Quotes about goodness
page 75

Larry Wall photo

“But the possibility of abuse may be a good reason for leaving capabilities out of other computer languages, it's not a good reason for leaving capabilities out of Perl.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199709251614.JAA15718@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Alain photo
Josip Broz Tito photo
Ismail Serageldin photo

“I do believe that encyclopedias are dead as dodos in the old fashioned way. Let me just go back, because earlier around I was interviewed and I said: The book will always be with us. Books - we used to read in scrolls and then they got invented the codex which is basically the form of the book. It has not been improved on. It's like scissors, like a spoon, and like a hammer. It's technology that's perfect in itself and will remain very good. But: What about the content inside of it? Now, there are books that you read for information. And there what you want to do is how to get the information. And it is infinitely more efficient, of higher quality, to use digital sources rather than the published sources for references. So dictionaries and encyclopedias are not going to be done in this very ponderous way of having old books that by the time they come out the information in them is obsolete. Second, you have to search in all of these and open the pages and then you go to an index and come back whereas you can type to search in. […] But if you want to hold in your hand a slim volume, nicely bound, of the love sonnets of Shakespeare or historical romans, that's a different story. There is the book as artifact, there is the joy in holding the book. And there is an efficiency in the book that you can carry with you in different ways. But I think that the encyclopedias and the dictionaries really are providing a service. And that service can be provided so much more efficiently online that they are bound to change. And if they don't change themselves and go online themselves … I mean, the old providers, like Britannica, will go online, will provide it, and will try to, in fact, compete with the model that Wikipedia pioneered.”

Ismail Serageldin (1944) egyptian academic

Wikimania 2008 press conference 0'33 (August 2008).

Lewis Black photo

“If anyone is as angry as I am, it's the good people of Detroit.”

Lewis Black (1948) American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor

Stark Raving Black (2010)

Julian of Norwich photo
Friedrich Hayek photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Britney Spears photo

“The only person I do worry about, that I want to be a good person for, I think is my responsibility, is my sister. I'm going to be cool for you, okay. I like, I need to, I like being by myself right now. I think it's good for me.”

Britney Spears (1981) American singer, dancer and actress

Diane Sawyer interview http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/sixtyminutes/stories/2003_11_23/story_1024.asp, 60 Minutes (23 November 2003)

Sinclair Lewis photo
Georges Duhamel photo
Raymond Cattell photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo

“It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, who is the true Word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers, will bring us to Him.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

Letter (8 November 1952); published in Letters of C. S. Lewis (1966), p. 247

Washington Gladden photo

“You are not so good a Christian when you are neglecting a plain duty as when you are performing it. And joining the church is a plain duty for all who mean to be Christians.”

Washington Gladden (1836–1918) American pastor

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 155.

David Dixon Porter photo
Milarepa photo

“Do not spend your life committing sinful deeds;
It is good for you to practice holy Dharma.”

Milarepa (1052–1135) Tibetan yogi

Source: Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Milarepa / Quotes / The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa: The Life-Story and Teaching of the Greatest Poet-Saint Ever to Appear in the History of Buddhism / Song to the Hunter

Joseph Chamberlain photo

“I say that this Bill has been changed in its most vital features, and yet it has always been found perfect by hon. Members behind the Treasury Bench. The Prime Minister [William Gladstone] calls "black," and they say, "it is good": the Prime Minister calls "white," and they say "it is better." It is always the voice of a god. Never since the time of Herod has there been such slavish adulation.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Cheers, cries of "Progress!" and "Judas!"
Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1893/jul/27/committee-progress-new-clauses-26th-july#column_724 in the House of Commons (27 July 1893) against the Irish Home Rule Bill
1890s

Jakaya Kikwete photo

“Those who expect radical changes in policy and direction are mistaken and lost. The government of the fourth republic will build on what was undertaken by previous governments and will continue with all good things.”

