Quotes about goodness
page 79

Georges Bernanos photo
Jean-Baptiste Say photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“We should judge university philosophy … by its true and proper aim: … that the junior barristers, solicitors, doctors, probationers, and pedagogues of the future should maintain, even in their innermost conviction, the same line of thought in keeping with the aims and intentions that the State and its government have in common with them. I have no objection to this and so in this respect have nothing to say. For I do not consider myself competent to judge of the necessity or needlessness of such a State expedient, but rather leave it to those who have the difficult task of governing men, that is to say, of maintain law and order, … and of protecting the few who have acquired property from the immense number of those who have nothing but their physical strength. … I certainly do not presume to argue with them over the means to be employed in this case; for my motto has always been: “Thank God, each morning, therefore, that you have not the Roman realm to care for!” [Goethe, Faust] But it was these constitutional aims of university philosophy which procured for Hegelry such an unprecedented ministerial favor. For it the State was “the absolute perfect ethical organism,” and it represented as originating in the State the whole aim of human existence. Could there be for future junior barristers and thus for state officials a better preparation than this, in consequence whereof their whole substance and being, their body and soul, were entirely forfeited to the State, like bees in a beehive, and they had nothing else to work for … except to become efficient wheels, cooperating for the purpose of keeping in motion the great State machine, that ultimus finis bonorum [ultimate good]? The junior barrister and the man were accordingly one and the same. It was a real apotheosis of philistinism.”

Inzwischen verlangt die Billigkeit, daß man die Universitätsphilosophie nicht bloß, wie hier gescheht!, aus dem Standpunkte des angeblichen, sondern auch aus dem des wahren und eigentlichen Zweckes derselben beurtheile. Dieser nämlich läuft darauf hinaus, daß die künftigen Referendarien, Advokaten, Aerzte, Kandidaten und Schulmänner auch im Innersten ihrer Ueberzeugungen diejenige Richtung erhalten, welche den Absichten, die der Staat und seine Regierung mit ihnen haben, angemessen ist. Dagegen habe ich nichts einzuwenden, bescheide mich also in dieser Hinsicht. Denn über die Nothwendigkeit, oder Entbehrlichkeit eines solchen Staatsmittels zu urtheilen, halte ich mich nicht für kompetent; sondern stelle es denen anheim, welche die schwere Aufgabe haben, Menschen zu regieren, d. h. unter vielen Millionen eines, der großen Mehrzahl nach, gränzenlos egoistischen, ungerechten, unbilligen, unredlichen, neidischen, boshaften und dabei sehr beschränkten und querköpfigen Geschlechtes, Gesetz, Ordnung, Ruhe und Friede aufrecht zu erhalten und die Wenigen, denen irgend ein Besitz zu Theil geworden, zu schützen gegen die Unzahl Derer, welche nichts, als ihre Körperkräfte haben. Die Aufgabe ist so schwer, daß ich mich wahrlich nicht vermesse, über die dabei anzuwendenden Mittel mit ihnen zu rechten. Denn „ich danke Gott an jedem Morgen, daß ich nicht brauch’ für’s Röm’sche Reich zu sorgen,”—ist stets mein Wahlspruch gewesen. Diese Staatszwecke der Universitätsphilosophie waren es aber, welche der Hegelei eine so beispiellose Ministergunft verschafften. Denn ihr war der Staat „der absolut vollendete ethische Organismus,” und sie ließ den ganzen Zweck des menschlichen Daseyns im Staat aufgehn. Konnte es eine bessere Zurichtung für künftige Referendarien und demnächst Staatsbeamte geben, als diese, in Folge welcher ihr ganzes Wesen und Seyn, mit Leib und Seele, völlig dem Staat verfiel, wie das der Biene dem Bienenstock, und sie auf nichts Anderes, weder in dieser, noch in einer andern Welt hinzuarbeiten hatten, als daß sie taugliche Räder würden, mitzuwirken, um die große Staatsmaschine, diesen ultimus finis bonorum, im Gange zu erhalten? Der Referendar und der Mensch war danach Eins und das Selbe. Es war eine rechte Apotheose der Philisterei.
Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, p. 159, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 146-147
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), On Philosophy in the Universities

“We do not have monarchies by divine right, we do not lack influential and wealthy clergy, we do not want rich families between the crown and the people. What we are looking for is equal rights for the people, and uniform distribution of goods. It is time for democratizing the right to property.”

