Quotes about goodness
page 77

Victor Villaseñor photo
Steven Pressfield photo
Robert Maynard Hutchins photo
Chris Matthews photo
Harry Turtledove photo

“Sex and politics - sex and politicians. I never understand how any politician gets a shag, really. Can you? A classic example: the David Mellor sex scandal. I bet you're the same as me. We're not shocked by these scandals involving politicians. I bet when that happened, your response was not 'Good God, that's outrageous! A man in his job, he should be running the country, not messing about like this; no wonder we're in a state; terrible!' No, that wasn't the response. You open the paper, you read about that, and you go 'Ha ha ha ha - I don't think so, Dave! I don't think so. In your dreams, perhaps.' The interesting person in that relationship is not him; it's her - Antonia. A woman of mystery; a mystery woman. Antonia de Sancha, always described as an 'unemployed actress'. Unemployed actress? How's she an unemployed actress? God! if you can feign sexual interest in David Mellor, I should think Chekhov's a piece of piss. So, she thinks 'I'm an actress. It's a role. I'll prepare'. She gets to the bedroom situation. He's in a kit-off situation, and there's Antonia giving it 'Red lorry, yellow lorry - Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper'. But the hair - that's the main unattractive thing. What barber told him that suited him? Someone winding him up there. 'Yes, David, that'll suit you, mate: a greasy, oily flap of dirty-looking patent leather, wafting about down one side of your moosh; that'll drive those unemployed actresses mental!' (Linda Live, 1993)”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

Stand-up

Mahendra Chaudhry photo
Ihara Saikaku photo
Sydney Smith photo

“It is the safest to be moderately base — to be flexible in shame, and to be always ready for what is generous, good, and just, when anything is to be gained by virtue.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

"Catholics", published in The Edinburgh Review (1827)

Dan Rather photo
James K. Morrow photo
John DiMaggio photo
Mark Burns (televangelist) photo
Leszek Kolakowski photo
Joe Biden photo
George Raymond Richard Martin photo

“Much as I admire Tolkien, and I do admire Tolkien — he’s been a huge influence on me, and his Lord of the Rings is the mountain that leans over every other fantasy written since and shaped all of modern fantasy — there are things about it, the whole concept of the Dark Lord, and good guys battling bad guys, Good versus Evil, while brilliantly handled in Tolkien, in the hands of many Tolkien successors, it has become kind of a cartoon. We don’t need any more Dark Lords, we don’t need any more, ‘Here are the good guys, they’re in white, there are the bad guys, they’re in black. And also, they’re really ugly, the bad guys. It is certainly a genuine, legitimate topic as the core of fantasy, but I think the battle between Good and Evil is waged within the individual human hearts. We all have good in us and we all have evil in us, and we may do a wonderful good act on Tuesday and a horrible, selfish, bad act on Wednesday, and to me, that’s the great human drama of fiction. I believe in gray characters, as I’ve said before. We all have good and evil in us and there are very few pure paragons and there are very few orcs. A villain is a hero of the other side, as someone said once, and I think there’s a great deal of truth to that, and that’s the interesting thing. In the case of war, that kind of situation, so I think some of that is definitely what I’m aiming at.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

AssignmentX interview (June 2011) http://www.assignmentx.com/2011/interview-game-of-thrones-creator-george-r-r-martin-on-the-future-of-the-franchise-part-2/

Ron White photo
Chris Pontius photo

“There's a very good chance we could be riding each other to Russia.”

Chris Pontius (1974) American actor

[Gumball 3000- Jackass Episodes]

Orson Scott Card photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Camille Paglia photo
Edouard Manet photo

“The Bellevue air [suburb outside Paris with curative waters] has done me a world of good... But Alas! Naturalist painting is more in disfavor than ever.”

Edouard Manet (1832–1883) French painter

quote in a letter to Emile Zola, June 1880; as quoted by Colin B. Bailey, in The Annenberg Collection: Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-impressionism, publish. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009, p. 16 - note 5
Manet had severe rheumatism and visited in 1879 a clinic in the same location, Bellevue, a suburb outside Paris with curative waters
1876 - 1883

Hesiod photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo
Ben Stein photo
Charles James Fox photo
Muhammad al-Mahdi photo
James Kenneth Stephen photo
Francis Bacon photo
Bill Maher photo
James C. Collins photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo

“Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. If I had to give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I shd. say, 'sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends.”

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

Letter to Arthur Greeves (29 December 1935) — in They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914–1963) (1979), p. 477

Paul Karl Feyerabend photo
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo
Dave Matthews photo

“Our good friend LeRoi Moore passed on and gave up his ghost today, and we will miss him forever.”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

Concert the night of Moore's death. http://www.nme.com/news/dave-matthews-band/39071 (2008)

Noam Chomsky photo

“There's a good reason why nobody studies history. It just teaches you too much.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

KGNU benefit at the University of Colorado at Boulder, April 5, 2003 (context: João Goulart) http://www.freespeech.org/fsitv/fscm2/contentviewer.php?content_id=299
Quotes 2000s, 2003

Vincent Van Gogh photo

“d'Alembert, who wrote the introduction to the Encyclopédie, resigned his editorship with the scathing remark that the work was like a harlequin's coat: some good stuff, but mostly rags.”