Jakaya Kikwete (1950) Tanzanian politician and president

During his inauguration ceremony, 2005-12-21 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4548136.stm
2005

Aldous Huxley photo
Edgar Rice Burroughs photo

“I had gone thoroughly through some of the all-fiction magazines and I made up my mind that if people were paid for writing such rot as I read I could write stories just as rotten. Although I had never written a story, I knew absolutely that I could write stories just as entertaining and probably a lot more so than any I chanced to read in those magazines.
I knew nothing about the technique of story writing, and now, after eighteen years of writing, I still know nothing about the technique, although with the publication of my new novel, Tarzan and the Lost Empire, there are 31 books on my list. I had never met an editor, or an author or a publisher. l had no idea of how to submit a story or what I could expect in payment. Had I known anything about it at all I would never have thought of submitting half a novel; but that is what I did.
Thomas Newell Metcalf, who was then editor of The All-Story magazine, published by Munsey, wrote me that he liked the first half of a story I had sent him, and if the second half was as good he thought he might use it. Had he not given me this encouragement, I would never have finished the story, and my writing career would have been at an end, since l was not writing because of any urge to write, nor for any particular love of writing. l was writing because I had a wife and two babies, a combination which does not work well without money.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) American writer

How I Wrote the Tarzan Books (1929)

“Scotty and I became good friends. We had an immediate musical rapport that was sensational. We did a lot of listening and talking. Besides technique, he had governing, control. I think he was the first bass player who was fleet-footed in the musical sense.
[…]
What a trauma! It struck me right down—that someone I was developing such a relationship with would suddenly not be there.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

On bassist Scott LaFaro and his premature demise, as quoted in Jade Visions: The Life and Music of Scott LaFaro https://books.google.com/books?id=KnTSqVu9Zr4C&pg=PA67&dq=%22Clare+relates%22+intitle:Jade&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAGoVChMI-9Dphf_kxgIVCGk-Ch3DaQiT#v=onepage&q=%22Clare%20relates%22%20intitle%3AJade&f=false (2009) by Helene LaFaro-Fernandez, pp. 67-68

Harry Emerson Fosdick photo
John Dewey photo
Andrew Sega photo
Thomas Robert Malthus photo
Albrecht Thaer photo
William Saroyan photo
James MacDonald photo

“His disposition is kindness. His default action is for your benefit. He’s good! And someday you will taste it!”

James MacDonald (1960) American pastor

Source: Always True (Moody, 2011), p. 85

Noel Chiappa photo

“Fast, Cheap, Good - Pick Any Two.”

Noel Chiappa (1956)

Noel Chiappa's Home Page, January 1, 1990, November 20, 2016 http://mercury.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/,

Tanith Lee photo
David Lange photo
Marcus Tullius Cicero photo
Michael J. Sandel photo
Neil Young photo
M.I.A. photo
Roy A. Childs, Jr. photo

“Since society is only a group of individuals interacting according to their various purposes and plans, society has no ‘good’ apart from that of the units of which it is composed.”

Roy A. Childs, Jr. (1949–1992) American libertarian essayist and critic

"The Epistemological Status of the Issue,” 1971-72

G. K. Chesterton photo
Eudora Welty photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn't work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!”

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

Tweet https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1029329583672307712 by President Trump about Omarosa Manigault, as quoted by CNN https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/14/politics/trump-omarosa-attacks/index.html (August 14, 2018)
2010s, 2018, August

Chad Johnson photo

“There are two things for Brother Harris this week. The bad thing is, he has to cover me. The good is he can save 15 percent by switching his auto insurance to Geico.”

Chad Johnson (1978) American football player, wide receiver

"Bengals report: Notes, quotes" http://www.sportsline.com/nfl/teams/report/CIN/9006407, CBS Sports (27 October 2005)

Jerry Coyne photo
Ellen G. White photo
Thomas Hobbes photo
Grant MacEwan photo

“I believe instinctively in a God for whom I am prepared to search.

I believe it is an offence against the God of Nature for me to accept any hand-me-down, man-defined religion or creed without the test of reason. I believe no man dead or alive knows more about God than I can know by searching.

I believe that the God of Nature must be without prejudice, with exactly the same concern for all of His children, and that the human invokes no more, no less of fatherly love than the beaver or the sparrow.

I believe I am an integral part of the environment and, as a good subject, I must establish an enduring relationship with my surroundings. My dependence upon the land is fundamental.

I believe destructive waste and greedy exploitation are sins.

I believe the biggest challenge is in being a helper rather than a destroyer of the treasures in Nature's storehouse, a conserver, a husbandman and partner in caring for the Vineyard.