Francisco Luís Gomes (1829–1869) Indo-Portuguese physician, writer, historian, economist, political scientist and MP in the Portuguese parli…

A Liberdade da Terra e a Economia Rural da India Portuguesa (1862), Introduction. Quoted by Teotonio R. de Souza in Essays in Goan history (1989), p. 137
A Liberdade da Terra e a Economia Rural da India Portuguesa (1862)

Sidney Lanier photo
Jay Leiderman photo
William Ernest Henley photo
Susan Cooper photo

“Its always good to have a theme.”

Rob Payne (1973) Canadian writer

Source: Working Class Zero (2003), Chapter 2, p. 14

Herbert Hoover photo

“A good many things go around in the dark besides Santa Claus.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Address to the John Marshall Republican Club, St. Louis, Missouri (16 December 1935)

Philip Warren Anderson photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Francis Marion Crawford photo
Nguyễn Du photo

“Inside ourselves there lies the root of good:
the heart outweighs all talents on this earth.”

Source: The Tale of Kiều (1813), Lines 3251–3252

John Lancaster Spalding photo

“To clothe truth in fitting words is to feel a satisfaction like that which comes of doing good deeds.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 23

Roger Ascham photo

“There is no such whetstone, to sharpen a good wit and encourage a will to learning, as is praise.”

Roger Ascham (1515–1568) English scholar and didactic writer

The Schoolmaster (1570), p. 1

Harry Hopkins photo

“They are damn good projects - excellent projects. That goes for all the projects up there. You know some people make fun of people who speak a foreign language, and dumb people criticize something they do not understand, and that is what is going on up there - God damn it!”

Harry Hopkins (1890–1946) American politician, 8th United States Secretary of Commerce, assistant to President Franklin Delano Roosev…

Stated at a press conference (April 4, 1935); reported in Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (1948), p. 60. Sherwood says, "The reports of this conference quoted Hopkins as saying that 'the people are too damned dumb', and this phrase was given plenty of circulation in the press" (p. 61). He adds in a footnote that "it will be seen from the transcript of his remarks that this particular statement was directed not at the people but at the critical orators" (p. 938). Also reported in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 48-49; Boller and George also note that the quote was quickly misreported as "The people are too damn dumb to understand".

Stephen King photo
Norman Mailer photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Paul Ryan photo
Sandy Koufax photo

“The game has a cleanness. If you do a good job, the numbers say so. You don't have to ask anyone or play politics. You don't have to wait for the reviews.”

Sandy Koufax (1935) American baseball player

As quoted in "Koufax" https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/03/21/koufax/3139f66f-996a-485f-8cce-8f7671152136/?utm_term=.174cfc71ede2) by Thomas Boswell, in The Washington Post (March 21, 1979)

Christopher Hitchens photo

“That war in the early 1990s changed a lot for me. I never thought I would see, in Europe, a full-dress reprise of internment camps, the mass murder of civilians, the reinstitution of torture and rape as acts of policy. And I didn't expect so many of my comrades to be indifferent – or even take the side of the fascists. It was a time when many people on the left were saying 'Don't intervene, we'll only make things worse' or, 'Don't intervene, it might destabilise the region. And I thought – destabilisation of fascist regimes is a good thing. Why should the left care about the stability of undemocratic regimes? Wasn't it a good thing to destabilise the regime of General Franco? It was a time when the left was mostly taking the conservative, status quo position – leave the Balkans alone, leave Milosevic alone, do nothing. And that kind of conservatism can easily mutate into actual support for the aggressors. Weimar-style conservatism can easily mutate into National Socialism. So you had people like Noam Chomsky's co-author Ed Herman go from saying 'Do nothing in the Balkans', to actually supporting Milosevic, the most reactionary force in the region. That's when I began to first find myself on the same side as the neocons. I was signing petitions in favour of action in Bosnia, and I would look down the list of names and I kept finding, there's Richard Perle. There's Paul Wolfowitz. That seemed interesting to me. These people were saying that we had to act. Before, I had avoided them like the plague, especially because of what they said about General Sharon and about Nicaragua. But nobody could say they were interested in oil in the Balkans, or in strategic needs, and the people who tried to say that – like Chomsky – looked ridiculous. So now I was interested.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"In enemy territory? An interview with Christopher Hitchens." http://www.johannhari.com/2004/09/23/in-enemy-territory-an-interview-with-christopher-hitchens, Interview with Johann Hari (2004-09-23): On the Bosnian War
2000s, 2004

Enoch Powell photo
Stephen Fry photo
Charles Simic photo

“It’s never been such a good time to be a crook. In what other country of laws does one enjoy so much freedom to defraud one’s government and fellow citizens without having to worry about cops showing at the door? Small-time crooks sooner or later end up in the slammer, but our big-time con artists, as we’ve come to learn, are now regarded as the untouchables, too well-heeled and powerful to lock up.”

