Quotes about goodness
page 67

Samuel Rutherford photo

“The good Husbandman may pluck His rose & gather in His lily.”

Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661) Scottish Reformed theologian

Letter 310 to Mistress Taylor's on her son's death
Letters of Samuel Rutherford (Andrew Bonar)

Willie Nelson photo
Edsger W. Dijkstra photo
Fred Rogers photo

“Well, what is essential about you? And who are those who have helped you become the person that you are? Anyone who has ever graduated from a college, anyone who has ever been able to sustain a good work, has had at least one person and often many who have believed in him or her. We just don't get to be competent human beings without a lot of different investments from others.”

Fred Rogers (1928–2003) American television personality

Commencement Address at Dartmouth College June 9th, 2002 http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2002/june/060902c.html and Commencement Address at Middlebury College May, 2001 http://web.archive.org/web/20030906163501/http://www.middlebury.edu/offices/pubaff/general_info/addresses/Fred_Rogers_2001.htm

Robert M. Pirsig photo
Dwight D. Eisenhower photo
Francis Crick photo
George W. Bush photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Bernard Cornwell photo
James Mattis photo

“For decades, Saddam Hussein has tortured, imprisoned, raped and murdered the Iraqi people; invaded neighboring countries without provocation; and threatened the world with weapons of mass destruction. The time has come to end his reign of terror. On your young shoulders rest the hopes of mankind. When I give you the word, together we will cross the Line of Departure, close with those forces that choose to fight, and destroy them. Our fight is not with the Iraqi people, nor is it with members of the Iraqi army who choose to surrender. While we will move swiftly and aggressively against those who resist, we will treat all others with decency, demonstrating chivalry and soldierly compassion for people who have endured a lifetime under Saddam’s oppression. Chemical attack, treachery, and use of the innocent as human shields can be expected, as can other unethical tactics. Take it all in stride. Be the hunter, not the hunted: never allow your unit to be caught with its guard down. Use good judgment and act in best interests of our Nation. You are part of the world’s most feared and trusted force. Engage your brain before you engage your weapon. Share your courage with each other as we enter the uncertain terrain north of the Line of Departure. Keep faith in your comrades on your left and right and Marine Air overhead. Fight with a happy heart and strong spirit. For the mission’s sake, our country’s sake, and the sake of the men who carried the Division’s colors in the past battles-who fought for life and never lost their nerve-carry out your mission and keep your honor clean.”

James Mattis (1950) 26th and current United States Secretary of Defense; United States Marine Corps general

Demonstrate to the world there is "No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy" than a U.S. Marine.
Mattis' words in a message to the 1st Marine Division in March 2003, on the eve of the Iraq War, as quoted in "Eve of Battle Speech" in The Weekly Standard (1 March 2003); also quoted in War Stories: Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003) by Oliver North, p. 53

Ben Gibbard photo
Philip Pullman photo
Luciano Pavarotti photo
H. D. Deve Gowda photo

“Having a good and cultured family background was not enough to be successful in politics. One should live amidst farmers, till land, and tend cows and buffaloes.”

H. D. Deve Gowda (1933) Indian politician

On being compared with Hegde, a suave opponent
Source: Gopal K. Kadekodi, et al., Development in Karnataka: Challenges of Governance, Equity, and Empowerment http://books.google.co.in/books?id=YpjqJz_RbncC&pg=PA99&dq=Devegowda&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Lpy6U9fAJ4ejkwXp54DwDA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Devegowda&f=false, Academic Foundation, 2008 P.98

Nelson Mandela photo
Gordon Brown photo

“Good strong banks are essential for every family and for every business in the country and extraordinary times call for the bold and far-reaching solutions that the Treasury has announced today.”

Gordon Brown (1951) British Labour Party politician

Press Conference http://web.archive.org/20081012105620/www.number10.gov.uk/Page17114, 8 October 2008, announcing the policy of buying shares in banks in order to prevent the spread of the financial crisis.
Prime Minister

William Paley photo
Evelyn Waugh photo
Gideon Mantell photo
Syama Prasad Mookerjee photo
George Bernard Shaw photo
Adam Smith photo

“Hatred and anger are the greatest poison to the happiness of a good mind.”

