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Sue Monk Kidd100
Novelist 1948Related quotes
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist
Salon interview (2001)
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
No known source; also attributed to Susan Sarandon.[citation needed]
Disputed
“I believe in goodness, and I hope that good will prevail.”
Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet
31 August 1869
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
Context: My mind has been a tumult of opposing systems, — Stoicism, Quietism, Buddhism, Christianity. Shall I never be at peace with myself? If impersonality is a good, why am I not consistent in the pursuit of it? and if it is a temptation, why return to it, after having judged and conquered it?
Is happiness anything more than a conventional fiction? The deepest reason for my state of doubt is that the supreme end and aim of life seems to me a mere lure and deception. The individual is an eternal dupe, who never obtains what he seeks, and who is forever deceived by hope. My instinct is in harmony with the pessimism of Buddha and of Schopenhauer. It is a doubt which never leaves me, even in my moments of religious fervor. Nature is indeed for me a Mala; and I look at her, as it were, with the eyes of an artist. My intelligence remains skeptical. What, then, do I believe in? I do not know. And what is it I hope for? It would be difficult to say. Folly! I believe in goodness, and I hope that good will prevail. Deep within this ironical and disappointed being of mine there is a child hidden — a frank, sad, simple creature, who believes in the ideal, in love, in holiness, and all heavenly superstitions. A whole millennium of idyls sleeps in my heart; I am a pseudo-skeptic, a pseudo-scoffer.
“I don't believe in your "Good". I believe in human kindness.”
Vasily Grossman book Life and Fate
Source: Life and Fate
Leonard Nimoy (1931–2015) American actor, film director, poet, musician and photographer
A Lifetime of Love: Poems on the Passages of Life