Charles Simic (1938) American poet

"A Thieves' Thanksgiving," http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/nov/26/thieves-thanksgiving/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR+Goya+Ferrante+crooks&utm_content=NYR+Goya+Ferrante+crooks+CID_8376c474295b4e263a32522d2bbfd922&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=A%20Thieves%20Thanksgiving New York Review of Books, November 26, 2014

Pat Sajak photo

“I would be surprised… if someone at CBS wasn't thinking that eventually Johnny's gonna retire and if we have somebody in place, we'll be in good shape.”

Pat Sajak (1946) American television host

1980s-1990s
Source: Newsweek, Vol. 113 (1989), p. 138: Article states that "It's in the network's interest to get some kind of talk show going."

Tom Clancy photo
Gerard Bilders photo

“I have seen pictures [on the Salon of Brussel, 1860], of which I had never dreamed and in which I found all that my heart desires, all that I nearly always miss in the Dutch painters. Troyon, Courbet, Diaz, Dupré [all painters of the School of Barbizon, Robert Fleury have made a great impression on me. I am a good Frenchman, therefore; but, as Simon van den Berg says, it is just because I am a good Frenchman that I am a good Dutchman, since the great Frenchmen of today and the great Dutchmen of the past have much in common. Unity, restfulness, earnestness and, above all, an inexplicable intimacy with nature are what struck me most in these pictures. There were certainly also a few good Dutch pieces, but, generally speaking, when you place them next to the great Parisians, they lack that mellowness, that quality which, so to speak, resembles the deep tones of an organ. And yet this luxurious manner came originally from Holland, from our steaming, fat-coloured Holland! They were courageous pictures; there was a heart and a soul in them.”

Gerard Bilders (1838–1865) painter from the Netherlands

Quote from Bilders in his letter (End of 1860); as cited in Dutch Art in the Nineteenth Century – 'The Hague School; Introduction' https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dutch_Art_in_the_Nineteenth_Century/The_Hague_School:_Introduction, by G. Hermine Marius, transl. A. Teixera de Mattos; publish: The la More Press, London, 1908
1860's

Robert P. George photo
Adolph Freiherr Knigge photo

“In cities people think that it is good manners not even to know who lives in the same building.”

Adolph Freiherr Knigge (1752–1796) German writer and Freemason

In Städten glaubt man, es gehöre zum guten Tone, nicht einmal zu wissen, wer in demselben Hause wohnt.
Quoted in Der kleine Rechthaber: Wem gehört die Parklücke und andere juristische Überraschungen (2008) by Claus Murken, p. 79.

Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey photo

“It was a fine thing to be a newspaperman and I very much wanted to be a good one.”

Roger Kahn (1927–2020) American baseball writer

Source: The Boys Of Summer, Chapter 2, Ceremonies of Innocence, p. 175

Julian of Norwich photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
William Burges photo

“Nothing is more perishable than worn-out apparel, yet, thanks to documentary evidence, to the custom of burying people of high rank in their robes, and to the practice of wrapping up relics of saints in pieces of precious stuffs, we are enabled to form a veiy good idea of what these stuffs were like and where they came from. In the first instance they appear to have come from Byzantium, and from the East generally; but the manufacture afterwards extended to Sicily, and received great impetus at the Norman conquest of that island; Roger I. even transplanting Greek workmen from the towns sacked by his army, and settling them in Sicily. Of course many of the workers would be Mohammedans, and the old patterns, perhaps with the addition of sundry animals, would still continue in use; hence the frequency of Arabic inscriptions in the borders, the Cufic character being one of the most ornamental ever used. In the Hotel de Clu^ny at Paris are preserved the remains of the vestments of a bishop of Bayonne, found when his sepulchre was opened in 1853, the date of the entombment being the twelfth century. Some of these remains are cloth of gold, but the most remarkable is a very deep border ornamented with blue Cufic letters on a gold ground; the letters are fimbriated with white, and from them issue delicate red scrolls, which end in Arabic sort of flowers: this tissue probably is pure Eastern work. On the contrary, the coronation robes of the German emperors, although of an Eastern pattern, bear inscriptions which tell us very clearly where they were manufactured: thus the Cufic characters on the cope inform us that it was made in the city of Palermo in the year 1133, while the tunic has the date of 1181, but then the inscription is in the Latin language. The practice of putting Cufic inscriptions on precious stuffs was not confined to the Eastern and Sicilian manufactures; in process of time other Italian cities took up the art, and, either because it was the fashion, or because they wished to pass off" their own work as Sicilian or Eastern manufacture, imitations of Arabic characters are continually met with, both on the few examples that have come down to us of the stuffs themselves, or on painted statues or sculptured effigies. These are the inscriptions which used to be the despair of antiquaries, who vainly searched out their meaning until it was discovered that they had no meaning at all, and that they were mere ornaments. Sometimes the inscriptions appear to be imitations of the Greek, and sometimes even of the Hebrew. The celebrated ciborium of Limoges work in the Louvre, known as the work of Magister G. Alpais, bears an ornament around its rim which a French antiquary has discovered to be nothing more than the upper part of a Cufic word repeated and made into a decoration.”

