Quotes about goodness
page 62

MS Dhoni photo

“I focus on Cricket it's something i am good at. After retiring, i want to serve in the army. It has always been about serving the nation.”

MS Dhoni (1981) Indian cricket player

In dhoni's own words: it's always been about serving the country. https://www.scoopwhoop.com/sports/ms-dhoni/

Samuel Rogers photo
Dan Rather photo

“Good evening. President Reagan, still training his spotlight on the economy, today signed a package of budget cuts that he will send to Congress tomorrow. Lesley Stahl has the story.”

Dan Rather (1931) Journalist, Anchor

Rather's first lines in his debut as anchor of The CBS Evening News, Monday, March 9, 1981.

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“1964. If thou wilt have no Difference with thy Friends; sell them not Horses, nor Goods; and buy nothing of them.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

Tsunetomo Yamamoto photo
Henry Moore photo

“And for me Michelangelo's greatest work is one that was in his studio partly finished, partly unfinished when he died 'The Rondanini Pietà'. I don't know of any other single work of art by anyone that is more poignant, more moving. It isn't the most powerful of Michelangelo's works – it's a mixture, in fact, of two styles…. the changing became so drastic that I think he knocked the head off the sculpture… So the figure must originally have been a good deal taller. And if we see also the proportion of the length of the body of Christ compared with the length of the legs, there's no doubt that the whole top of the original sculpture has been cut away. Now this to me is a great question. Why should I and other sculptors I know, my contemporaries – I think that Giacometti feels this, I know Marino Marini feels it – find this work one of the most moving and greatest works we know of when it's a work which has such disunity in it?… But that's so moving, so touching: the position of the heads, the whole tenderness of the top part of the sculpture, is in my opinion more what it is by being in contrast with the rather finished, tough, leathery, typical Michelangelo legs. The top part is Gothic and the lower part is sort of Renaissance.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote of Henri Moore in his interview with David Silvester, in 'The Sunday Times Magazine', 16 Febr. 1964, pp. 18, 20-22
1955 - 1970

“Setting a good example for children takes all the fun out of middle age.”

William Feather (1889–1981) Publisher, Author

Also quoted in Every Day Is Father's Day: The Best Things Ever Said About Dear Old Dad (1989), p. 150
The Business of Life (1949)

Bode Miller photo
Bernard Cornwell photo
Simone Weil photo
Willem Roelofs photo

“I repainted the only unsold picture that was [exhibited] in Rotterdam last year. It seems to me that it looks quite pleasing and good now... I want you to ask him [the client] seven hundred guilders.... for six hundred as lowest price I would be willing to sell it and if you think - knowing him - it would be better to ask that price at once, so do it.”

Willem Roelofs (1822–1897) Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897)

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) Ik heb het eenige nog niet verkochte schilderij dat voorl. jaar te Rotterdam was, overgeschilderd.. .Mij dunkt, dat het er nog al aangenaam en goed uitziet.. .Ik wilde dat gij hem zevenhonderd guldens voor vroeg.. ..voor zeshonderd zou ik het uiterlijk kunnen laten en meent gij, hem kennende, het beter zou zijn dadelijk die prijs te vragen zoo doe het dan.
Quote from a letter of W. Roelofs, Brussel 20 June, 1860, to art-collector/dealer P. verloren van Themaat in Utrecht, from: an extract of the Dutch Archive RKD, The Hague https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/289
this letter is one of many illustrations that Roelofs repainted his paintings rather frequently, as improvement or on demand of the client
1860's

Marvin Gaye photo
Anthony Burgess photo
George William Curtis photo
Bob Dylan photo
Lucy Stone photo

“The right to education and to free speech having been gained for woman, in the long run every other good thing was sure to be obtained.”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

The Progress of Fifty Years (1893)

Roger Manganelli photo
John Lancaster Spalding photo

“The disinterested love of truth which culture fosters is akin to the unselfishness which is a characteristic of the good.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 212

