“We must learn to look at problems all-sidedly, seeing the reverse as well as the obverse side of things. In given conditions, a bad thing can lead to good results and a good thing to bad results.”
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
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Mao Zedong 181
Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of… 1893–1976Related quotes
Source: The Phantom Tollbooth
Joe Strummer: Putting a Scare into he Hearts of All Things Corporate (2002)
“Good judgement is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgement.”
“The idea of the thing was attacked by good and bad men, in good faith and bad.”
Source: Fourth Mansions (1969), Ch. 4
Context: "There was a later time when sincere men tried to build an organization as wide as the world to secure the peace of the world. It had been tried before and it had failed before. Perhaps if it failed this time it would not be tried again for a very long while. The idea of the thing was attacked by good and bad men, in good faith and bad. The final realization of it was so close that it could be touched with the fingertips. A gambler wouldn't have given odds on it either way. It teetered, and it almost seemed as though it would succeed. Then members of that group interfered."
"And it failed, O'Claire?"
"No. It succeeded, Foley, as in the other case. It succeeded in so twisted a fashion that the Devil himself was puzzled as to whether he had gained or lost ground by it. And he isn't easily puzzled."
“If goodness can't come from bad things, it makes bad things unbearable.”
Source: Love Is the Higher Law
“I learned that we are all good and bad instead of good or bad”
Context: Many men, aware of the treatment I received at the hands of Walter Dawson, have asked me why I did not avenge the wrongs he inflicted on me. I am not aware that he did inflict wrong on me … I did some good through being blacklisted. It made me more than determined to perfect an organization that would render blacklisting impossible; it made me mayor of Scranton where I learned that we are all good and bad instead of good or bad. It taught me how to put myself in the place of the vilest, filthiest, lowest-down tramp that comes to me for help. It taught me when men were brought before me for trial how to pierce the veil between cause and effect, between motive and act; it enabled me to come down from the bench as a magistrate, a representative of the law, and before the bar of my own heart, and conscience, place the prisoner then before me on the bench in my stead.
