Villains aren’t just on the stage or the big screen. Unfortunately, villains are a part of everyday life. They are in the people that surround us, but they cannot see they are villains, as these quotes point out. It is said that one man’s terrorist is another man’s hero, and this is true about villains too.
These quotes help us see their side, and to understand that many villains are simply people who are misunderstood. Yes, they may behave very badly, but they have their reasons. Perhaps their early life was full of pain or misfortune, or perhaps they were taught to act the way they do.
Often the people in our lives are people who are hurting when they purposely hurt us, Check out these quotes to see their side of the story.
Top Quotes About Villains
- “Live as a villain, die as a hero.” Banksy
- “You can figure out what the villain fears by his choice of weapons.” Connie Brockway
- “Nobody is a villain in their own story. We’re all the heroes of our own stories.” George R. R. Martin
- “A villain is just a victim whose story hasn’t been told.” Chris Colfer
- “I prefer a real villain to a false hero.” Killer Mike
- “One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.” William Shakespeare
- “Well, I think there are no villains in this world. There are just misunderstood heroes.” Tom Hiddleston
- A villain must be a thing of power, handled with delicacy and grace. He must be wicked enough to excite our aversion, strong enough to arouse our fear, human enough to awaken some transient gleam of sympathy. We must triumph in his downfall, yet not barbarously nor with contempt, and the close of his career must be in harmony with all its previous development.” Agnes Repplier
- “In any story, the villain is the catalyst. The hero’s not a person who will bend the rules or show the cracks in his armor. He’s one-dimensional intentionally, but the villain is the person who owns up to what he is and stands by it.” Marilyn Manson
- “You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.” Aaron Eckhart
- “The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.” Alfred Hitchcock
- “One murder makes a villain; millions, a hero.” Charlie Chaplin
- “If I play a villain, I try to find his lightness and his good side. And if I play a hero or a good guy, I’ll try to find his darkness or his flaws. Because I don’t believe in good and evil. I believe in grays.” Joel Kinnaman
- “I’m often painted as the bad guy, and the artistic part of me wants to hand out the brush.” Criss Jami
- “There are only three types of citizenship: hero, villain, nobody.” Toba Beta
- “All the true heroes of history will be forgotten and all the villains will be remembered as heroes.” Leo Tolstoy
- “The villain of any story is often the most compelling character.” John Hodgman
- “Villains are mostly just people villainized by circumstance.” Chris Colfer
- “History is moving pretty quickly these days, and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.” Ian Fleming
- “A cinema villain essentially needs a mustache so he can twiddle with it gleefully as he cooks up his next nasty plan.” Mel Brooks
- “I think all of us have a hero and a villain in us.” Anson Mount.
- “I think all villains have something in common: they have something that they need or want very, very badly. The stakes are very high and they are not bound by moral codes or being ethical, so they can do anything and will do anything to get what they want.” Donna Murphy
- “You want to believe in black and white, good and evil, heroes that are truly heroic, villains that are just plain bad, but I’ve learned in the past year that things are rarely so simple. The good guys can do some truly awful things, and the bad guys can sometimes surprise the heck out of you.” Karen Marie Moning
- “So easily do weak men put in high positions turn villains.” Dmitry Pisarev
- “Heroic ambition seemed to have been the cause of much of the world’s pain then – quite like it is now. No villain ever saw himself a villain: he only saw himself a hero, and this goes just as no hero ever saw himself a hero: he simply did what he had to do. No true hero initially sets out with intentions of being deemed a hero.”Criss Jami
- “I don’t believe in villains or heroes, only in right or wrong ways that individuals are taken, not by choice, but by necessity or by certain still uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances and their antecedents.” Tennessee Williams
- “Maybe that was why I adored horror movies and true crime. I identified with the villain, the foe, the outsider. I was always the person who didn’t belong.” Kayla Krantz
- “Sometimes a villain is very quiet – it makes them more deadly, more intellectual.” Dave Filoni
- “Are the problems of the world caused by bad people who need to be crushed? Or do people do bad things when they are in a certain situation? If it is the latter, then we can go around crushing the villains for another thousand years and nothing will change.” Charles Eisenstein