Robert Charles Wilson photo

“Better than big business is clean business.
To an honest man the most satisfactory reflection after he has amassed his dollars is not that they are many but that they are all clean.
What constitutes clean business? The answer is obvious enough, but the obvious needs restating every once in a while.
"A clean profit is one that has also made a profit for the other fellow."
This is fundamental moral axiom in business. Any gain that arises from another's loss is dirty.
Any business whose prosperity depends upon damage to any other business is a menace to the general welfare.
That is why gambling, direct or indirect, is criminal, why lotteries are prohibited by law, and why even gambling slot-machine devices are not tolerated in civilized countries. When a farmer sells a housekeeper a barrel of apples, when a milkman sells her a quart of milk, or the butcher a pound of steak, or the dry-goods man a yard of muslin, the housekeeper is benefited quite as much as those who get her money.
That is the type of honest, clean business, the kind that helps everybody and hurts nobody. Of course as business becomes more complicated it grows more difficult to tell so clearly whether both sides are equally prospered. No principle is automatic. It requires sense, judgment, and conscience to keep clean; but it can be done, nevertheless, if one is determined to maintain his self-respect. A man that makes a habit, every deal he goes into, of asking himself, "What is there in it for the other fellow?" and who refuses to enter into any transaction where his own gain will mean disaster to some one else, cannot go for wrong.
And no matter how many memorial churches he builds, nor how much he gives to charity, or how many monuments he erects in his native town, any man who has made his money by ruining other people is not entitled to be called decent. A factory where many workmen are given employment, paid living wages, and where health and life are conserved, is doing more real good in the world than ten eleemosynary institutions.
The only really charitable dollar is the clean dollar. And the nasty dollar, wrung from wronged workmen or gotten by unfair methods from competitors, is never nastier than when it pretends to serve the Lord by being given to the poor, to education, or to religion. In the long run all such dollars tend to corrupt and disrupt society.
Of all vile money, that which is the most unspeakably vile is the money spent for war; for war is conceived by the blundering ignorance and selfishness of rulers, is fanned to flame by the very lowest passions of humanity, and prostitutes the highest ideal of men; zeal for the common good; to the business of killing human beings and destroying the results of their collective work.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), Clean Business

Walter Winchell photo
Jayant Narlikar photo
Tom Petty photo

“You know, sometimes, I don't know why,
But this old town just seems so hopeless.
I ain't really sure, but it seems I remember the good times
Were just a little bit more in focus.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Here Comes My Girl, written with Mike Campbell
Lyrics, Damn The Torpedoes (1979)

George D. Herron photo
Walter Cronkite photo
Baruch Spinoza photo

“When sending his Short Treatise to his Amsterdam friends he begs of them to be sure that nothing but the good of their neighbours will ever induce them to communicate its doctrines to others.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

A. Wolf, from the introduction to Spinoza's Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being (1910)
S - Z

Slavoj Žižek photo
Joseph Addison photo
Seneca the Younger photo

“Our feeling about every obligation depends in each case upon the spirit in which the benefit is conferred; we weigh not the bulk of the gift, but the quality of the good-will which prompted it.”
Eo animo quidque debetur quo datur, nec quantum sit sed a quali profectum voluntate perpenditur.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Alternate translation: The spirit in which a thing is given determines that in which the debt is acknowledged; it's the intention, not the face-value of the gift, that's weighed. (translator unknown).
Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXXXI: On benefits, Line 6

Jerry Coyne photo
Hermann Rauschning photo
Jerry Springer photo
Thomas Moore photo

“Good at a fight, but better at a play;
Godlike in giving, but the devil to pay.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

On a Cast of Sheridan's Hand.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Claire Danes photo

“Anybody who knows how to make a good movie, knows that it's a collaborative undertaking. To deny that its really dangerous.”

Claire Danes (1979) American actress

"Interview: Steve Martin and Claire Danes" by Jeff Otto at IGN.com (19 October 2005)

Christopher Monckton photo
Tarik Gunersel photo

“You summarise your struggle for 20 years in 20 minutes and your child will remember 2 sentences, which is good.”