Section II, Chap. III.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part I

Walt Whitman photo

“Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is Good steadily hastening towards immortality,
And the vast that is evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Roaming in Thought, 1
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Aldous Huxley photo

“Words are good servants but bad masters.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

As quoted by Laura Huxley, in conversation with Alan Watts about her memoir This Timeless Moment (1968), in Pacifica Archives #BB2037 [sometime between 1968-1973])

Paul Theroux photo
Chuck Berry photo
Khaled Hosseini photo
Najib Razak photo

“Sometimes in politics and even in life you need to take the tough and difficult decisions which you know would be good for you and the country in the medium and long term”

Najib Razak (1953) Malaysian politician

Quoted on Today Online (February 15, 2016), "Najib likens tough decisions to antibiotics, says they’re good" http://www.todayonline.com/world/asia/najib-likens-tough-decisions-antibiotics-says-theyre-good

Carl Sagan photo

“Humans are very good at dreaming, although you’d never know it from your television.”

Source: Contact (1985), Chapter 20 (p. 359)

Daniel Kahneman photo
Daniel Levitin photo
George Holmes Howison photo
Alfie Kohn photo
Todd Snider photo
Douglas Coupland photo
Miguel de Cervantes photo

“There is a strange charm in the thoughts of a good legacy, or the hopes of an estate, which wondrously alleviates the sorrow that men would otherwise feel for the death of friends.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book IV, Ch. 74.

Arnold Schoenberg photo
Shankar Dayal Sharma photo

“Black Power seeks not understanding but conflict; addresses blacks and not whites; seeks to develop black support, but not white good will.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: Black Theology and Black Power (1969), p. 16

Parker Palmer photo
David Icke photo
John Heywood photo

“And ones their hastie heate a littell controlde,
Than perceiue they well, hotte love soone colde.
And whan hasty witlesse mirth is mated weele,
Good to be mery and wise, they thinke and feele.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Proverbs (1546)
Variant: And ones their hastie heate a littell controlde,
Than perceiue they well, hotte love soone colde.
And whan hasty witlesse mirth is mated weele,
Good to be mery and wise, they thinke and feele.

Stephenie Meyer photo
Susan Cooper photo
Justin D. Fox photo
Avner Strauss photo

“Dry bones make good flutes”

Avner Strauss (1954) Israeli musician

The Hollow Flute, from "Voices Within The Ark" Howard Schwartz, Jewish Poets, [ISBN 978-0380761098].

Athanasius of Alexandria photo
George William Curtis photo

“A few years after the Constitution was adopted Alexander Hamilton said to Josiah Quincy that he thought the Union might endure for thirty years. He feared the centrifugal force of the system. The danger, he said, would proceed from the States, not from the national government. But Hamilton seems not to have considered that the vital necessity which had always united the colonies from the first New England league against the Indians, and which, in his own time, forced the people of the country from the sands of a confederacy to the rock of union, would become stronger every year and inevitably develop and confirm a nation. Whatever the intention of the fathers in 1787 might have been, whether a league or confederacy or treaty, the conclusion of the children in 1860 might have been predicted. Plant a homogeneous people along the coast of a virgin continent. Let them gradually overspread it to the farther sea, speaking the same language, virtually of the same religious faith, inter- marrying, and cherishing common heroic traditions. Suppose them sweeping from end to end of their vast domain without passports, the physical perils of their increasing extent constantly modified by science, steam, and the telegraph, making Maine and Oregon neighbors, their trade enormous, their prosperity a miracle, their commonwealth of unsurpassed importance in the world, and you may theorize as you will, but you have supposed an imperial nation, which may indeed be a power of evil as well as of good, but which can no more recede into its original elements and local sources than its own Mississippi, pouring broad and resistless into the Gulf, can turn backward to the petty forest springs and rills whence it flows. 'No, no', murmurs the mighty river, 'when you can take the blue out of the sky, when you can steal heat from fire, when you can strip splendor from the morning, then, and not before, may you reclaim your separate drops in me.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

'Yes, yes, my river,' answers the Union, 'you speak for me. I am no more a child, but a man; no longer a confederacy, but a nation. I am no more Virginia, New York, Carolina, or Massachusetts, but the United States of America'.
1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Frank Stella photo

“I do think that a good pictorial idea is worth more than a lot of manual dexterity.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Quote from: Frank Stella, William S. Rubin, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1970, p. 30
Quotes, 1960 - 1970

Roberto Clemente photo

“I would have to say myself, but it would not look good for me to say it. I just have confidence I am the best because I believe in myself. If I had to pick another player, it would be Hank Aaron. He does everything so well.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "The Scoreboard" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=DsQbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=pU8EAAAAIBAJ&pg=5159%2C3057259&dq=roberto-clemente-recently-asked-best-hank-aaron-everything by Les Biederman, in The Pittsburgh Press (Tuesday, December 26, 1967), p. 40
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1967</big>

Chinmayananda Saraswati photo

“Live morality before you talk of it. Practise meditation before you preach it. Taste goodness before you recommend it. Gain bliss before you offer it to others.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

In Conscious Living http://books.google.co.in/books?id=cUPoxT6C-DYC&pg=PA85, p. 85
Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago
Variant: Live morality before you talk to him. Practicing meditation before you preach. Goodness taste before you recommend. Gain bliss before you offer to others.