Tobias Dantzig (1884–1956) American mathematician

Henri Poincaré, Critic of Crisis: Reflections on His Universe of Discourse (1954), Ch. 2. The Age of Innocence

Fiona Apple photo
Laurell K. Hamilton photo
Woodrow Wilson photo

“I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Statement to British envoy William Tyrrell explaining his policy on Mexico (November 1913)
1910s

John Clare photo
Alex Jones photo
Verghese Kurien photo
Franz Boas photo
Carl Sagan photo
Adolf Hitler photo
Michio Kushi photo
Thomas De Witt Talmage photo
Arthur Helps photo
Horace Mann photo

“Evil and good are God's right hand and left.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

Philip James Bailey, in Festus (1839), misattribution of this to Mann seems to have only started in recent years, on the internet.
Misattributed

Ganapathy Sachchidananda Swamiji photo

“It is of primary importance to attune with God through prayer, worship and the chanting of God's holy names … Then God Himself will give you good guidance.”

As quoted at the Introductory page of Datta Peetham. http://www.dattapeetham.com

Aristophanés photo

“Agathon: One must not try to trick misfortune, but resign oneself to it with good grace.”

tr. Athen. 1912, vol. 2, p. 278 http://books.google.com/books?id=6fxxAAAAIAAJ&q=%22one+must+not+try+to+trick+misfortune,+but+resign+oneself+to+it+with+good+grace%22
tr. O'Neill 1938, Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristoph.+Thes.+198
Thesmophoriazusae, line 198-199
Thesmophoriazusae (411 BC)

Pope Benedict XVI photo
Mr. T photo
Gustav Stresemann photo
Natacha Rambova photo
Amir Khan (boxer) photo
Vitruvius photo

“When the juices of trees have no means of escape, they clot and rot in them, making the trees hollow and good for nothing.”

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter IX, Sec. 4

Thomas Shadwell photo

“Every man loves what he is good at.”

Thomas Shadwell (1642–1692) English poet and playwright

Act V, sc. i.
The True Widow (1679)

Katie Melua photo

“The only trouble is that there's absolutely no passion, no soul and no excitement to be found here…Yet all good music should provoke some sort of emotion, and this [Nine Million Bicycles] provokes none whatsoever.”

Katie Melua (1984) British singer-songwriter

John Murphy
[John Murphy, Nine Million Bicycles review, http://www.musicomh.com/singles5/katie-melua-3_0905.htm, musicOMH, 2005-09-19]
About

Richard Dawkins photo
Donovan photo
Malala Yousafzai photo

“I think that it's really an early age… I would feel proud, when I would work for education, when I would have done something, when I would be feeling confident to tell people, 'Yes! I have built that school; I have done that teachers' training, I have sent that (many) children to school'… Then if I get the Nobel Peace Prize, I will be saying, Yeah, I deserve it, somehow… I want to become a Prime Minister of Pakistan, and I think it's really good. Because through politics I can serve my whole county. I can be the doctor of the whole country… I can spend much of the money from the budget on education," she told It appears that becoming prime minister is a means to the end she has dedicated her life to… [in recalling when she got shot] He asked, 'Who is Malala?' He did not give me time to answer his question… He fired three bullets… One bullet hit me in the left side of my forehead, just above here, and it went down through my neck and into my shoulder… But still if I look at (it), it's a miracle… A Nobel Peace Prize would help me to begin this campaign for girls' education… But the real call, the most precious call, that I want to get and for which I'm thirsting and for which I want to struggle hard, that is the award to see every child to go to school, that is the award of peace and education for every child. And for that, I will struggle and I will work hard.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

Interview on CNN with Christiane Amanpour (October 11, 2013)

Michael Moorcock photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo photo

“The people want government that works for them at every level. They want good government that begins at their doorstep in the barangay, and does not end before the closed door of a bureaucrat in Metro Manila.”

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (1947) The 14th President of the Philippines from 2001 to 2010

2005 State of the Nation Address (July 25, 2005) http://www.gov.ph/sona/sonatext2005.asp

Thom Yorke photo
Stephen Vincent Benét photo

“Life was a storm to wander through.
I took the wrong way. Good and well,
At least my feet sought out not Hell!”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Source: Young Adventure (1918), The Quality of Courage

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos photo

“I was astonished at the pleasure to be derived from doing good.”