I accept, with apologies to Albert Schweitzer, "a Reverence for Life" and all that is of the Great Spirit's creation.

I believe mortality is not complete until the individual holds all of the Great Spirit's creatures in brotherhood and has compassion for all. A fundamental concept of Good consists of working to preserve all creatures with feeling and the will to live.

I am prepared to stand before my Maker, the Ruler of the entire Universe, with no other plea than that I have tried to leave things in His Vineyard better than I found them.”

Grant MacEwan (1902–2000) Alberta politician, Mayor of Calgary, Lieutenant Governor of Alberta

[Will The Real Alberta Please Stand Up, University of Alberta Press, 2010, 185–186, Geo Takach] The MacEwan Creed, 1969 http://www.macewan.ca/web/services/ims/client/upload/ACF16FF.pdf.

Pat Condell photo

“It's often claimed that many people in the West are converting to Islam, and it's true that some are, but it's also true that many Muslims in the West are leaving Islam, but you don't hear so much about them for obvious reasons. Some of them have been brave enough to make themselves known, and reach out to help other Muslims who want to escape the tyranny of their religion, and, like them, it's the religion I have a problem with, not the people. So no, I don't hate Muslims — thanks for asking — I wish them well. Even the fanatics who stand at the roadside with their dopey little banners and bulging eyeballs, calling for death to the West — I even wish those boneheads well, in that I wish them good mental health, if that isn't too wildly optimistic. And of course I know that there are lots of moderate, peaceful Muslims. Indeed, many of them are so moderate and peaceful, they're invisible and silent, and that is part of the problem. And just because there are lots of peaceful Muslims, it doesn't mean the religion itself is not an aggressive, fascist ideology that threatens all our freedoms, nor does it mean that western governments aren't falling over themselves to make excuses for it, pretending that Islam has nothing to do with the violence inspired and sanctioned by its scripture, and repeatedly carried out in its name.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

The Enemy Within http://youtube.com/watch?v=NUiysSau8Qk (18 July 2010)]
2010

Paul Keating photo

“The excesses of the 80s must not reappear in the 90s, The last thing we need now is a return to the 80s philosophy of 'greed is good' and that the only useful interest is self-interest.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

From a speech he delivered in Bankstown, New South Wales on the 24th of February 1993
Source: http://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/1993-paul-keating

Rob Enderle photo

“Bernie Madoff, who was put in jail for losing $64B actually looks damn good against the Cook's near 5X bigger loss.”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

The impossible task of fixing Apple http://tgdaily.com/opinion-features/70874-the-impossible-task-of-fixing-apple in TG Daily (10 April 2013)

Laura Anne Gilman photo
Meister Eckhart photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“2541. Hope is a good Breakfast, but a bad Supper.”

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

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

Fred Thompson photo
George Washington Plunkitt photo

“Every good man looks after his friends, and any man who doesn’t isn’t likely to be popular. p. 5”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 1, Honest Graft and Dishonest Graft

Nisargadatta Maharaj photo

“The World is a very complex system. It is easy to have too simple a view of it, and it is easy to do harm and to make things worse under the impulse to do good and make things better.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Kenneth Boulding (1986) "Proceedings of the 7th Friends Association for Higher Education Conference, Malone College, 1986" p. 4, quoted in Debora Hammond, The Science of Synthesis, Colorado: University of Colorado Press, 2003.
1980s

Andrew S. Grove photo

“Bad companies are destroyed by crisis, Good companies survive them, Great companies are improved by them.”

Andrew S. Grove (1936–2016) Hungarian-born American businessman, engineer, and author

Andy Grove, December 1994; cited in: Albert Yu (1998) Creating the digital future. p. 93 : After the Pentium Processor flaw in December 1994
1980s - 1990s

George Noory photo
Horace Mann photo

“I have never heard anything about the resolutions of the apostles, but a good deal about their acts.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts : Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern (1908) edited by Tryon Edwards

Gordon Tullock photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Thomas Carlyle photo

“Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have, long since, as good as renounced it.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Bk. II, ch. 4.
1830s, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834)

