The Foundling

“They often say an idea is not as important as its execution, and that the judgment comes according to perspectives. I confess this be the truth of life. Well then, I should also calculate, that if I have an utterly cruel idea but execute it properly, people will judge me as a saviour, while if a heroic person like you fulfills his idea with the utmost sincerity, he shall be accused of villainy since he goes on extremes just to bring his idealistic vision to life. Aye, amigo – sincerity is rarely rewarded. Foxiness and hypocrisy win the hearts of the multitude, especially if one craftily hides their true intentions and desires with an innocent, hearty smile.”
― Tamuna Tsertsvadze, Galaxy Pirates

“What if I wanted to rule the world?" she asked lightly. "I might desire to sit on a throne of skulls and be the universe's dark queen."
"I'd totally help you with that," Jared told her. " I am so willing to be a minion, you have no idea. I will throw people into aquariums full of mutant octopi and sharks with lasers on their heads on command.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, Untold

“One should be labelled as a villain in society’s eyes in order to commit kind deeds untrammelled. The society never associates freedom with kindness, for sometimes the free spirits allow themselves to defy common rules, and the society deems it as villainy. If I am called a villain for the said reason, I shall bear that label with pride, for it proves I am a free man.”
― Tamuna Tsertsvadze, Galaxy Pirates

“I would say that you have fallen into the commonest fallacy of all in dealing with social and economic subjects—the ‘devil theory.’ [...]
You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity. [...]
You think banders are scoundrels. They are not. Nor are company officials, nor patrons, nor the governing classes back on earth. Men are constrained by necessity and build up rationalizations to account for their acts.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Logic of Empire

“Quite often Wrong Planet people have a chequered past with periods of, how shall we say, fluctuating fortunes. Feast or famine, that’s always been our lifestyle, with maybe spells of what some people would term ‘reprehensible conduct.’ A number of Carefree Scamps have served time in prison. And if you’re reading this now and thinking, “Well, I must admit I’ve been a bit of a scoundrel at times, but I like to think my heart’s in the right place now,” then that’s further evidence that you ‘get’ it.”
― Karl Wiggins, Birth of the Communist Manifesto

“My advice: give it up now and be glad you failed the first time. Look at me, I’ve only killed one person and look what it’s turned me into.”
― Clare Urbanski, Sixth in Line

“What will you do to me, my little sparrow? Beat your hands against my chest? Scratch me up? Shout at me in that sweet, trembling voice? If that’s the case, you tempt me to villainy, simply by making me crave the punishment.”
― Nenia Campbell, Raise the Blood

“I told you that you wouldn't like me. I understand. It shows proper feeling. If you said to me: There's this man who is so callous and brutal that he doesn't give a damn about his fellow human beings, wouldn't shed a tear over the death of an innocent; would you care to meet this person, shake hands with him, maybe invite him into your home and have dinner with him? You're kidding, right. That hypothetical piece of shit is, of course, me.”
― K.J. Parker, Prosper's Demon

“If hell...has one complexion more hideous than another, it is where villainy is masked by hypocracy”
― Walter Scott, Rob Roy

“At least seventy per cent of villainy was the aesthetic.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, Long Live Evil

“I can do this," I say. "On my own. Let me prove it." He doesn't look convinced. "Come on, give me a chance to be the hero for once." I pause. "Or... the villain? I'm still a little confused about where we stand as far as that goes?"
"Don't think about it too hard, you'll hurt yourself," he says.”
― K.S. Merbeth, Bite

“Seeing her hands trembling, he felt a familiar thrill run down his spine. He lived for these moments. She’d been so full of herself, so confident. Then, with just a shove from him, she’d collapsed like a house of cards. The joy of crushing his opponents made sweating through two uniforms a day worth it.”
― Mark S. Ehrlich, Float the Boat

“I swear it's easier to purge yourself of great errors than of little villainies.”
― Marek Hłasko, The Eighth Day of the Week

“People renowned for villainy and virtue may come from the same stock.”
― Luo Guanzhong, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms

“If I have added anything to the history of villainy, it’s a sense of fun.”
― Vincent Price

“The only kind of people who would be knocking down big animals now would be poachers or cattle rustlers, and either could be desperate and dangerous if caught in the act.”
― C.J. Box, Open Season

“…empathy shouldn’t be offered based on who someone is; it should be offered based on who we are…. If we can decide that one group of people is a villain and beyond redemption and not deserving of humanity, as we see all the time in society, it’s very easy to say that about any other group of people.”
― David Osit