“Nothing bad ever happens if you don't do anything.”
Radio From Hell (November 13, 2006)
“That was one of the virtues of being a pessimist: nothing was ever as bad as you thought it would be.”
— James Jones, book From Here to Eternity
Source: From Here to Eternity
Last update June 3, 2021. History
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James Jones52
American author 1921–1977Related quotes
“Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.”
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist
K 13
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook K (1789-1793)
George Will (1941) American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author
The Leveling Wind: politics, the culture, and other news, 1990-1994 (c. 1994), Will, Viking; as cited in Quotable Quotes (1997), Editors of Reader’s Digest, Penguin : ISBN 1606525956
1990s
Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America
2010s, 2016, September, First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)
“If human beings didn't have a strong preference for creation, nothing would get built, ever.”
Larry Niven (1938) American writer
Niven's Laws
Context: 6) It is easier to destroy than create.
Bin Laden tore down the World Trade Center? Let's see him build one. If human beings didn't have a strong preference for creation, nothing would get built, ever.
Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America
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The Last Great Pandemic
Jarrett Stepman
The Daily Signal
https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/03/17/the-last-great-pandemic/
2020s, 2020, March
James Clavell book Shōgun
Source: Shōgun (1975), Ch. 5
“In truth, O judges, while I wish to be adorned with every virtue, yet there is nothing which I can esteem more highly than being and appearing grateful. For this one virtue is not only the greatest, but is also the parent of all the other virtues.”
Etenim, iudices, cum omnibus virtutibus me adfectum esse cupio, tum nihil est quod malim quam me et esse gratum et videri. Haec enim est una virtus non solum maxima sed etiam mater virtutum omnium reliquarum.
Marcus Tullius Cicero Pro Plancio
Pro Plancio (54 B.C.)
“no one ever gossips about the virtues of others”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
1920s
Variant: No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.
Source: On Education, Especially in Early Childhood (1926), Ch. 2: The Aims of Education, p. 50
Context: The instinctive foundation of the intellectual life is curiosity, which is found among animals in its elementary forms. Intelligence demands an alert curiosity, but it must be of a certain kind. The sort that leads village neighbours to try to peer through curtains after dark has no very high value. The widespread interest in gossip is inspired, not by a love of knowledge but by malice: no one gossips about other people's secret virtues, but only about their secret vices. Accordingly most gossip is untrue, but care is taken not to verify it. Our neighbour's sins, like the consolations of religion, are so agreeable that we do not stop to scrutinise the evidence closely.