William Burges (1827–1881) English architect

Quote was introduced with the phrase:
In the lecture on the weaver's art, we are reminded of the superiority of Indian muslins and Chinese and Persian carpets, and the gorgeous costumes of the middle ages are contrasted with our own dark ungraceful garments. The Cufic inscriptions that have so perplexed antiquaries, were introduced with the rich Eastern stuffs so much sought after by the wealthy class, and though, as Mr. Burges observes
Source: Art applied to industry: a series of lectures, 1865, p. 85; Cited in: " Belles Lettres http://books.google.com/books?id=0EegAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA143" in: The Westminster Review, Vol. 84-85. Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1865. p. 143

Sathya Sai Baba photo
Robert Hunter (author) photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“I have ever deemed it more honorable and profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.”

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

As quoted in The Life and Writings of Thomas Jefferson : Including All of His Important Utterances on Public Questions (1900) by Samuel E. Forman, p. 429
Posthumous publications

Daniel Defoe photo

“The best of men cannot suspend their fate:
The good die early, and the bad die late.”

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) English trader, writer and journalist

Character of the Late Dr. S. Annesley (1715).

Jack Layton photo
Eric Hoffer photo

“Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Section 26
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)

Mike Tomlin photo

“People aren't very good listeners, by nature … Part of being a good communicator is recognizing and understanding that and trying to make the complex simple. I try to capture a concept, an idea or a moment in a few words. If they remember it, job done.”

Mike Tomlin (1972) head coach of the National Football League's Pittsburgh Steelers

As quoted in "Inside Tomlin's style: Humility, words matter for Steelers coach" by Jarrett Bell, in USA Today (31 January 2009)

John Dryden photo

“For present joys are more to flesh and blood
Than a dull prospect of a distant good.”

Pt. III, lines 364–365.
The Hind and the Panther (1687)

Al-Mahdi photo
Ted Malloch photo

“One runs a business ultimately to do well so you can do good for everyone.”

Ted Malloch (1952) American businessman

Source: Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 102.

Paul Newman photo
Peggy Noonan photo
Ernest Hemingway photo

“Fortunately I have never learned to take the good advice I give myself nor the counsel of my fears.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: The Dangerous Summer (1985), Ch. 1

Thomas Jefferson photo
André Maurois photo

“A great statesman, like a good housekeeper, knows that cleaning has to be done every morning.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Leadership

Roger Ebert photo
Martin Heidegger photo
Oliver Wendell Holmes photo

“Being good can never do without the effort to learn, step by step, and in real circumstances of life, how to separate religious and moral words from an expelling mechanism, one which demands human sacrifice, so as to make of them words of mercy which absolve, which loose, which allow creation to be brought to completion.”

James Alison (1959) Christian theologian, priest

Source: Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001), " The man blind from birth and the Creator's subversion of sin http://girardianlectionary.net/res/fbr_ch-1_john9.htm", p. 20.

Fernand Léger photo
Andy Warhol photo

“THERAPIST: your problem is, that youre perfect, and everyone is jealous of your good posts, and that makes you rightfully upset.
ME: I agree”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/516183352106577920]
Tweets by year, 2014

Mario Cuomo photo
John Cotton Dana photo

“A great department store, easily reached, open at all hours, is more like a good museum of art than any of the museums we have yet established.”

John Cotton Dana (1856–1929) American librarian and museum director

New York Times, March 16, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/arts/17iht-rartmuseums.html

Du Fu photo

“Good rain is coming to our delight.
Its early-spring timing is perfectly right.
With wind it drifts in all through the night.
Silently it's drenching everything in sight.”

