Quotes about goodness
page 64

“My work up to then had been very uneven, I would be good one night, dull the next. Meisner made me aware of how to be consistent in using the best that I have to offer. But I guess nobody can teach you the knack, or whatever it is, that helps you come to life on stage.”

Christopher Lloyd (1938) American actor

New Face: Christopher Lloyd http://www.nytimes.com/1977/06/24/archives/new-face-christopher-lloyd-a-real-happy-end.html (June 24, 1977)

Life, Help, Night

“Good political leadership for me involves getting the big decisions right - however difficult, however controversial, however potentially divisive and then being able to take people with you. And that requires something else as well - being wise enough to know when it's time to listen.”

Charles Kennedy (1959–2015) British politician

Speech given to the 2005 Liberal Democrat Party Conference

People, Decision, Time

“The fact that black voters have voted over 90 percent Democratic for decades leaves them almost wholly without power. Democrats—paradigmatically, the Clintons—feint in their direction during general elections, trying to assure turnout and using them to bash Republicans as bigots and—in the usual fashion—as emblems of their own goodness.”

Crispin Sartwell (1958) American philosopher

White Liberals: We’re Not Racist (August 29, 2016)

Fashion

“If there exists one unique great imperial power which is always convinced that its most brutal interests coincide with the Good; if it is true that every year the USA spends more on their military budget than Russia, China, France, England and Germany put together; and if that Nation-State, devoted to military excess, has no public idol other than wealth, no allies other than servants, and no view of other peoples apart from an indifferent, commercial and cynical one; then the basic freedom of States, peoples and individuals consists in doing everything and thinking everything in order to escape, as much as possible, from the commandments, interventions and interference of that imperial power.”

Alain Badiou (1937) French writer and philosopher

From Philosophy and the 'war against terrorism in Infinite Thought: truth and the return of philosophy. London: Continuum, 2003. ISBN 0826467245.

People, Thinking, Freedom, Indifference

“Why," said another, "Some there are who tell
Of one who threatens he will toss to Hell
The luckless Pots he marr'd in making — Pish!
He's a Good Fellow, and 'twill all be well.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Hell

“But it isn’t absence that causes sorrow. It is affection and love. Without affection, without love, such absences would cause us no pain. For this reason, even the pain caused by absence is, in the end, something good and even beautiful, because it feeds on that which gives meaning to life.”

Carlo Rovelli book The Order of Time

Source: The Order of Time (2018), p. 105

Love, Life, Pain, Beauty

“The Republican cause is onward. Every man who desires good government has an important political duty to perform, and, with a united and determined effort, the country will be redeemed from the misrule of modern Democracy.”

Elbridge G. Spaulding (1809–1897) American politician

Remarks on the Republican platform (1860)

Democracy, Effort, Country

“I'm over my heart's desire / I feel cold, but I'm back in the fire
Love is a litany / A magical mystery / And all in good time”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

The Shock of the Lightning
Dig Out Your Soul (2008)

Love, Feeling, Time, Heart

“The first erroneous assumption is that quality means goodness, or luxury, or shininess or weight. The word "quality" is used to signify the relative worth of things in such phrases as "good quality," "bad quality," and that brave new statement 'quality of life.' 'Quality of life' is a cliche because each listener assumes that the speaker means exactly what he or she, the listener, means by the phrase. It is a situation in which individuals talk dreamily about something without ever bothering to define it.”

Philip B. Crosby (1926–2001) Quality guru

Source: Quality Is Free, 1977, p. 14-15

Life

“Presumption has many forms; and it is worth considering, whether a great and good Being would most disapprove the presumption which expected too much from His goodness, or the presumption which dared positively to disbelieve His promise.”

William Arthur (minister) (1819–1901) Wesleyan Methodist minister and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 553.

“Greed is all right, by the way. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.”

Ivan Boesky (1937) American investor, white-collar criminal

Den of Thieves (1992), by John B. Stewart

Way, Feeling, Thinking

“[T]he free market may be a good, bad or insufficient idea, but, in any case, it is just a crude commercial code. Now it is regularly equated with or given credit for or even precedence over the freedom of man. But the freedom of man is a moral statement on the human condition, both in the practical and in the humanist sense. To equate it with a school of business is to betray a certain confusion. An unconscious unease.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Voltaire's Bastards (1992)

School, Idea, Business, Sense

“He used to say that it was better to have one friend of great value than many friends who were good for nothing.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Anarcharsis, 5.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 2: Socrates, his predecessors and followers

“In a word, everything is for sale, anything can be bought in our country. And in this flow, he who holds the slightest cover of public authority uses it illegally to acquire money, goods, prestige or to avoid obligations. The right to be recognized by a public servant, to have one's children enrolled in school, to obtain medical care, etc. …are all subject to this tax which, though invisible, is known and expected by all.”

Mobutu Sésé Seko (1930–1997) President of Zaïre

November 25, 1977. D.J. Gould, "Patrons and Clients: The Role of the Military in Zaire Politics," in Isaac Mowoe, ed., The Performance of Soldiers as Governors, p. 485

Money, Children, School, Country

“I recall an old Sufi story of a good man who was granted one wish by God. The man said he would like to go about doing good without knowing about it. God granted his wish. And then God decided that it was such a good idea, he would grant that wish to all human beings.
And so it has been to this day.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1986)

God, Idea

“The secret to looking great in lingerie: Feel good. Once you feel good, you look good, too.”