Jeremy Clarkson photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Jeremy Corbyn photo
Max Stirner photo
John Ross Macduff photo
Ron Paul photo
Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“I should prefer uneloquent good sense to loquacious folly”
Malim equidem indisertam prudentiam quam stultitiam loquacem

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book III, chapter 34, section 142; J. S. Watson's translation
De Oratore – On the Orator (55 BC)

Charles Erwin Wilson photo

“For years I thought that what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country. Our contribution to the nation is considerable.”

Charles Erwin Wilson (1890–1961) American secretary of Defence

Charles E. Wilson (1952) in: Confirmation hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee, responding to Sen. Robert Hendrickson's question regarding conflicts of interest. Quoted in Safire's Political Dictionary (1978) by William Safire.

Bruce Fairchild Barton photo

“Probably the greatest single weakness of the Sino-Soviet bloc is her shaky economy. Here is a soft spot where peaceful pressures could be devastating. No amount of Soviet propaganda can cover up the obvious collapse of the Chinese communes and the sluggish inefficiency of the Soviet collectivized farms. Every single Soviet satellite is languishing in a depression. Even Pravda has openly criticized the lack of bare essentials and the shoddy quality of Russian-made goods. These factors of austerity and deprivation add to the hatred and misery of the people which constantly feed the flames of potential revolt. Terrorist tactics have been used by the Red leaders to suppress uprisings. In spite of the virtual "state of siege" which exists throughout the Soviet empire, there are many outbreaks of violent protest. All of this explains why the Soviet leaders are constantly pleading for "free trade," "long-term loans," "increased availability of material goods from the West." Economically, Communism is collapsing but the West has not had the good sense to exploit it. Instead, the United States, Great Britain and 37 other Western powers are shipping vast quantities of goods to the Sino-Soviet bloc. Some business leaders have had the temerity to suggest that trade with the Reds helps the cause of peace. They suggest that "you never fight the people you trade with." Apparently they cannot even remember as far back as the late Thirties when this exact type of thinking resulted in the sale of scrap iron and oil to the Japanese just before World War II. After the attack on Pearl Harbor it became tragically clear that while trade with friends may promote peace, trade with a threatening enemy is an act of self-destruction. Have we forgotten that fatal lesson so soon?”

The Naked Communist (1958)

Peter Kropotkin photo
Michael Elmore-Meegan photo
André Maurois photo
Kent Hovind photo
Phil Brooks photo

“So all you people here, despite evidence to the contrary, still choose to support a man that for all intents and purposes can't even support himself? OK, OK, so if you're a Jeff Hardy fan, if you're wearing a Jeff Hardy t-shirt, if you're wearing one of his diabolical little handsleeves, God forbid if you have your face painted, I want to see you stand up right now. I want to hear you make some noise! Go ahead, if you love and support Jeff Hardy, let the world know! (Crowd cheers, stands up.) Cameraman, cameraman get a good shot, get a real good shot at all these people. The truth is ladies and gentlemen, I don't blame you. I don't blame anybody here for supporting Jeff Hardy. The people I blame, are their parents. Or let's be realistic here, I said parents, what I should have said was parent. Because it's obviously a single parent situation, just like the way Jeff Hardy grew up. See you people are so concerned with the relationship with your children failing, just like your marriage did, that you acquiesce to their every whim and their every desire. I hate to tell you, this doesn't make you a good parent, Philadelphia, it makes you an enabler. (Crowd boos. Starts chanting for Hardy.) And the fact that you even let your children look up to a guy like Jeff Hardy, just shows that you really don't care what happens to them to begin with. It's a sad situation. So I don't blame anybody here or sitting at home watching this, that supports Jeff Hardy if they're under 17, because they're young and they're, well, they're impressionable. The real problem lies with the parents, it's the parents who don't make a conscious effort to sit their children down and teach them the proper way to live! (Crowd boos.) You see it starts with a Jeff Hardy t-shirt, next thing you know they're smoking a pack of cigarettes, after that, they're drinking a bottle of beer. Right after that they move on to shots of Jack Daniels, which is a gateway drug for marijuana…(Crowd pops for marijuana.) And the fact that you people sit here and cheer that goes to show that I'm telling the truth! How about some old fashioned street drugs? And before you know it they're digging through Mom's purse because they're addicted, they're addicted to prescription medication. (Crowd cheers, Punk mouths,"That's not cool!" to fans.) All of this can be stopped before it's too late! Parents, all you have to do is talk to your children. Sit them down and show them the way, tell them the words that can save their lives, show them that sometimes it's what you don't do that makes you who you are! For weeks, for weeks I've been saying to people like you, just say no. But today I think we should just say yes. Yes to the future of a straight edge, drug free America! Just say yes to the winner of tonight's match, just say yes, to the World Heavyweight Champion! Thank you!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