Du Fu (712–770) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

"Welcome Rain in a Spring Night" (《春夜喜雨》), as translated by Ying Sun http://www.musicated.com/syh/tangpoems.htm (2008)

Gertrude Stein photo
Fiona Apple photo

“Everything good, I deem too good to be true;
Everything else is just a bore.
Everything I have to look forward to
Has a pretty painful and very imposing before.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

O' Sailor
Song lyrics, Extraordinary Machine (2005)

George II of Great Britain photo

“I hate bainting, and boetry too! Neither the one nor the other ever did any good.”

George II of Great Britain (1683–1760) British monarch

John Ireland Hogarth Illustrated (1791); cited from John Ireland and John Nichols Hogarth's Works (1883) p. 122.
Later sources usually quote this as "I hate all bainters and boets!", or as "Damn the bainters and the boets too!" The saying is often misattributed to George I.

G. K. Chesterton photo
George Canning photo

“I for my part still conceive it to be the paramount duty of a British member of parliament to consider what is good for Great Britain…I do not envy that man's feelings, who can behold the sufferings of Switzerland, and who derives from that sight no idea of what is meant by the deliverance of Europe. I do not envy the feelings of that man, who can look without emotion at Italy – plundered, insulted, trampled upon, exhausted, covered with ridicule, and horror, and devastation – who can look at all this, and be at a loss to guess what is meant by the deliverance of Europe? As little do I envy the feelings of that man, who can view the peoples of the Netherlands driven into insurrection, and struggling for their freedom against the heavy hand of a merciless tyranny, without entertaining any suspicion of what may be the sense of the word deliverance. Does such a man contemplate Holland groaning under arbitrary oppressions and exactions? Does he turn his eyes to Spain trembling at the nod of a foreign master? And does the word deliverance still sound unintelligibly in his ear? Has he heard of the rescue and salvation of Naples, by the appearance and the triumphs of the British fleet? Does he know that the monarchy of Naples maintains its existence at the sword's point? And is his understanding, and his heart, still impenetrable to the sense and meaning of the deliverance of Europe?”

George Canning (1770–1827) British statesman and politician

Speech in 1798, quoted in Wendy Hinde, George Canning (London: Purnell Books Services, 1973), p. 66.

Aung San Suu Kyi photo
Democritus photo

“If one choose the goods of the soul, he chooses the diviner [portion]; if the goods of the body, the merely mortal.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus

Charlie Brooker photo
H.L. Mencken photo

“The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-bye to the Bill of Rights.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe (1920-1936), p. 279
1920s

Alan Cox photo

“Engineering does not require science. Science helps a lot but people built perfectly good brick walls long before they knew why cement works.”

Alan Cox (1968) British computer programmer

Re: Coding style - a non-issue http://lkml.org/lkml/2001/12/1/110.

Salman al-Ouda photo

“My enemies, I thank you! You are who trained me to be patient, to respond to the evil with the good and to overlook.”

Salman al-Ouda (1956) journalist

My Enemies, I Thank You (كتاب شكرا أيها الأعداء)

Joan Robinson photo
Orson Welles photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Graham Greene photo

“My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.”

Graham Greene (1904–1991) English writer, playwright and literary critic

International Herald Tribune (October 7, 1977)

Andrew Scheer photo

“I have a popcorn problem. I can't stop. I've been known to drive by the movie theater, walk in, just buy a bag of popcorn. It's so good.”

Andrew Scheer (1979) 35th Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons and MP for Regina—Qu'Appelle

5 August 2017 interview with Midnight Sun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsDGGsnXO18

Nalo Hopkinson photo
Condoleezza Rice photo

“You are a good friend and we welcome you.”

Condoleezza Rice (1954) American Republican politician; U.S. Secretary of State; political scientist

[http://web.archive.org/web/20060413191309/http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/64434.htm Remarks With Equatorial Guinean President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogol April 12, 2006.

Larry Wall photo

“Besides, it's good to force C programmers to use the toolbox occasionally.”

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

[1991May31.181659.28817@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov, 1991]
Usenet postings, 1991

Harold L. Ickes photo

“This is what the "New Deal" means to me, an era of acute social consciousness and realization of mutual responsibility, a time of reciprocal helpfulness, of greater understanding and willingness to work together for the good of all.”

Harold L. Ickes (1874–1952) American politician

Speech to the Associated General Contractors of America (Jan. 31, 1936) as quoted by Jason Scott, Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956 (2006)

Orson Scott Card photo
John Mearsheimer photo

“In an ideal world, where there are only good states, power would be largely irrelevant.”

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 1, Introduction, p. 16

Maimónides photo