Alessandra Ambrosio (1981) Brazilian model

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/accent/content/accent/epaper/2004/11/16/1116angels.html
Attributed

Secret, Feeling

“She says the solution is to ban guns. They tried that in France which has among the toughest gun laws anywhere in the world, and 130 people were brutally murdered by Islamic terrorists in cold blood. Her plan is to disarm law abiding Americans, abolishing the Second Amendment, and leaving only the bad guys and terrorists with guns. No good. Not going to happen, folks. … She wants to take away American's guns and then admit the very people who want to slaughter us. Let them come into the country, we don't have guns. Let them come in, let them have all the fun they want.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, June, Speech about the Orlando Shooting (June 13, 2016)

People, World, Law, Guy

“But whom do I treat unjustly,' you say, 'by keeping what is my own?' Tell me, what is your own? What did you bring into this life? From where did you receive it? It is as if someone were to take the first seat in the theater, then bar everyone else from attending, so that one person alone enjoys what is offered for the benefit of all in common — this is what the rich do. They seize common goods before others have the opportunity, then claim them as their own by right of preemption. For if we all took only what was necessary to satisfy our own needs, giving the rest to those who lack, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, and no one would be in need.”

Basil of Caesarea (329–379) Christian Saint

Source: Social Justice, I Will Tear Down My Barns, p. 69

Life, Personality

“I'm watching the water
Watching the coast
Suddenly I know
What I want the most

And I want to tell you
Still I hold back
I need some time
Get my life on track.

I know that look on your face
But there's somethin' lucky about this place
And there's somethin' good comin'
For you and me
Somethin' good comin'
There has to be.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

"Something Good Coming"
Lyrics, Mojo (2010)

Life, Water, Time

“To the gross senses the chair seems solid and substantial. But the gross senses and be refined by means of instruments. Closer observations are made, as the result of which we are forced to conclude that the chair is “really” a swarm of electric charges whizzing about in empty space. … While the substantial chair is an abstraction easily made from the memories of innumerable sensations of sight and touch, the electric charge chair is a difficult and far-fetched abstraction from certain visual sensations so excessively rare (they can only come to us in the course of elaborate experiments) that not one man in a million has ever been in the position to make it for himself. The overwhelming majority of us accept the electric-charge chair on authority, as good Catholics accept transubstantiation.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

“One and Many,” pp. 8–9
Do What You Will (1928)

Sense, Memory

“Truth's like a dollar-piece, it's got two sides, and both are wanted to make it good currency.”

John Buchan book The Path of the King

Source: The Path of the King (1921), Ch. XIV "The End of the Road", I

Truth

“Any literature, when it arrives at being good literature, transcends genre.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Vanna Bonta Talks About Quantum fiction: Author Interview (2007)

Literature

“I will begin with this confession: whatever I have done in the course of my life, whether it be good or evil, has been done freely; I am a free agent.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)

Life, Evil

“We wish that Allah‑swt accepts us for Ghazwah-tal Hind, but it is only in Allah’s Knowledge how we will participate in it. We should be sure that our intention is so pure that even if we pass away from this world before the Ghazwah, still Allah‑swt will, Insha Allah, include us in the ranks of its Mujahideen on the Day of Judgement in the Field of Resurrection! So, examine your beliefs, your deeds, and your conduct, and prove yourself to be a full time servant of the Holy Prophet‑saws. All blessings, all goodness awaits the person who fulfils his covenant of loyalty to the Holy Prophet‑saws.”

Ameer Muhammad Akram Awan (1934–2017) Pakistani Sufi leader

World, Knowledge, Time, Personality

“Abdulla Khan Uzbeg’s force of 12,000 horse and 20,000 foot destroyed, in the Kalpi-Kanauj area alone, all towns, took all their goods, their wives and children as slaves and beheaded and ‘immortered’ (fixed heads with mortar in walls and pillars) the chiefest of their men. No wonder he once declared that “I made prisoners of five lacs of men and women and sold them. They all became Muhammadans. From their progeny there will be crores by the day of judgement.””

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

Shah Nawaz Khan, Maasir-ul-Umara, I, 105. quoted from K.S. Lal, Muslim slave system in medieval India, chapter 6
Generals under the command of Jahangir

Women, Men, Children, Horse

“The bank mania is one of the most threatening of these imitations. It is raising up a moneyed aristocracy in our country which has already set the government at defiance, and although forced at length to yield a little on this first essay of their strength, their principles are unyielded and unyielding. These have taken deep root in the hearts of that class from which our legislators are drawn, and the sop to Cerberus from fable has become history. Their principles lay hold of the good, their pelf of the bad, and thus those whom the Constitution had placed as guards to its portals, are sophisticated or suborned from their duties.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Josephus B. Stuart (May 10, 1817) ME 15:112; reported in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Andrew A. Lipscomb (1904), vol. 15, p. 112
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

Money, History, Heart, Country

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Source: The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995), Ch. 2 : Science and Hope, p. 25

Children, People, Feeling, Question

“The truth of what I have so often inculcated, that it is the "steady, painstaking, likely-to-do-good" man who in the long run wins the race against those who now and then give a brilliant flash and, as Shakespeare says, "straight are cold again."”

Charles Dodgson (archdeacon) (1800–1868) Anglican clergyman, scholar

As quoted in The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898) p. 55

Truth

“Whether people accept this music or not, I don’t give a damn. I know how good—and right—the group is. We all sell out to a point. And don’t get me wrong, I like living comfortably and having a nice car. But if money determines your art, then what’s the point?”