Tarik Gunersel (1953) Turkish actor

Oluşmak (To Become) Aphorisms (Pan Publishing House, Istanbul, 2011)

Nathanael Greene photo
Ibn Battuta photo
Henry George Liddell photo

“A good, very good, not to say admirable schoolmaster, but then he is only a schoolmaster.”

Henry George Liddell (1811–1898) Headmaster, lexicographer, classical scholar, and dean

Of his headmaster at Charterhouse, Dr. Russell; p. 31.
Colin Gordon, Beyond the Looking Glass (1982)

Sir Francis Buller, 1st Baronet photo

“There is no distinction between a good jury and a common jury.”

Sir Francis Buller, 1st Baronet (1746–1800) British judge

King v. Perry (1793), 5 T. R. 460.

John Calvin photo
Ethan Nadelmann photo

“If somehow we could snap our fingers and there would no longer be any drugs in the world whatsoever, would there be no more addiction? Would there be no more suffering? Or is it possible that addiction is not really about drugs, that addiction is really about the relationships that human beings form with one another and all sorts of things? That it's about the difference between establishing good relationships and bad relationships? Who is going to be in control? Who is going to say what this relationship should be between ourselves and these plants and chemicals and substances?… Is this a decision that we just put in the hands of government? Is this a decision we put just in the hands of doctors? Just in the hands of the pharmaceutical companies, the tobacco companies, the alcohol companies and all the other corporations that profit off of the production and sale of these things? The true challenge is how do we learn to live with these substances in such a way that they cause the least possible harm and the greatest possible good. What will cause people to wake up and say "Stop?" What will cause people to say, "Enough is enough?"”

Ethan Nadelmann (1957) American writer; campaigner for the legalization of marijuana

What will cause people to say, "I value my freedom even if that freedom involves a measure of risk?"
Video address, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBW07ITbagc hosted on YouTube http://www.youtube.com by user "droppingknowledge."
The War on Drugs

Harold Bloom photo
Stanley Spencer photo

“Do you know what good art is? It is saying "ta" to God.”

Stanley Spencer (1891–1959) English painter

As quoted in Times Thievish Progress (1970) by John Rothenstein; "ta" is a British form of "thank you."

Bill Evans photo
Robert T. Bakker photo

“The multiplier effect is a major feature of networks and flows. It arises regardless of the particular nature of the resource, be it goods, money, or messages.”

John H. Holland (1929–2015) US university professor

Source: Hidden Order - How Adaptation Builds Complexity (1995), Ch 1. Basic Elements, p. 25

Leo Tolstoy photo

“The Christianity of the first centuries recognized as productions of good art, only legends, lives of saints, sermons, prayers, and hymn-singing evoking love of Christ, emotion at his life, desire to follow his example, renunciation of worldly life, humility, and the love of others; all productions transmitting feelings of personal enjoyment they considered to be bad, and therefore rejected … This was so among the Christians of the first centuries who accepted Christ teachings, if not quite in its true form, at least not yet in the perverted, paganized form in which it was accepted subsequently.
But besides this Christianity, from the time of the wholesale conversion of whole nations by order of the authorities, as in the days of Constantine, Charlemagne and Vladimir, there appeared another, a Church Christianity, which was nearer to paganism than to Christ's teaching. And this Church Christianity … did not acknowledge the fundamental and essential positions of true Christianity — the direct relationship of each individual to the Father, the consequent brotherhood and equality of all people, and the substitution of humility and love in place of every kind of violence — but, on the contrary, having founded a heavenly hierarchy similar to the pagan mythology, and having introduced the worship of Christ, of the Virgin, of angels, of apostles, of saints, and of martyrs, but not only of these divinities themselves but of their images, it made blind faith in its ordinances an essential point of its teachings.
However foreign this teaching may have been to true Christianity, however degraded, not only in comparison with true Christianity, but even with the life-conception of the Romans such as Julian and others, it was for all that, to the barbarians who accepted it, a higher doctrine than their former adoration of gods, heroes, and good and bad spirits. And therefore this teaching was a religion to them, and on the basis of that religion the art of the time was assessed. And art transmitting pious adoration of the Virgin, Jesus, the saints, and the angels, a blind faith in and submission to the Church, fear of torments and hope of blessedness in a life beyond the grave, was considered good; all art opposed to this was considered bad.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What is Art? (1897)

“I get so excited when I know I’m going to a good restaurant, then, when I do the review, I write myself up into such a frenzy that I have to go out and eat all over again.”