At Night of Champions 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Richard Hovey photo

“For ’t is always fair weather
When good fellows get together
With a stein on the table and a good song ringing clear.”

Richard Hovey (1864–1900) American writer

"Spring", p. 60.
Along the Trail (1898)

Thomas Hood photo

“How widely its agencies vary,—
To save, to ruin, to curse, to bless,—
As even its minted coins express,
Now stamped with the image of Good Queen Bess,
And now of a Bloody Mary.”

Thomas Hood (1799–1845) British writer

Her Moral; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
20th century

Garrison Keillor photo
Steve McManaman photo
Bernie Sanders photo

“It's funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is, that people are lining up for food. That is a good thing! In other countries people don't line up for food: the rich get the food and the poor starve to death.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

As quoted in "When Bernie Sanders Thought Castro and the Sandinistas Could Teach America a Lesson" http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/28/when-bernie-sanders-thought-castro-and-the-sandinistas-could-teach-america-a-lesson.html by Michael Moynihan, The Daily Beast (28 February 2016)
1980s

Ken Ham photo

“Bible-believing Christians who oppose same-sex marriage are not discriminating against homosexual people—they are taking a stand on the authority of God’s Word. They are applying God’s holy standards—as recorded in the Bible—to correctly identify sin as sin. Homosexual behavior is sin. All sin is evil. People need to understand what sin is, and not justify it and dress it up as something good and acceptable.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

"United Methodist Church showing more Support for 'Gay Marriage'" http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2014/07/08/united-methodist-church-showing-more-support-for-gay-marriage/, Around the World with Ken Ham (July 8, 2014)
Around the World with Ken Ham (May 2005 - Ongoing)

Dick Armey photo
Milton Friedman photo
Walter Rauschenbusch photo
August Macke photo

“I have been in Munich this week, and got to know the whole 'Neue Künstlervereinigung' at [gallery] Tannhauser's – Jawlensky, Kandinsky etc... For Munich they are very, very good, I was interested.”

August Macke (1887–1914) German painter of the expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter

Quote in Macke's letter to Franz Marc, September 1910; as quoted by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 137

Shashi Tharoor photo
John Muir photo

“If you are good to this one and that one, this one and that one will say you are good. If you are good to everyone, no one will say that you are good.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Si eres bueno con éste, con aquél dirán que eres bueno. Si eres bueno con todos, nadie dirá que eres bueno.
Voces (1943)

Vyasa photo
Thorstein Veblen photo
Bill Clinton photo
William Burges photo

“Use a good strong thick bold line so that we may get into the habit of leaving out those prettinesses which only cost money and spoil our design.”

William Burges (1827–1881) English architect

Attributed to William Burges (1860) paper on architectural drawing in: Sir Reginald Theodore Blomfield (1912) Architectural drawing and draughtsmen https://archive.org/stream/cu31924015419991#page/n25/mode/2up, Cassell & company, limited, 1912. p. 6-7

Alan Moore photo
Christian Dior photo

“We went from losses to goods seized by creditors, while continuing to organize surrealist or abstract exhibitions…”

Christian Dior (1905–1957) French fashion designer

In September 1932 when there was world wide economic crisis
Source: Marie France Pochna, "Christian Dior: The Man who Made the World Look New", p. 53

Agatha Christie photo

“I aroused Judith’s contempt by asking what good all this was likely to do to mankind? There is no question that annoys your true scientist more.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Source: Curtain - Poirot's Last Case (1975), chapter 7

Dan Rather photo
Jean-Baptiste Say photo