John McLaughlin (1942) guitarist, founder of the Mahavishnu Orchestra

On the criticism of his acoustic band Shakti, after temporarily retiring his electric period with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, as quoted in Jerome, Jim. "John McLaughlin Pulls the Plug on His Guitar, but He's as Electrifying as Ever", People Magazines. 21 June 1976. http://people.com/archive/john-mc-laughlin-pulls-the-plug-on-his-guitar-but-hes-as-electrifying-as-ever-vol-5-no-24/

Money, People, Art, Music

“The formation of such feelings of obligation and loyalty to any group with which one is identified is of the highest significance to good morale. It is the essence of the powerful patriotic feelings which are stimulated in times of war, but which have their origins in earliest childhood. …Not all Americans have been able to develop a range of identification large enough to include the nation and thus to develop strong feelings of loyalty and obligation. To some extent this ability seems to be a measure of social maturity.”

Roy R. Grinker, Sr. (1900–1993) American psychiatrist and neurologist

Source: Men Under Stress, 1945, p. 40 cited in: The Clare Spark Blog (2009) Strategic Regression in “the greatest generation” http://clarespark.com/2009/12/09/strategic-regression-in-the-greatest-generation/ December 9, 2009

War, Feeling, Strong, Time

“In the works I paint [now] I can't see any guarantee that I shall make progress.... while better skilled people [artists] - even though their work does not seem so good at the moment - can move forward much more easily.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
Er is in wat ik maak geen waarborg, dat ik vooruit zal gaan.. ..terwijl beter geschoolde lui, ook al lijkt hun werk op het ogenblik niet zoo goed, veel eer, verder kunnen komen.
Breitner, quoted by Jan Veth, in Portretstudies en silhouetten, J. Veth; Amsterdam 1908, p. 204
Jan Veth is remembering Breitner's remark from an earlier walk they made together
1900 - 1923

People, Painting

“Good afternoon. Yesterday, December the 13th, at around 8:30 p. m. Baghdad time, United States military forces captured Saddam Hussein alive. He was found near a farmhouse outside the city of Tikrit, in a swift raid conducted without casualties. And now the former dictator of Iraq will face the justice he denied to millions.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Remarks on the Capture of Saddam Hussein (December 2003)

Justice, Time

“I think it's something that people don't think about. It's hot outside—your car is like a fishbowl. So the light comes in, and it gets trapped, and it gets really hot in there really quickly. If you see a dog in a hot car, and you think that he's in danger or that he's been there for a while, it's good to speak up… go into whatever businesses it's parked outside of, and just raise awareness about it.”

Krysten Ritter (1981) American actress

Interview with PETA; as quoted in "See Krysten Ritter's Hot New PETA Ad!", E! Online (27 August 2013) https://www.eonline.com/news/452566/see-krysten-ritter-s-hot-new-peta-ad.

People, Dogs, Cars, Business

“Most of the network related programming in games has to do with providing a good interactive experience when playing over the internet. This matter is very different from serving web pages. The primary concern there is to handle connection latency, latency fluctuations, packet loss and bandwidth limitations, and pretty much hide all of that from the player's experience.”

Timothee Besset French software programmer

Quoted in Brian Boyko, "ID Software Developer Timothee Besset on Network Performance in Games" http://www.networkperformancedaily.com/2007/01/id_software_developer_timothee.html Network Performance Daily (2007-01-29).

Game, Loss

“On the supposition that the world is to go on divided among aggressive sovereign states, with phases of war preparation known as peace and acute phases of more and more destructive war, it is quite a good move in the game. On the supposition that the world is growing up to an age of reason, and that a world of civilisation is attainable, it is a monstrous crime.”

H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English writer

On the British government's decision to build the Singapore Naval Base, in an article for the Westminster Gazette (13 October 1923)

War, Age, World, Peace

“Oh dear, oh dear, how stupid men are when they get an idea into their heads! I tell you he's a good dragon, and a friend of mine, and tells me the most beautiful stories you ever heard, all about old times and when he was little. And he's been so kind to mother, and mother'd do anything for him. And father likes him too, though father doesn't hold with art and poetry much, and always falls asleep when the dragon starts talking about style. But the fact is, nobody can help liking him when once they know him. He's so engaging and so trustful, and as simple as a child!”

Kenneth Grahame book The Reluctant Dragon

The Boy to St. George
Dream Days (1898), The Reluctant Dragon

Men, Stupidity, Beauty, Art

“If South Korea's dictatorships were America's running dogs, then North Korea was the Eastern bloc's house cat: intractable, convinced of its superiority, and to some observers a more independent creature, but never much good at feeding itself—even after the can openers started falling silent in 1989.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2000s, Mother of All Mothers (September 2004)

Dogs, Cats, Housing

“He's like a PlayStation. I think he can take advantage of every mistake you make. Barcelona are a very good side but of course they have Messi who can make the difference at any moment in the game. He is very young but he can achieve a lot. There are not many players who can score four goals like he did. He has six or seven great years ahead of him and he can become unbelievable.”

Arsène Wenger (1949) French footballer and manager

On Lionel Messi, (7 April 2010) http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/apr/07/barcelona-arsenal-lionel-messi

Game, Thinking

“For too little of tile best Marle can doe but little good, and too nmch therof hath beene alreadie founde to bee verie hurtfull to the Corne.”