Giles Coren (1969) British food critic, television presenter and novelist

Jewish Chronicle, 23 February 2007 http://website.thejc.com/home.aspx?AId50455&ATypeId1&searchtrue2&srchstrGiles%20Coren&srchtxt0&srchhead1&srchauthor0&srchsandp0&scsrch0

“We cannot bring the good old days back but, if we must eat mass-made foods, get laws passed to insist upon its goodness and purity.”

Flora Thompson (1876–1947) English author and poet

September Chapter The Peverel Papers - A yearbook of the countryside ed Julian Shuckburgh Century Hutchinson 1986
The Peverel Papers

Wilfred Thesiger photo
Simone Weil photo
Hugo Black photo
Tony Blair photo

“The British are special. The world knows it. In our innermost thoughts we know it. This is the greatest nation on earth. So it has been an honour to serve it. I give my thanks to you, the British people, for the times that I have succeeded, and my apologies to you for the times I have fallen short. But good luck.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

" Full text of Tony Blair's resignation speech http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/the_blair_years/article1772414.ece", Times Online, 10 May 2007.
Announcing his impending resignation, Trimdon Labour Club, 10 May 2007.
2000s

Tzvetan Todorov photo

“People who believe themselves to be the incarnation of good have a distorted view of the world.”

Tzvetan Todorov (1939–2017) Bulgarian historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist

Hope and Memory: Reflections on the Twentieth Century (2003)

Bernard Mandeville photo
Jonas Salk photo

“Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors.”

Jonas Salk (1914–1995) Inventor of polio vaccine

As quoted in Learning from the Future : Competitive Foresight Scenarios (1998) by Liam Fahey and Robert M. Randall, p. 332. Also as quoted in Edward Cornish, Responsibility for the Future, The Futurist (May/June 1994), p. 60.

John Milton photo
Cat Stevens photo
Will Eisner photo
Leopoldo Galtieri photo
Seneca the Younger photo

“I do not trust my eyes to tell me what a man is: I have a better and more trustworthy light by which I can distinguish what is true from what is false: let the mind find out what is good for the mind.”
Oculis de homine non credo, habeo melius et certius lumen quo a falsis uera diiudicem: animi bonum animus inueniat.

De Vita Beata (On the Happy Life): cap. 2, line 2
Alternate translation: I do not distinguish by the eye, but by the mind, which is the proper judge of the man. (translator unknown).
Moral Essays

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“3444. Money, like Dung, does no Good till ’tis spread.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Franz Marc photo

“The impure men and women who surrounded me (and particularly the men), did not arouse any of my real feelings; while the natural feeling for life possessed by animals set in vibration everything good in me.”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

from the front of World War 1.
In a letter to his wife, April 1915; as quoted in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 444
1915 - 1916

Ursula K. Le Guin photo
George Chapman photo

“Enough 's as good as a feast.”

Act III, scene ii.
Eastward Hoe (1605)

Rutherford B. Hayes photo

“Coming in, I was denounced as a fraud by all the extreme men of the opposing party, and as an ingrate and a traitor by the same class of men in my own party. Going out, I have the good will, blessings, and approval of the best people of all parties and sections.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Diary (23 January 1881)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Josefa Iloilo photo
Frank Bainimarama photo
Confucius photo
Mark Manson photo

“Don’t hope for a life without problems,” the panda said. “There’s no such thing. Instead, hope for a life full of good problems.”

