“Good people are only half as good, and bad people only half as bad, as other people regard them.”

Source: Guards! Guards!

Source: A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard (1911), p. 18.

Variant: We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.

Source: It (1986), Ch. 16 : Eddie's Bad Break, §8
Context: Maybe, he thought, there aren't any such things as good friends or bad friends — maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you're hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they're always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for, too, if that's what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart.

Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), Chapter 28

2010s, 2015, Speech on (20 July 2015)

NPR Interview January 2007, regarding current uses of the camera phone http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/programs/2007/01/06/father_of_the_camera.html.

So don't worry if now your time is bad it's making you strong so nothing can effect you in future