Hugh Plat (1552–1608) writer

Source: Diverse new Sorts of Soylenot yet brought into any publique Use, 1594, p. 30; Cited in: Malcolm Thick (1994)

Bee

“A true scholarship would examine, and then either accept or reject, with good reason, any new theory which challenges a generally accepted theory admitted to be full of sharp anomalies. However, this has not been the attitude of world scholarship towards our earlier book. The general attitude has been as follows: there is a school of crank scholarship in India which is out to prove, by hook or by crook, that India was the original homeland of the Indo-European family of languages; and the writers of this school deserve to be firmly put in their place. And the best method of doing this is by tarring all scholars who support, or even appear to support, an Indian homeland theory, with one brush; and then pointing out particularly untenable propositions made by one or the other of the scholars so branded together, to prove that all the scholars so named belong to one single school of irrational scholarship.”

Shrikant Talageri (1958) Indian author

Shrikant Talageri, The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis, 2000.
The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis (2000), Chapter 9 : Michael Witzel - An Examination of Western Vedic Scholarship

Books, World, School, Family

“Of course, we need not be surprised if artistic excellence goes unrecognized on account of being unknown; but there should be the greatest indignation when, as often, good judges are flattered by the charm of social entertainments into an approbation which is a mere a pretence.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Introduction, Sec. 3
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book III

“I'll say this about nuclear weapons. You know I'm not sitting on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I'm not in on the planning. I'll take it at face value that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff successfully eliminated nuclear weapons in the first phase of the operation.But keep in mind this. That the Bush Administration has built a new generation of nuclear weapons that we call 'usable nukes.' And they have a nuclear posture now, which permits the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons in a non-nuclear environment, if the Commander in Chief deems U. S. forces to be in significant risk.If we start bombing Iran, I'm telling you right now, it's not going to work. We're not going to achieve decapitation, regime change, all that. What will happen is the Iranians will respond, and we will feel the pain instantaneously, which will prompt the Bush administration to phase two, which will have to be boots on the ground. And we will put boots on the ground, we will surge a couple of divisions in, probably through Azerbaijan, down the Caspian Sea coast, in an effort to push the regime over. And when they don't push over, we now have 40,000 troops trapped. We have now reached the definition of significant numbers of U. S. troops in harm's way, and there is no reserve to pull them out! There's no more cavalry to come riding to the rescue. And at that point in time, my concern is that we will use nuclear weapons to break the backbone of Iranian resistance, and it may not work.But what it will do is this: it will unleash the nuclear genie. And so for all those Americans out there tonight who say, 'You know what - taking on Iran is a good thing.' I just told you if we take on Iran, we're gonna use nuclear weapons. And if we use nuclear weapons, the genie ain't going back in the bottle, until an American city is taken out by an Islamic weapon in retaliation. So, tell me, you want to go to war with Iran. Pick your city. Pick your city. Tell me which one you want gone. Seattle? L. A.? Boston? New York? Miami. Pick one. Cause at least one's going. And that's something we should all think about before we march down this path of insanity that George Bush has us headed on.</p”

Scott Ritter (1961) American weapons inspector and writer

October 16, 2006
2006

Pain, War, Way, Feeling

“I want to redeem my life. I want to become a good, decent person. I want to rebuild my life.”

Jared Fogle (1977) American corporate mascot

On pleading guilty to having sex with minors and possession of child pornography, as quoted in "Jared Fogle, ex-Subway spokesman, sentenced to 15 years in prison" http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/jared-fogle-subway-1.3326594?cmp=rss by Rick Callahan in CBC News report. (19 November 2015)

Life, Personality

“If it is not love, what then is it that I feel? But if it is love, before God, what kind of thing is it? If it is good, whence comes this bitter mortal effect? If it is evil, why is each torment so sweet?”

Francesco Petrarca Il Canzoniere

S'amor non è, che dunque è quel ch'io sento?
Ma s'egli è amor, perdio, che cosa et quale?
Se bona, onde l'effecto aspro mortale?
Se ria, onde sí dolce ogni tormento?
Canzone 132, st. 1
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life

Love, God, Feeling, Evil

“You can't just stand and say to yourself, 'OK, right now I'm the best. That's it. No more working.' If you're a good player you have to be working harder and harder. This is not just my goal, it's my team goal. We can improve more and we can probably be even better than last year. My dream is to be the best.”

Alexander Ovechkin (1985) Russian ice hockey player

Helene Elliott (October 16, 2008) "Ovechkin Is Good for NHL, Bad for Opposing Goalies", Los Angeles Times.

Dreams

“Or, to state his character as it stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased, he was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whose moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), Ch. 1

“There, the Father with the Son and all the beloved are enfolded and embraced in the bond of love, that is to say, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. It is this same unity, which is fruitful according to the bursting-out of the Persons and in the return, an eternal bond of love, which can nevermore be united. And all those who know themselves to be bound therein must remain eternally blissful. They are all rich in virtues and enlightened in contemplation and simple where they rest enjoyably, for in their turning-in, the love of God reveals itself as flowing out with all good and drawing in into unity and is superessential and without mode (method or system) in an eternal repose. And so they are united to God, by intermediary, without intermediary, and also without difference.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Little Book of Enlightenment (c. 1364)

Love, God, Drawing, Personality

“I hold that we have a very imperfect knowledge of the works of nature till we view them as works of God,— not only as works of mechanism, but works of intelligence, not only as under laws, but under a Lawgiver, wise and good.”

James McCosh (1811–1894) British philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 429.