- “Actors endow the villain in fiction with a warmth and quality that makes them memorable. I think we like fictional villains because they’re the Mr. Hyde of our own dreams. I’ve met a few real villains in my time, and they weren’t the least bit sympathetic.” John Rhys-Davies
- “know the feelin, when you feelin like a villain,You be havin good thoughts but the evils be revealin’.And the stresses of life can take you off the right path,Jealousy and envy tends to infiltrate your staff…We gotta hold it down so we can move on pastAll adversities, so we can get through fast.” Q-Tip
- “Life is not a cinema; indeed both the hero and the villain will die in the end.” J. Lepika
- “One of the greatest things about playing a villain is people wondering when he’s going to make his comeback.” Michael McMillian
- “The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful in society, had that society been well organized.” Mary Wollstonecraft
- “If you think making unlawful demands predicated on unproven beliefs with the threat of violence represents bravery, you are the villain in the story.” C.A.A. Savastano
- “Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes.” Robert A. Heinlein
- “The only difference between a hero and a villain is…Who is telling the story!” Nitya Prakash
- ”Life is not simple, and people can’t be boxed into being either heroes or villains.” Jessica Hagedorn
- “Someone with a victim mindset is always looking for a villain to blame and a situation to suffer from.” Steve Maraboli
- “I’m not a role model. I’m a role villain.” Marilyn Manson
- “Not all people are obsessed with love in their life, some are just are obsessed to need a villain because they want to be a Hero.” Nitya Prakash
- “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
- “But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?” Friedrich Nietzsche
- “Maybe I am villain in your story, but I am hero in mine.” Shon Mehta
- “If life has taught me one thing, it’s that there are no villains. Only people, doing their best.” Joe Abercrombie
- “Some people are cowards… I think by and large a third of people are villains, a third are cowards, and a third are heroes. Now, a villain and a coward can choose to be a hero, but they’ve got to make that choice.” Tom Hanks
- “Am I still a hero if the only person I save ismyself?Am I still a villain if the only person I hurt ismyself?”B. Damani
- “In an evil society a villain is the hero, because only the villain can speak the truth.” T.J. Kirk
- “Villains are a lot of fun. My villains have a lot of tongue-in-cheek. They are sometimes conscious of and a little bit gleeful of their villainy.” John Rhys-Davies
- “There weren’t any villains though. The world was just complicated in various ways, and there weren’t any obvious villains to be found. It was excruciating.” Tatsuhiko Takimoto
Related: Marilyn Manson’s Wildest Quotes
Quotes top 5 Favorite Quotes from Villains
- “I chose my path, you chose the way of the hero. And they found you amusing for a while, the people of this city. But the one thing they love more than a hero is to see a hero fail, fall, die trying. In spite of everything you’ve done for them, eventually they will hate you”. Why bother?” Green Goblin, Spiderman
- “Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?” The Joker, Batman
- “You are a god among insects. Never let anyone tell you different.” Magneto, X2: X-Men United
- “A vigilante is just a man lost in the scramble for his own gratification. He can be destroyed, or locked up. But if you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal, and if they can’t stop you, then you become something else entirely… a legend, Mr. Wayne.” Ra’s Al Ghul, Batman Begins
- “Oh, you. You just couldn’t let me go, could you? This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. You are truly incorruptible, aren’t you? Huh? You won’t kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness. And I won’t kill you because you’re just too much fun. I think you and I are destined to do this forever.” Joker, The Dark Knight
Be sure to see our Freddy Krueger Quotes
Villains Video – Top 10 Movie Villains of All Time
This is a great montage of the 10 worst movie villains of all time. Its a well edited quick clip that will remind you of your favorite villains. And you might find yourself wanting to watch these movies again too.
Related: Pablo Escobar Quotes
Summary
Every villain, whether from fiction or from our lives, can teach us something about the nature of humanity. Villains are rarely all bad, and they are all hurting. People are rarely good or evil; there is good and bad in everyone.
We all have the potential to become a villain. Use these quotes to remember that the people we see as villains are people who have suffered in one way or another. This will make it easier to change the way you react to the villains in your life. As we change the way we treat others, even villains can begin to change.
I’m Alice Judy and AnQuotes is a fun hobby for me. We know that everyone loves a great quote and our mission here is simple – to be the best and most interesting quote site in the world! If you have quotes you would like us to cover, please contact us.
