“The evil that men do…”

FAMOUS FUNERAL ORATION QUOTE: “The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.”        William Shakespeare (1564-1616)         Lines said by Mark Antony in Act 3, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar        This is one of several well-known quotes in the funeral oration Mark Antony gives for Julius Caesar after Caesar is assassinated. It follows the famous opening words: “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” The oration in the play is loosely based on a real speech Antony gave at Caesar’s funeral, a few days after Caesar was stabbed to death by his political enemies on March 15, 44 B.C. (the “Ides of March”). An account of what Antony said was recorded by the Greek-born Roman historian Appian in his history of Rome’s civil wars. It does not include any of the famous lines in Shakespeare’s play. According to Appian, the Roman masses became so angry after hearing Antony’s subtly inflammatory speech that they burnt down the Senate building where Caesar was killed and went hunting for his murderers, who were forced to flee Rome.

THE GOD CONUNDRUM: “If, as the theologians say, ‘the very act of free choice is traced to God as to a cause’...if ‘everything happening from the exercise of free choice must be subject to divine providence,’ must not the evil that men do be attributed to God as cause?”        From a commentary on the philosophical debate over free will in The Great Ideas volume of Encyclopedia Britannica’s multi-volume series about the great books and ideas of the Western World, which was edited by Mortimer J. Adler and first published in 1952.

AN EARLY LABOR ACTIVIST’S VIEWPOINT: “It is sins of omission, not commission, that are most fruitful of harm; not the evil that men do, but the good they did not do, that lives after them.”        Editorial comment in an 1889 issue of The Railway Conductor’s Monthly        Included in The Conductor and Brakeman Vol. 6, compiled by The Order of Railway Conductors and Brakemen

A MODERN ACTIVIST’S VIEWPOINT: “It’s not the evil that men do that outlives them; it’s the mischief that computers and genetic research can get us into when they are spliced together that we need to worry about.”         From the book Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Business Ethics and Society (2006), written by Lisa Newton, Elaine Englehardt and Michael Pritchard         Paraphrasing of the views of technology critics like Jeremy Rifkin

THE SEXIST PARSON’S OPINION: “Parson Fawcett said: the evil that men do lives after them; but the evil that women do goes on for countless generations through their breeding.”        Catherine Cookson (1906-1998)        British novelist        In her period romance novel The Love Child (1990)

See more takeoffs and variations on “The evil that men do...”

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Related reading…

“The evil that men do” makes headlines – and annoys women

FAMOUS QUOTE: “The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.”        William Shakespeare (1564-1616)         Mark Antony’s famous funeral oration for Caesar in Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2

TOUCHY TIGER WOODS QUOTE: “There is a famous quote by Julius Caesar which states, ‘The evil men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.’ Tiger Woods cheated on his wife. His career is over. And golf is still boring.”        Author and blogger Robin Westmiller        In her column on Examiner.com, Dec. 20, 2009        Misattributing (and misusing?) Shakespeare’s quote

TOUCHÉ COUNTERQUOTE: “Yet with all the genderless demands the once fair sex insists upon one they have chosen to ignore is protesting the saying, ‘The evil that men do.’ I guess the ladies feel they do no evil, or at least they are not about to admit to it.”        Columnist Norm Cukras        In his column in the Highlands Today, Dec. 18, 2009

ACCLAIMED CRITIC’S QUOTE: “The evil that men do lives on the front pages of greedy newspapers, but the good is oft interred apathetically inside.”        Brooks Atkinson (1894-1984)        American drama critic and author        In his book Once Around the Sun (1951)

ACCLAIMED HIPSTER'S QUOTE: “The bad jazz that a cat blows, Wails long after he’s cut out. The groovy is often stashed with their frames.”        Lord Buckley (1906-1960)        The legendary hipster performer        His version of “Marc Antony’s Funeral Oration”

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