“Being good in just one thing it’s not enough, you have to be sufficiently good in everything.”

— Bjarne Stroustrup

Conference Madrid 2019

Last update Nov. 12, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Being good in just one thing it’s not enough, you have to be sufficiently good in everything." by Bjarne Stroustrup?

Bjarne Stroustrup photo

Bjarne Stroustrup 30

Danish computer scientist, creator of C++ 1950

Related quotes

“I don’t believe in doing everything and being mediocre at all of them. I believe in being good at one thing.”

Sofia Boutella (1982) Algerian dancer and actress

Sofia Boutella: from hung up with Madonna to hanging with Samuel L. Jackson in Kingsman https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/sofia-boutella-from-hung-up-with-madonna-to-hanging-with-samuel-l-jackson-in-kingsman/news-story/9ac4c0ec9799fc4f08fc5b922d339379 (January 30, 2015)

“If you love the good thing vitally, enough to give up for it all that one must give up, then you must hate the cheap thing just as hard. I tell you, there is such a thing as creative hate! A contempt that drives you through fire, makes you risk everything and lose everything, makes you a long sight better than you ever knew you could be.”

Willa Cather book The Song of the Lark

Part VI, Ch. 9
The Song of the Lark (1915)

“One of the big things about being a man, she'd noted, was that being good, doing the work, wasn't enough. It had to be generally acknowledged that here you were, damn well seeing to business.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Source: The Lonely Dead (2004), Ch. 6

“The good thing about being explosive is that no one can beat you.”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Source: Unwind

“You know, I have a philosophy there’s good that happens in everything.
It may not reveal itself immediately, and even in the most dire circumstances, if you just wait, if you just remain open to things, the good in it will reveal itself. And that has happened to me as well in countless, countless ways.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

2020s, I’ve Had a Year to Think About What’s Important (2020)

“It's not enough to do good. You have to be seen doing good.”

Rene Balcer (1954) screenwriter, producer and director

DA Arthur Branch in the Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode In the Wee Small Hours.
Law & Order: Criminal Intent

“It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Variant: It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.
Source: Discourse on Method

“I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author’s political views.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Letter to Upton Sinclair (19 August 1927)

“Intellectuals cannot be good revolutionaries; they are just good enough to be assassins.”

Jean Paul Sartre Dirty Hands

Act 5, sc. 3
Dirty Hands (1948)

“Yesirree, life sure is good.
Yesirree, nothing could possibly go wrong with everything being so good.
But of course, in books, good is boring.
Good is a snoozer.
Good makes people close the covers and never reopen them.
But you know—you'd think that just once when life finally started going my way, that cosmic writer out there would allow me and all of my co-characters to simply enjoy things for just a little while. I mean, what kind of a prick would end a book just when everything's going so well?”

Douglas Coupland book JPod

JPod (2006)

Related topics