Jean Froissart photo

“If we all spring from a single father and mother, Adam and Eve, how can they claim or prove that they are lords more than us, except by making us produce and grow the wealth which they spend? They are clad in velvet and camlet lined with squirrel and ermine, while we go dressed in coarse cloth. They have the wines, the spices and the good bread: we have the rye, the husks and the straw, and we drink water. They have shelter and ease in their fine manors, and we have hardship and toil, the wind and the rain in the fields. And from us must come, from our labour, the things which keep them in luxury”

Jean Froissart (1337–1405) French writer

Et, se venons tout d'un père et d'une mere, Adam et Eve, en quoi poent il dire ne monstrer que il sont mieux signeur que nous, fors parce que il nous font gaaignier et labourer ce que il despendent? Il sont vestu de velours et de camocas fourés de vair et de gris, et nous sommes vesti de povres draps. Il ont les vins, les espisses et les bons pains, et nous avons le soille, le retrait et le paille, et buvons l'aige. Ils ont le sejour et les biaux manoirs, et nous avons le paine et le travail, et le pleue et le vent as camps, et faut que de nous viengne et de nostre labeur ce dont il tiennent les estas.
Book 2, p. 212.
Froissart is again quoting John Ball.
Chroniques (1369–1400)

John Wooden photo

“A player who makes a team great is more valuable than a great player. Losing yourself for the group, for the good of the group — that’s teamwork.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

Interview on Charlie Rose https://archive.org/details/WHUT_20100614_130000_Charlie_Rose (2000), IBM Linux Commercial: The Prodigy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7ozaFbqg00#t=15.3s (2003)

Amitabh Bachchan photo
Lee Smolin photo
W. H. Auden photo
Sinclair Lewis photo
Bret Easton Ellis photo
Julio Cortázar photo

“"Hair loss and retrieval" (Translation of "Pérdida y recuperación del pelo")


To combat pragmatism and the horrible tendency to achieve useful purposes, my elder cousin proposes the procedure of pulling out a nice hair from the head, knotting it in the middle and droping it gently down the hole in the sink. If the hair gets caught in the grid that usually fills in these holes, it will just take to open the tap a little to lose sight of it.


Without wasting an instant, must start the hair recovery task. The first operation is reduced to dismantling the siphon from the sink to see if the hair has become hooked in any of the rugosities of the drain. If it is not found, it is necessary to expose the section of pipe that goes from the siphon to the main drainage pipe. It is certain that in this part will appear many hairs and we will have to count on the help of the rest of the family to examine them one by one in search of the knot. If it does not appear, the interesting problem of breaking the pipe down to the ground floor will arise, but this means a greater effort, because for eight or ten years we will have to work in a ministry or trading house to collect enough money to buy the four departments located under the one of my elder cousin, all that with the extraordinary disadvantage of what while working during those eight or ten years, the distressing feeling that the hair is no longer in the pipes anymore can not be avoided and that only by a remote chance remains hooked on some rusty spout of the drain.


The day will come when we can break the pipes of all the departments, and for months to come we will live surrounded by basins and other containers full of wet hairs, as well as of assistants and beggars whom we will generously pay to search, assort, and bring us the possible hairs in order to achieve the desired certainty. If the hair does not appear, we will enter in a much more vague and complicated stage, because the next section takes us to the city's main sewers. After buying a special outfit, we will learn to slip through the sewers at late night hours, armed with a powerful flashlight and an oxygen mask, and explore the smaller and larger galleries, assisted if possible by individuals of the underworld, with whom we will have established a relationship and to whom we will have to give much of the money that we earn in a ministry or a trading house.


Very often we will have the impression of having reached the end of the task, because we will find (or they will bring us) similar hairs of the one we seek; but since it is not known of any case where a hair has a knot in the middle without human hand intervention, we will almost always end up with the knot in question being a mere thickening of the caliber of the hair (although we do not know of any similar case) or a deposit of some silicate or any oxide produced by a long stay against a wet surface. It is probable that we will advance in this way through various sections of major and minor pipes, until we reach that place where no one will decide to penetrate: the main drain heading in the direction of the river, the torrential meeting of detritus in which no money, no boat, no bribe will allow us to continue the search.