God, Law, Intelligence, Nature

“If the West is genuinely interested in democracy then they will have to suffer hundreds of Al Jazeeras. There is Abu Dhabi television, Al-Arabiya (but that is under Saudi patronage), and there is a channel out of Lebanon (but they are politically close to Hezbollah). They are all very good as journalists but they are all part of the state.”

Samir Khader Iraqi journalist

Democracy, Suffering, Parting

“A Muslim should live up to his character, and employ his powers in doing what is good, beneficial and helpful.”

Mohammed Alkobaisi (1970) Iraqi Islamic scholar

Understanding Islam, "Morals and Ethics" http://vod.dmi.ae/media/96716/Ep_03_Morals_and_Ethics Dubai Media

Help

“[asked what he thought of modern civilization] That would be a good idea.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

variant: "I think it would be a good idea" when asked what he thought of Western civilization. On p. 75 of Ralph Keyes' book The Quote Verifier (2006), Keyes writes: 'During his first visit to England, when asked what he though of modern civilization, Gandhi is said to have told news reporters, "That would be a good idea." The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations cites E. F. Schumacher's Good Work as its source for this Gandhiism, as does Nigel Rees in the Cassell Companion to Quotations. In that 1979 book, Schumacher said he saw Gandhi make this remark in a filmed record of his quizzing by reporters as he disembarked in Southampton while visiting England in 1930. Gandhi did not visit England in 1930. He did attend a roundtable conference on India's future in London the following year. Standard biographies of Gandhi do not report his making any such quip as he disembarked. Most often it has been revised to be Gandhi's assessment of "Western" civilization: "I think it would be a good idea." A retort such as this seems a little flip for Gandhi, and must be regarded as questionable. A comprehensive collection of his observations includes no such remark among twelve entries for "Civilization."' The quote was attributed to Gandhi in various sources prior to Schumacher's 1979 book mentioned by Keyes above, though none have been found that mention where and when he gave this answer. The earliest located on google books being Reader's Digest, Volume 91 from 1967, p. 52, where it is attributed to a CBS News Special called "The Italians", described here http://www.larchmontgazette.com/news/bernard-birnbaum-cbs-award-winning-producer-dead-at-89/ as "a 1966 look at the nation and its people based on the book by Luigi Barzini", produced by Bernard Birnbaum and one of the 1966/1967 Emmy award winners http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0151531.html. A discussion of the quote on "The Quote Investigator" website here http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/23/good-idea/ mentions that on "The Italians" the quote was attributed to Gandhi. Disputed

Idea

“A dream, a dream, — it is all a dream,
A strange, sad dream, good sooth;
For old as I am, and old as I seem,
My heart is full of youth.”

Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–1889) English writer and poet

The Song of Seventy.
A Thousand Lines (1846)

Youth, Sadness, Dreams, Heart

“He [Thutmose III] went to Asia with his army and killed the natives to his heart's content, and stole so much of their goods that Egypt was rolling in wealth for quite a while. Thutmose III was thus one of the earliest exponents of internationalism, or going into other countries and slaughtering the inhabitants.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part I: It Seems There Were Two Egyptians, Hatshepsut

Heart, Country, Wealth

“The people are being kept in line at the moment, because there are still lots of shiny new things for them to buy. But more and more Americans are beginning to look beyond their immediate material comfort and to worry about the long-term moral slide of their country. If the economy slips badly, there will be hell to pay. More and more people will listen to the dissidents. A big problem for the Jews is how to silence the dissidents now, how to stifle the people who are asking inconvenient questions and thinking dangerous thoughts, before these thoughts spread to other people. They've tried to do it with legislation, but the country isn't yet in a mood to be told what it can think. What the Jews need is a nice, big war. Then they can crack down on the dissidents. Then they can call us "subversives." Then they can call us "unpatriotic," because we will be against their war… That's why I am convinced that there will be a strong effort to involve America in another major war during the next four years. This effort will be disguised, of course. It will be cloaked in deceit, as such efforts always are. While the warmongers are scheming for war, they will tell us how much they want peace. They're good at that sort of thing. They've had a lot of practice. But they will be scheming for war, believe me, no matter what they say. And when that war comes, remember what you have read today.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

Get Set for War, 1997.
1990s, 1990

War, People, Peace, Mood

“I wrote the Light of What We Know here..(at Yaddo), over several long stays. I'm not sure where I would have written it otherwise. I've been homeless since 2007, all my few possessions put into storage before I set off to travel across Europe and Asia. My journey was interrupted because of the deaths of loved ones and it was within the interruption that I began and finished writing the novel. Yaddo, I was told, might be a good place to write. … Yaddo turned out to suit me perfectly. A stately home—not English privilege but a Scooby Doo mansion—with woodlands, three lakes and magical charm, this charitable foundation has for a hundred years been host to giants such as James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Sylvia Plath and Truman Capote. I'm still homeless and have yet to resume my broken travels, but wherever I go, I know that Yaddo and its 400-acre stretch of God's own country was always a kind of home to me and helped to nurture In the Light of What We Know.”

Zia Haider Rahman British novelist

"Sweet Inspiration - Writing and Travel", April 4, 2015 Sweet Inspiration - Writing and Travel http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/themes/67591492/Sweet-inspiration-Writing-and-travel April 4, 2015. Retrieved on 2015-04-05.

Love, Death, God, Travel

“I'm iron. I lasted through ten years of war, and now I can last through this. It's true, it's not good for the nerves.”