Mark Manson (1984) American writer and blogger

Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016), Chapter 2, “Happiness Is a Problem” (p. 30)

Linus Torvalds photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Annie Besant photo

“Karma brings us ever back to rebirth, binds us to the wheel of births and deaths. Good Karma drags us back as relentlessly as bad, and the chain which is wrought out of our virtues holds as firmly and as closely as that forged from our vices.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Theosophical Review, Volume 17 http://books.google.co.in/books?id=nv8LAAAAIAAJ, p. 139
Source: https://www.theosophy.world/resource/ebooks/karma-annie-besant Karma

Ai Weiwei photo
Marvin Gaye photo

“Hey baby, what'cha know good?
I'm just gettin' back, but you knew I would.
War is hell, when will it end?
When will people start gettin' together again?”

Marvin Gaye (1939–1984) American singer-songwriter and musician

What's Happening Brother, co-written with James Nyx, Jr.
Song lyrics, What's Going On (1971)

Laurence Sterne photo
G. E. M. Anscombe photo
Kate Bush photo

“It's no good for you baby
It's no good for you now
Keep looking up for the ladder.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, The Red Shoes (1993)

Shreya Ghoshal photo
Geoffrey Chaucer photo

“Another reason for studying philosophy is that it provides a good way of learning to think more clearly about a wide range of issues.”

Nigel Warburton (1962) British author and lecturer

Philosophy : the basics (Fifth Edition, 2013), Introduction

John the Evangelist photo

“Do not be amazed at this, for the hour is coming in which all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who did good things to a resurrection of life, and those who practiced vile things to a resurrection of judgment.”

John the Evangelist (10–98) author of the Gospel of John; traditionally identified with John the Apostle of Jesus, John of Patmos (author o…

John 5:28-29 http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/b/r1/lp-e/nwt/E/2013/43/5#h=34:352-34:604, New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures
Gospel of John

Donald J. Trump photo
William Blake photo
Ignatius Sancho photo

“…an awkward loon- whom I do sometimes care about- who has more wit than money- more good sense than wit- more urbanity than sense- and more pride than some princes”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

(from vol 2, letter 42: 9 Oct 1779, to Mr M___ ) [describing a friend]

Devin Townsend photo
Aldo Capitini photo

“In a tribal nation, he’s just one more partisan mobilizing his troops…. Mr. Shapiro has always been deeply conservative and does not pretend to be objective. But he says his market niche is giving cleareyed reads of current events, not purely partisan rants. He is often compared to his former colleague at, Milo Yiannopoulos. On the surface, they seem the same. Both speak on college campuses. Both draw protests. Both used to work for Mr. Bannon at Breitbart. Both are young. In fact, they are very different. Mr. Yiannopoulos, a protégé of Mr. Bannon, was good at shocking audiences, saying things like “feminism is cancer.” But critics say that he was empty of ideas, a kind of nihilistic rodeo clown who was not even conservative. Mr. Shapiro broke with Mr. Bannon last year, saying Breitbart had become a propaganda tool for Mr. Trump. Mr. Yiannopoulos’s act collapsed this year. But the fact that it lasted so long says a lot about the right’s fury against mainstream liberalism, Mr. Shapiro said…. But Mr. Shapiro does it too. He thinks it’s easy to provoke the left, which he says has become intellectually flabby after decades of cultural dominance. It’s not good at arguing and relies instead on taboos and punishing people who violate them. That is the essence of his stump speech…. Critics say that is great red meat for his audience, but it’s nonsense. Even if straight white males are low on the left’s pecking order, they have most of the power in Washington, in statehouses, in every corporate boardroom. They run America. Mr. Shapiro says he’s about more than tribal polemics.”

Sabrina Tavernise (1971) American journalist

Ben Shapiro, a Provocative ‘Gladiator,’ Battles to Win Young Conservatives https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/us/ben-shapiro-conservative.html (November 23, 2017), '.

Ursula K. Le Guin photo
William Hazlitt photo
Orson Scott Card photo

“A good work of art reveals something that is in reality. A new metaphor, a new myth, a new type of character, all these reveal a feature of reality for which we previously had no name.”

Michael Roberts (writer) (1902–1948) English schoolteacher and man of letters

Hulme and Modrern Poetry' in ' T E Hulme ',Carcanet Press,Manchester, 1982