Quotes / Balance Between Good and Evil

Anime and Manga

"I do not deny evil, nor do I believe that any human is completely free of malice. Everything must be in balance. As long as evil and good maintain an equilibrium in this world, there is no problem. Perfect balance is the key to everything."

— Death the Kid, Soul Eater

Comic Books

"When Black Hammer destroyed Anti-God, it threw off The Balance. As he learned on New World, there is a cosmic balance between light and dark that must be maintained. And with Anti-God destroyed, a price had to be paid. Us. We had to leave too in order to maintain The Balance. If we stayed, Anti-God would return too."

— Colonel Weird, Black Hammer

Fan Works

"Flowing through all, there is balance. There is no peace without a passion to create. There is no passion without peace to guide. Knowledge fades without the strength to act. Power blinds without the serenity to see. There is freedom in life. There is purpose in death. The Force is all things and I am the Force."

— The Grey Jedi Code, Star Wars

Film

"Good and evil, there never is one without the other."

— Merlin, Excalibur

Literature

There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.

— The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut

"As soon as you appeared on this roof you made yourself ridiculous. It was your tone of voice. You spoke your words as though you denied the very existence of the shadows or of evil. Think, now : where would your good be if there were no evil and what would the world look like without shadow? Shadows are thrown by people and things. There's the shadow of my sword, for instance. But shadows are also cast by trees and living things. Do you want to strip the whole globe by removing every tree and every creature to satisfy your fantasy of a bare world? You're stupid."

— Woland, The Master and Margarita

"For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad."

— Lehi, The Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 2:11

Luficer:: Just try to imagine, Philip, a world without evil. A world without anger, hate, war, disease, destruction, and all the other terrible things you can think of. The sun shines, the birds whistle, and so do all the nice and friendly people. They are having a really good time. They greet each other, they take care of each other, and they help each other. Can you imagine that, Philip?
Philip: Yes... but it is hard.
Luficer: Of course it is. And now it gets even harder. No ruthlessness, laziness, or egoism. No envy, and therefore no sports or competition. The drive to compete has died, because if you lose, you never feel aggrieved or angry, only happy for your opponent. And when the joy of winning and losing is equally great, why even play at all? Books and film are about nothing at all, because in this world there are no bad guys to capture, and therefore no heroes. The newspapers are just as empty as the books, because there is nothing to write about, no crime, no scandals, fraud, political corruption, nothing at all. The unemployment rate will rise dramatically. If only you knew, Philip, how many people have jobs because mankind is unable to behave itself.

— The Great Devilwar

The Moors were a place of delicate balances, every principality held by two monsters of equal power and opposing dispositions. Because the Master thrived in hunger and death, Dr. Bleak stood in austerity and in life, balancing the scales, preventing the judgment of the Moon herself from falling on their shoulders.

— Wayward Children: "In Mercy, Rain"

Tabletop Games

"I have heard it said evil is nothing more than good's absence, as if evil was the darkness to good's light. A comforting thought, I imagine, for those seeking redemption, but, I tell you, put such thoughts from your mind. You need only peer into a demon's eyes to know evil is not some vacuum waiting for virtue to come and fill its emptiness. Evil is a force. It is an influence in the cosmos, an agency equal to or perhaps even greater than its antithesis. There are two sides in this eternal struggle, one light and the other dark. You might find evil's works reprehensible, yet to those whose hearts belong to corruption, good deeds are equally deplorable. Understand, there is no redemption, only treason against the side you were born to serve."

— Asmodeus, Lord of the Nine Hells, The Book of Vile Darkness

In its primordial state, the Wyrm maintained the equilibrium of order and chaos through the process of creation or obliteration. If chaos threatened to overwhelm the universe with its boundless energy, or if order had bound up too much of the free energy of the world, the Wyrm would stretch wide its maw to swallow up the excess and remove it from existence, or aim its tail at the deficiency and bestow upon the world the added mass of its own excretions.

— Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Book Of The Wyrm (2nd Ed)

Video Games

Rose: No! There must be balance! The cycle must be maintained.
Gnarl: I think what that wench is ranting about is that when a force gets out of control, another must rise to stop it.
Rose: There cannot be light without darkness!
Gnarl: And that darkness would be you, Master!

— Overlord II

I propose a simple experiment - look around. You see light. You see darkness. There could not be one without the other. They are two sides of the same coin.
If it is true for these Newtonian echoes, why would it not be true of the purest, paracausal forms?
Therefore, I conclude: the reason you persecute me is not because of the symmetry. It's because of the truth beyond this truth, the truth which you most dread: if we could destroy Darkness, but we had to give up our Light to do so, how many of us would make that trade?

— Ulan-Tan, Destiny 2, "Symmetry Flight"

I believe in balance. But to seek balance is not to seek equity. A sea half of water and half of poison is not in balance. A body half alive and half dead is not in balance. Given the choice to live in any world, any world at all… we would need a little Darkness in it, I think, to keep the balance true. But not so much as we would need the Light…

— Queen Mara Sov, Destiny 2, "Trust and Hope"

"Where there are demons, I slay them.
Where there are saints, I slay them.
Good is not my nature.
Justice is not my purpose.
The righteous path is not mine to walk.
Good and Evil alike shall perish beneath my blade."

— The Law of Balance, Full Metal Daemon Muramasa

"You swore an oath, my master. To make no distinction between good and evil. To become a vessel of might, as I am. We who bear the name Muramasa were forged to slay good and evil alike. Mido. You slew one whom you judged as evil. Now you must slay one whom you judge good. You slew an enemy. Now you must slay a friend. You slew with hate. Now you must slay with love."

— Muramasa, Full Metal Daemon Muramasa

Webcomics

"Ben and I assumed that you can label any stance you want as 'preserving the balance' as long as some sort of eerily knowledgeable character is the one making the proclamations."

— Lewis Powell, The Rant for Terror Island Theorem #164

"The balance of power must be met. Conflict and resolution must be equal."

— Gamermaster, L's Empire

Web Original

"Why? Why is there a balance? Why not just have everything good and nothing evil? What’s actually wrong with that?"
"I..." He licked his lips and squinted. The golden light seemed to be bothering him. ‘The balance is beyond human understanding, beyond the mere..."
"You don’t know, do you?" I let the question hang. "You were going to send me back into that volcano, to almost certain death, and you’ve absolutely no idea why."

— How To Write Badly Well: "Base Your Plot on Unsupported Assertions"

Qui-Gon: Anakin will bring balance to the Force? That would be good, right?

Mace Windu: Noooo... no no no no... It would be really, really... No. Just... no.

— Darths & Droids

Western Animation

"You destroyed the demon! Yin and yang! Now the world is out of balance, nobody told you to destroy the demon!"

— Uncle, Jackie Chan Adventures

---