Sepp Dietrich (1892–1966) German SS commander

To Leon Goldensohn, February 28, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004 - Page 280

War

“One day of good preaching is no match for six days of inconsistent practice. God will never honor His church with complete success until it completely honors Him.”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 145.

God, Success

“Good fortune will elevate even petty minds, and give them the appearance of a certain greatness and stateliness, as from their high place they look down upon the world; but the truly noble and resolved spirit raises itself, and becomes more conspicuous in times of disaster and ill fortune.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Eumenes, sec. 9
Parallel Lives

World, Appearance, Time

“We know ourselves what difficult times we live in. We know equally, and we are conscious of the fact, that with us—all of us at home and overseas—there rests the responsibility whether this form of government will remain, or whether it will fail. It is therefore good that we who meet from all corners of the world to take counsel with one another, should, at any rate among ourselves, hold this torch of freedom alight, and alive, until other nations come to see our ways.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Empire Parliamentary Association's Conference in Westminster Hall (4 July 1935); published in This Torch of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses (1935), pp. 5-6.
1935

World, Way, Home, Freedom

“No more sleep. You cannot be world champions by sleeping. Sleep five, six hours, you do not need more. You will sleep when you are retired. Retired persons are allowed to sleep. If you are not retired, do not. That is also good for your figure. No Saturdays, Sundays, holidays. If you want to achieve a big goal, there is no room for celebrations – as we know, there are 170 celebrations of Saint Patron’s day in Serbia. We will be celebrating when we win. We cannot win if instead of training we celebrate.”

Zoran Đinđić (1952–2003) Serbian politician

Tribunal Serbia on the right track in Leskovac, 09.03.2002.

World, Sleep, Holiday, Personality

“I remember seeing how Layne [Staley] reacted to Andy [Andrew Wood] dying from drugs, and I think that he was scared possibly. And I think he also reacted the same way when Kurt [Cobain] shot himself. They were really good friends. And yet it didn’t stop him. But for me, if I think about the evolution of my life as it appears in songs for example, Higher Truth is a great example of a record I wouldn’t have been able to write [when I was younger], and part of that is in essence because there was a period of time there where I didn’t expect to be here. And now not only do I expect to be here, and I’m not going anywhere, but I’ve had the last 12 years of my life being free of substances to kind of figure out who the substance-free guy is, because he’s a different guy. Just by brain chemistry, it can’t be avoided. I’m not the same, I don’t think the same, I don’t react the same. And my outlook isn’t necessarily the same. My creative endeavours aren’t necessarily the same. And one of the great things about that is it enabled me to kind of keep going artistically and find new places and shine the light into new corners where I hadn’t really gone before. And that feels really good. But it’s also bittersweet because I can’t help but think, what would Jeff be doing right now, what would Kurt be doing right now, what would Andy be doing? Something amazing, I’m sure of it. And it would be some music that would challenge me to lift myself up, something that would be continually raising the bar so that I would work harder too, in the same way they affected me when they were alive basically.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

When asked if there was a lesson to be learned from his friends' deaths caused by substance abuse and if it was not enough to scare everyone ** The Life & Times of Chris Cornell, Rolling Stone Australia, 17 September 2015 https://rollingstoneaus.com/music/post/the-life-and-times-of-chris-cornell/2273, Solo career Era

Life, Truth, Music, Way

“I know most of the young Democrats our age who want to go into politics, they mean well and they speak well, but none of them is as good as you are at actually doing things to make positive changes in people’s lives.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

2010s, (July 26, 2016)

People, Age, Change

“Pretty woman, he thought. Pretty little black-skinned woman. Who wanted to kill for love, die for love. The pride, the conceit of these doormat women amazed him. They were always women who had been spoiled children. Whose whims had been taken seriously by adults and who grew up to be the stingiest, greediest people on earth and out of their stinginess grew their stingy little love that ate everything in sight. They could not believe or accept the fact that they were unloved; they believed that the world itself was off balance when it appeared as though they were not loved. Why did they think they were so lovable? Why did they think their brand of love was better than, or even as good as, anybody else's? But they did. And they loved their love so much they would kill anybody who got in its way.”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

Song of Solomon (1977)

Love, Women, Children, People

“I think that the cultivation of the humane letters has the most distinct bearing on the cultivation and appreciation of science. Science is nothing without imagination; and imagination is most readily kept fresh by literature. What little good there is a mere descriptive person, and in the small facts which with painful toil he accumulates. But let these facts be welded together by thought, their bearing traced by imagination, experiments devised by the mind projecting itself in advance of them, and the plodder is likely to become the great discoverer.”

Jacob Mendes Da Costa (1833–1900) American physician

Da Costa, Jacob M. The Higher Professional Life: Valedictory Address to the Graduating Class of Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia. Philadelphia, PA: J.B. Lippincott & Co, 1883.

Pain, Imagination, Literature, Thinking

“The one thing I don't wanna be is, I don't wanna be forgotten. And I think I've done a pretty good job of that.”

Cameron Duncan (1986–2003) New Zealand filmmaker

Strike Zone

Thinking

“Since shotguns are not military weapons, your local sporting goods dealer will have good information about them, as long as you aren't black, Spanish, or a white freak.”

William Powell (author) book The Anarchist Cookbook

Source: The Anarchist Cookbook (1971), Chapter Three: "Natural, Nonlethal, and Lethal Weapons".

Sport

“I never thought of it (becoming a classic). It never occurred to me. I was going to be happy if it had a good, strong run, if it was a popular film. I thought it would run its course and that would be that. But it just kept rolling along and it keeps rolling along, and generation after generation keeps showing up to see it. It’s a wonderful thing to be a part of something that means so much to so many people and that just keeps thriving.”

