“Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger—according to the way you react to it.”
Book I, Chapter 5, "We Have Cause to Be Uneasy"
Mere Christianity (1952)
Context: Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger—according to the way you react to it.
Comments during his first audience with German pilgrims
2005
Farwell, Byron: Queen Victoria's Little Wars, p. 27-31
“Goodness does not consist in greatness, but greatness in goodness.”
XIV, 6. Compare: "They ’re only truly great who are truly good", George Chapman, Revenge for Honour, Act v. Sc. 2.
Deipnosophistae (2nd century)
“The great in Evil, and the great in [Goodness|Good]]—both leave an immortal residue.”
Part 3, Chapter 12 (p. 181)
Nifft the Lean (1982)
NPR: "Apple Requested 'Zero' Personal Data In Deals With Facebook, CEO Tim Cook Says" https://www.npr.org/2018/06/04/616280585/apple-requested-zero-personal-data-in-deals-with-facebook-ceo-tim-cook-says (4 June 2018)
As cited in: Margaret A. Byrnes, Jeanne Baxter (2006), The Principal's Leadership Counts!. p. 99
Good To Great And The Social Sectors, 2005
According to Michael A. Ledeen, this line has been falsely attributed to Tocqueville by Dwight Eisenhower, Bill Clinton, Colin Powell, Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan. See Tocqueville on American Character (2001), p. 25 http://books.google.com/books?id=gFjQUXYsSR0C&pg=PA25. Hillary Clinton in her acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention (July 29, 2016), said, without attribution, "America is great because America is good."
Misattributed
