“Things are never as bad as they seem.”

— Harper Lee, book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Last update Dec. 4, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Things are never as bad as they seem." by Harper Lee?

Harper Lee142

American author 1926–2016

Related quotes

“You are entering a phase of your life in which many different things will occur… bad things that seem good at first and good things that seem bad at first.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“… none seemed to think the injury arose from the use of a bad thing, but from the abuse of a very good thing.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Address to the Springfield Washingtonian Temperance Society (22 February 1842). Frequently misquoted as "It has long been recognized that the problems with alcohol relate not to the use of a bad thing, but to the abuse of a good thing." http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/temperance.htm <br class="br">1840s

“Things are not always as bad as they seem. Sometimes, the darkness only makes it easier to see the light.”

Jim Butcher book Skin Game

Source: Skin Game

“Harry Dresden: Many things are not as they seem: The worst things in life never are.”

Jim Butcher book White Night

Source: The Dresden Files, White Night (2007), Chapter 1, Opening line

“I don’t want there to be a catastrophe, I hope there never is another one, there probably will be, but it is really terrible that we need, we seem to rely on very bad things happening in order to come together. We’ve got to do better than that.”

Russ Feingold (1953) Wisconsin politician; three-term U.S. Senator

[Rivera, Adrian, An Interview with Democratic Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, http://thepolitic.org/an-interview-with-democratic-wisconsin-senator-russ-feingold/, 20 August 2018, The Politic, January 10, 2018]
2018

“The really basic thing in government is policy. Bad administration, to be sure, can destroy good policy, but good administration can never save bad policy.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Speech to the Los Angeles Town Club, Los Angeles, California (11 September 1952); Speeches of Adlai Stevenson (1952), p. 36
Context: In the tragic days of Mussolini, the trains in Italy ran on time as never before and I am told in their way, their horrible way, that the Nazi concentration-camp system in Germany was a model of horrible efficiency. The really basic thing in government is policy. Bad administration, to be sure, can destroy good policy, but good administration can never save bad policy.