Christopher Lloyd (1938) American actor

Christopher Lloyd Interview http://www.startrek.com/article/christopher-lloyd-interview (October 22, 2010)

People, Strong, Parting, Happiness

“Media people should have long noses like an elephant to smell out politicians, mayors, prime ministers and businessmen. We need to know the reality, the good and the bad, not just the appearance.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

News conference in Vancouver, B.C. as quoted in The Globe and Mail. (8 September 2006) http://web.archive.org/web/20070326201154/http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060908.BCDALAILAMA08/TPStory/.

People, Reality, Appearance

“It is good to praise others but it important to look for faults within oneself. It is nice to be concerned about people but to be introspective is even nicer.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Source: Soul Curry for You and Me: An Empowering Philosophy that Can Enrich Your Life, P. 25.

People

“I think of Neuromancer as being, in a good sense, an adolescent book. It's a young man's book. It was written very young-man's-book. It was written by a man who was not very young, when he wrote it, but who was sufficiently immature.”

William Gibson (1948) American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and founder of the cyberpunk subgenre

No Maps for These Territories (2000)

Books, Thinking, Sense

“Europe by the end of this century will be a continent after the neutron bomb; the grand buildings will still be standing, but the people who built them will be gone. We are living through a remarkable period: the self-extinction of the race who, for good or ill, shaped the modern world.”

Mark Steyn (1959) Canadian writer

It's the Demography, Stupid (2006)

People, World

“A [further] aspect [of homosexuality] is the hatred of God’s reality, an insistence on wars against reality, in living in a world of make believe. As a result, the theater is the natural element of these people. Some scholars, again not Christian, have pointed out there has been by-and-large a strong homosexual control of the theater, in varying degrees in different times, from the days of the Romans. But part and parcel of this homosexual control of the theater has been the delight in prostituting women, in using them and abusing them for the sheer delight of showing their contempt for them. Now this is homosexual culture, described by people who are not hostile to it, and in fact sometimes have some good things to say for it.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Homosexuality (n. d.)

Women, God, Hostility, War

“Obama is going to be out playing golf. He might be on one of my courses. I would invite him, I actually would say. I have the best courses in the world, so I'd say, you what, if he wants to — I have one right next to the White House, right on the Potomac. If he'd like to play, that's fine. In fact, I'd love him to leave early and play, that would be a very good thing.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)

Love, World, Housing

“The good critic is one who tells of his mind's adventures among masterpieces.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Le bon critique est celui qui raconte les aventures de son âme au milieu des chefs-d'œuvre.
Series II : M. Jules Lemaître
The Literary Life (1888-1892)

“Culture is good, genius is brilliant, civ1lization is a blessing, education is a great pr1vilege; but we may be educated villains.. The thing that we want most of ail is the precious gift of the Holy Ghost.”

John Hall (1829–1898) Presbyterian pastor from Northern Ireland in New York, died 1898

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 320.

Education

“An artist needs not so much an audience, as to feel a need to answer, a promise to respond…. a good feeling about his art.”

Robert Pinsky (1940) American poet, editor, literary critic, academic.

Poetry and the World, Ecco Press,1988

Art, Feeling

“So far as it depends on the course of this government, our relations of good will and friendship will be sedulously cultivated with all nations.”

John Tyler (1790–1862) American politician, 10th President of the United States (in office from 1841 to 1845)

First annual message to Congress (1 June 1841).

Friendship, Dependency

“We must all begin to question the experts. They have not really been right. No abundance of material goods can compensate for the death of individuality and personal creativity.”

Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) American author, activist, and civil rights leader. Wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Harvard class day address (1968); published in the July 1, 1968, issue of Harvard Alumni Bulletin http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/05/coretta-scott-king-urges-students-to-speak-out-with-righteous-indignation As quoted in International Education Vol. 1, p. 26

Death, Question, Personality

“Maybe once, early on, he had convinced himself he could do some good, sometimes even imagined he was a mole, getting close so he could strike a blow. Imagined he was in it to defend Ambergris from the enemies that surrounded it. Imagined he was protecting ordinary citizens.
But the truth was he’d been tired, had stopped caring. Broken down from too much fighting, too many things connected to his past. And when that spark, that impulse, had returned, it was too late: he was trapped.”

Jeff VanderMeer book Finch

Source: Finch (2009), p. 20

Truth, Imagination, Past, Fight

“In God's providence there is no evil, but only good or its preparation.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Jnana

God, Evil

“The knight's bones are dust,
And his good sword rust;
His soul is with the saints, I trust.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

"The Knight's Tomb" (c. 1817)

Soul

“He thought he was a good poet but he was not. He thought books could tell him how to live but they couldn't. He was a serious but dazed reader. He read Dante and Shakespeare and Nietzsche and Freud. He read modern poetry and books on psychiatry. He had taken a degree in English, couldn't, decided to farm, bought a goat farm, managed a Confederate museum in a cave on his property, wrote poetry, went broke, became a golf pro.”

Walker Percy book The Second Coming

The Second Coming (1980)

Books, Reading

“Truth is best (of all that is) good. As desired, what is being desired is truth for him who (represents) the best truth.”