But before that, and perhaps much earlier, for example a few centimeters from the mouth of the sink, at the height of the apartment on the second floor, or in the first underground pipe, we may happen to find the hair. It is enough to think of the joy that this would cause us, in the astonished calculation of the efforts saved by pure good luck, to choose, to demand practically a similar task, that every conscious teacher should advise to its students from the earliest childhood, instead of drying their souls with the rule of cross-multiplication or the sorrows of Cancha Rayada.”

Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) Argentinian writer

Historias de Cronopios y de Famas (1962)

Trinny Woodall photo
Swami Vivekananda photo
Russell L. Ackoff photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Zakir Hussain (musician) photo
Harry Turtledove photo
Hermione Gingold photo

“My family were of good English peasant class from St. John's Wood. My father dealt in stocks and shares and my mother also had a lot of time on her hands.”

Hermione Gingold (1897–1987) English actress

The World is Square [her autobiography], Pt. I. Pub. 1945 by Home & Van Thal Ltd.

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar photo
Erik Naggum photo

“If the syntax is good enough for the information, it should be good enough for the meta-information.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: XML and lisp http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/4917ba734ce860c4 (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Nelson Mandela photo
Grover Norquist photo

“Yeah, the good news about the move to abolish the death tax, the tax where they come and look at how much money you've got when you die, how much gold is in your teeth and they want half of it, is that — you're right, there's an exemption for — I don't know — maybe a million dollars now, and it's scheduled to go up a little bit. However, 70 percent of the American people want to abolish that tax. Congress, the House and Senate, have three times voted to abolish it. The president supports abolishing it, so that tax is going to be abolished. I think it speaks very much to the health of the nation that 70-plus percent of Americans want to abolish the death tax, because they see it as fundamentally unjust. The argument that some who played at the politics of hate and envy and class division will say, 'Yes, well, that's only 2 percent,' or as people get richer 5 percent in the near future of Americans likely to have to pay that tax. I mean, that's the morality of the Holocaust. 'Well, it's only a small percentage,' you know. 'I mean, it's not you, it's somebody else.' And this country, people who may not make earning a lot of money the centerpiece of their lives, they may have other things to focus on, they just say it's not just. If you've paid taxes on your income once, the government should leave you alone. Shouldn't come back and try and tax you again.”

Grover Norquist (1956) Conservative Lobbyist

interview with NPR's Terry Gross on the program Fresh Air, October 2, 2003.
2003

Ann Coulter photo

“There are a lot of bad Republicans; there are no good Democrats.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Interview with Brian Lamb at Booknotes (11 August 2002) http://www.booknotes.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1688.
2002

John Banville photo
Georgia O'Keeffe photo
Keith Ward photo
Linus Torvalds photo

“Guess what? Wheels have been round for a really long time, and anybody who "reinvents" the new wheel is generally considered a crackpot. It turns out that "round" is simply a good form for a wheel to have. It may be boring, but it just tends to roll better than a square, and "hipness" has nothing what-so-ever to do with it.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Attributed
Source: on Desktop_architects: Drivers – below the OS, Fri Aug 3 18:12:57 PDT 2007 https://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/desktop_architects/2007-August/002446.html.

Andrew S. Grove photo

“Technology happens, it's not good, it's not bad. Is steel good or bad?”

Andrew S. Grove (1936–2016) Hungarian-born American businessman, engineer, and author

Time, TIME: Man Of The Year, Walter, Isaacson, 1997-12-29 http://www.time.com/time/special/moy/grove/opener1.html,
1980s - 1990s

Sherilyn Fenn photo
James Thomson (poet) photo

“From seeming evil still educing good.”

James Thomson (poet) (1700–1748) Scottish writer (1700-1748)

Source: Hymn (1730), line 114.

Alasdair MacIntyre photo
Arthur Stanley Eddington photo

“It is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they are confirmed by theory.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

As quoted in "Annals of Science II-DNA" by Horace Freeland Judson in The New Yorker (4 December 1978), p. 132

Ilana Mercer photo
Richard Dawkins photo

“evidence is the only good reason to believe anything”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

interview shown in AlJazeera https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0jA6VsivBE&t=0h26m04s, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0jA6VsivBE&t=0h28m37s

Tom Stoppard photo

“Good things, when short, are twice as good.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

Misattributed
Source: Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Wordly Wisdom (Oráculo Manual) Maxim #105 http://www.humanistictexts.org/gracian.htm.

Edward Jenks photo