J’ai été étonné du plaisir qu’on éprouve en faisant le bien.
Letter 21: Le Vicomte de Valmont to la Marquise de Merteuil. Trans. P.W.K. Stone (1961). http://www.cartage.org.lb/fr/themes/livreBiblioteques/Livres/Biblio(fr)/L/Lacl/Liaisonsdangereuses/lett21.htm
Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)

Masti Venkatesha Iyengar photo
Richard Feynman photo
Hendrik Lorentz photo

“I cannot refrain… from expressing my surprise that, according to the report in The Times there should be so much complaint about the difficulty of understanding the new theory. It is evident that Einstein's little book "About the Special and the General Theory of Relativity in Plain Terms," did not find its way into England during wartime. Any one reading it will, in my opinion, come to the conclusion that the basic ideas of the theory are really clear and simple; it is only to be regretted that it was impossible to avoid clothing them in pretty involved mathematical terms, but we must not worry about that. …
The Newtonian theory remains in its full value as the first great step, without which one cannot imagine the development of astronomy and without which the second step, that has now been made, would hardly have been possible. It remains, moreover, as the first, and in most cases, sufficient, approximation. It is true that, according to Einstein's theory, because it leaves us entirely free as to the way in which we wish to represent the phenomena, we can imagine an idea of the solar system in which the planets follow paths of peculiar form and the rays of light shine along sharply bent lines—think of a twisted and distorted planetarium—but in every case where we apply it to concrete questions we shall so arrange it that the planets describe almost exact ellipses and the rays of light almost straight lines.
It is not necessary to give up entirely even the ether. …according to the Einstein theory, gravitation itself does not spread instantaneously, but with a velocity that at the first estimate may be compared with that of light. …In my opinion it is not impossible that in the future this road, indeed abandoned at present, will once more be followed with good results, if only because it can lead to the thinking out of new experimental tests. Einstein's theory need not keep us from so doing; only the ideas about the ether must accord with it.”

Hendrik Lorentz (1853–1928) Dutch physicist

Theory of Relativity: A Concise Statement (1920)

“He [Anthony Crosland] and his Socialist fellow-theoreticians did a terrific job in degrading scholastic standards in the name of equality, which meant dragging down the good to the level of the mediocre.”

George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) English-born author of Scottish descent

Dumbing Down, Down, Down... p. 247.
The Light's On At Signpost (2002)

Pentti Linkola photo
Rachel Riley photo

“Men are not as scared to lose and they’ve got a lot more time to devote to, not exactly pointless things, but to being good at things like Countdown.”

Rachel Riley (1986) television presenter

Interview, The Observer, 12 Oct 2014 http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/oct/12/rachel-riley-countdown-stop-saying-girls-arent-good-at-maths

John Stossel photo

“There is some good evidence man contributes to global warming. But I say, so what? We can deal with that. It's not a catastrophe. And cold is far worse for hurting people than warmth.”

John Stossel (1947) American consumer reporter, investigative journalist, author and libertarian columnist

[Fox & Friends, John Stossel, 2014-12-11, Fox News, Television], quoted in Fox segment on ‘ridiculous’ climate change devolves into talk of humans living with dinosaurs, Raw Story, David Edwards, 2014-12-11, 2014-12-15 http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/fox-segment-on-ridiculous-climate-change-devolves-into-talk-of-humans-living-with-dinosaurs/,

Richard Rorty photo
John C. Calhoun photo
Nigel Cumberland photo

“Refusing to forgive never made anyone feel better about anything. All you are doing is holding on to feelings of upset, anger and jealousy and that can never be good. I once read that being angry and unforgiving towards someone else is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

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

Dorothy Parker photo

“The musical comedies of the month are She’s a Good Fellow and The Lady in Red, both of which owe their book and lyrics to Anne Caldwell—evidently a native of New York, judged by the casualness with which she rhymes “teacher” and “reach a.””

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 2: 1919, p. 82

Charles Wheelan photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Brad Paisley photo

“There are many who write good deeds in the dust, and injuries on marble.”

Stefano Guazzo (1530–1593) Italian writer

Ve ne sono molti che scrivono i beneficii nella polvere, e l'ingiurie nel marmo.
Del Prencipe di Valacchia, p. 79.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 436.

Randy Pausch photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo

“I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in the country, such high moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

This quotation is commonly said to have been spoken by Macaulay during a speech to the British Parliament in 1835. Since Macaulay was in India at the time, it is more likely to have come from his Minute on Indian Education http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/txt_minute_education_1835.html. However, these words do not appear in that text. According to Koenraad Elst http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/hinduism/macaulay.html, these words were printed in The Awakening Ray, Vol. 4, No. 5, published by the Gnostic Center, preceded by: "His words were to the effect." Burjor Avari cites this misattribution as an example of "tampering with historical evidence" in India: The Ancient Past ISBN 9780415356169, pp. 19–20), writes: "No proof of this statement has been found in any of the volumes containing the writings and speeches of Macaulay. In a journal in which the extract appeared, the writer did not reproduce the exact wording of the Minutes, but merely paraphrased them, using the qualifying phrase: ‘His words were to the effect.:’ This is extremely mischievous, as numerous interpretations can be drawn from the Minutes." For a full discussion, see Koenraad Elst, The Argumentative Hindu (2012) Chapter 3
Misattributed