Zoroaster Persian prophet and founder of Zoroastrianism

Ahunuvaiti Gatha; Yasna 27, 14.
The Gathas

Truth

“In common with my colleagues, I recognise that no single remedy can be a complete cure, but while I am ready to examine every proposal…I must frankly say that I believe a tariff levied on imported foreign goods will be found to be indispensable…The ultimate destiny of this country is bound up with the Empire…I hope to take my part in forwarding a policy which was the main subject of my father's last great political campaign…I hope that we may presently develop into a National Party, and get rid of that odious title of Conservative, which has kept so many from joining us in the past.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Election address in Birmingham (October 1931), quoted in Keith Feiling, Neville Chamberlain (London: Macmillan, 1946), pp. 196-197.
Minster of Health

Hope, Past, Parting, Country

“We were also misled by M. Michelin's use of the word "impracticable". "Impracticable," we argued with a careful exercise in semantics, leaves just a chance. More than that. As we thought about it, it seemed to give a broad hint that the road was passable to the young and the determined in sturdy motor cars. "Impracticable" — scratched paintwork, discomfort, difficult finding petrol stations, shortage of good restaurants — these it seemed were the sort of hazards the urbane Michelin was trying to convey to us. Alas, he was not.”

John Pearson (author) (1930) author

Gone to Timbuctoo (1961), Ch. 9

Cars, Exercises, Chance

“And the Lord Rupert looked at his work, and even he saw that it was a load of crap, but this was the enterprise culture and it sold millions so it was good. And on the same basis he decided to take over the television too, and the earth itself wept, and little robins vomited, and cuddly furry animals threw themselves under trains, and the whole thing was filmed by Sky Channel for a horror nature programme, and the most awful thing of all was that this was just the beginning.”

Attila the Stockbroker (1957) punk poet, folk punk musician and songwriter

"The Bible according to Rupert Murdoch", from attilathestockbroker.com http://www.attilathestockbroker.com. Retrieved 2007-03-26.

Nature, Animals, Training

“I believe in future generations; I believe in education, in the elimination of all that is worthless in our culture. We must leave only the good things. I don't need to explain this in detail. Every Brazilian knows which way of thinking and which negative attitudes comprise the root of the behavior that prevents our progress, with order, in a more accelerated rhythm.”

Marcos Pontes book Missão Cumprida

Missão Cumprida (2011), chapter 114

Education, Way, Behavior, Thinking

“I’m a good scholar when it comes to reading but a blotting kind of writer when you give me a pen.”

John Millington Synge (1871–1909) Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore

Draft of a preface in “Notebook 16”; Quoted in The Collected Works of J.M. Synge, vol. 1, Introduction.

Reading

“Now my work is my drug of choice…I like to take whatever work opportunities I can. I like to work with as many people as I can. I like to show up on time, and I like to have a good time.”

Alaska Thunderfuck 5000 (1985) American Drag queen

Advocate interview (2015)

People, Time

“81. Agape is the progeny of apatheia. Apatheia is the very flower of ascesis. Ascesis consists in keeping the commandments. The custodian of those commandments is the fear of God which is in turn the offspring of true faith. Now faith is an interior an interior good, one which is to be found even in those who do not yet believe in God.”

Evagrius Ponticus (345–399) Christian monk

The Praktikos

God, Fear, Faith, Flowers

“Evolution throws a wonderful light on all the struggles, eccentricities, tortuous developments of the human conscience in the past. It is the only theory of morals that does. And evolution throws just as much light on the ethical and social struggle today; and it is the only theory that does. What a strange age ours is from the religious point of view! What a hopeless age from the philosopher's point of view! Yet it is a very good age, the best that ever was. No evolutionist is a pessimist.”

Joseph McCabe (1867–1955) British writer

The Human Origin of Morals http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/mccabe02.htm (1926), p. 59.

Age, Light, Past

“Maybe vagueness has been good for me. The word means two different things in Tokyo and Osaka, you know. In Tokyo it means stupidity, but in Osaka they talk about vagueness in a painting and in a game of Go.”

Yasunari Kawabata book The Master of Go

Source: The Master of Go (1951), Ch. 18, p. 76.

Stupidity, Game, Painting

“I feel 100% responsible, even though there's nothing I could do to prevent it. What good is my guilt if it's not felt by those supposedly in charge?”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, NATIONALISM

Feeling

“There are two kinds of geniuses: the ‘ordinary’ and the ‘magicians.’ an ordinary genius is a fellow whom you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they’ve done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians… Feynman is a magician of the highest caliber.”

Mark Kac (1914–1984) Polish-American mathematician

Mark Kac about Richard Feynman, cited in: Scott D. Tremaine (2011) " John norris Bahcall. 1934–2005. A Biographical Memoir http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/bahcall-john-n.pdf".

Feeling, Understanding, Time

“It is frequently expressed in all parts of Scripture, that the worship of the stars would be followed by absence of rain, devastation of the land, bad times, diseases, and shortness of life. But abandonment of that worship, and the return to the service of God, would be the cause of the presence of rain, fertility of the ground, good times, health and length of life. Thus Scripture teaches, in order that man should abandon idolatry, the reverse of that which idolatrous priests preached to the people, for, as has been shown by us, the principal object of the Law is to remove this doctrine, and to destroy its traces.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.30

Life, God, People, Health

“A truly successful life is one filled with friends so it helps if people like being around you. If you suspect they don’t, have a think about how strongly you exhibit ‘likeable’ qualities such as listening well, being trustworthy, kind, generous, compassionate, fun, positive and unselfish. The good news is that you can learn such qualities even if they don’t come naturally to you.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Life, People, Nature, Thinking