Quotes about goodness (10000 quotes, page 98)

“One of my grandfathers was a blacksmith, and all the plumbers and carpenters and electricians, people who did things with their hands, thought of themselves as artists because they were good at doing things. They were proud of their making things.”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

Kenneth Noland, p. 9
Conversation with Karen Wilkin' (1986-1988)

People

“In Germany, it seems that the intellectual and aesthetic life are to be celebrated and are seen as part of a real and good education, whereas in Britain, traditionally – certainly since the Enlightenment – we've been afraid of anything intellectual, aesthetic, visual.”

Anish Kapoor (1954) British contemporary artist of Indian birth

Life , Education , Parting

“I find that I have great faith in human nature. I believe that people are good. I believe they are to be trusted. So far as I know, no one has ever betrayed my faith, in any way. If they ever have, I've been spared the knowledge of it.
If I couldn't have faith in human nature, I wouldn't want to live. It is the one thing that could destroy for me the joy of living.
I've come to believe that life, under almost any conditions, is worth while.
I found that out when I had my accident some years ago, and was in the hospital.
I thought, for a couple of weeks, that I would be blind for life. I thought I would surely be so disabled that I would never be able to work again. I didn't suppose that I would have one five-hundredth of what I have now. Still I thought, 'Life is worth while. Just to be alive. I still think so.”

Harold Lloyd (1893–1971) American film actor and producer

"Discoveries About Myself". Motion Picture, October 1930, pg. 90. (Brewster Publications). https://archive.org/stream/motionpicture1923040chic#page/n595/mode/2up

Life , People , Faith , Way

“I said it is good for centrifuges to operate, but it is also important that the country operates as well and the wheels of industry are turning.”

Hassan Rouhani (1948) 7th President of Islamic Republic of Iran

Presidential campaign, 2013

Country

“Who ever heard of a devout deist? Who ever heard of one who was willing to spend his life in missionary labor for the good of others? It is not according to the constitution of the mind that such a system should awaken the affections. And what is true of this system is true of every false system. All such systems leave the heart cold, and, accordingly, exert very little genuine, transforming power over the life.”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 504.

Life , Heart , Falseness

“Isn't it great that I evoke a reaction from people? Whether it is good or bad is secondary. The thing is that I like being myself. I find it very tiresome to put up a fake smile, say the right things, and be diplomatic. It's just not in my personality to be like that.”

Mallika Sherawat (1976) Indian actress

Cine Bliitz magazine,(July 2005)

People , Smile , Personality

“Yet living and dying, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, riches and poverty, and so forth are equally the lot of good men and bad. Things like these neither elevate nor degrade; and therefore they are no more good than they are evil.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

II, 11
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book II

Men , Pain , Pleasure , Evil

“There is nothing serious in civil life except good and evil, vice and virtue. Everything else in it should be a game.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Life , Game , Evil

“A council to a magistrate, who is himself responsible for what he does, are generally nothing better than a clog upon his good intentions, are often the instruments and accomplices of his bad and are almost always a cloak to his faults.”

Alexander Hamilton Federalist Papers

Federalist No. 70 (18 March 1788)
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

“To me, feeling good about yourself as you get older is all about your attitude - if you think you're old, you'll feel old.”

Lulu (singer) (1948) Scottish singer, actress, and television personality

I'm through with having Botox, says pop diva Lulu, 2008-03-31, 2008-03-31, Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=550849&in_page_id=1879,

Feeling , Thinking

“I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual. For all these reasons, I still call myself "libertarian."… But I must confess that over the last two decades, I have changed radically on the question of how to achieve these goals. Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible… The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron.”

Peter Thiel (1967) American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager

In an article http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian published by Cato Unbound (April 13, 2009)

Death , Women , Faith , Democracy

“When Machiavelli advises the Prince to carry out the Machiavellian scheme of action, he invests those actions with no sort of morality or beauty. For him morality remains what it is for everyone else, and does not cease to remain so because he observes (not without melancholy) that it is incompatible with politics. … For him evil, even if it aids politics, still remains evil. The modern realists are the moralists of realism. For them, the act which makes the State strong is invested with a moral character by the fact that it does so, and this whatever the act may be. The evil which serves politics ceases to be evil and becomes good.”

Julien Benda (1867–1956) French essayist

Source: Treason of the Intellectuals (1927), pp. 107-108

Beauty , Strong , Evil

“I would be very present in his life right now. I would be probably with him a good chunk of the time, just there to talk, to figure out what's going on in his head, to figure out who's in his life and who's not, you know.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

On what she would do in the place of Justin Bieber's mother (10 February 2014) http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/michelle-obama-justin-bieber-mom-present-life-article-1.1608513#ixzz2wGte2OyF
2010s

Life , Time

“Your Excellency may rest assured, that I have done every thing in my power to cultivate and promote a good understanding, both with the Count and the Marquis, and flatter myself that I am upon very good terms with them both. The Marquis's great thirst for glory, and national attachment, often run him into errors. However, he did every thing to prevail on the Admiral to cooperate with us, that man could do. People censure the Admiral with great freedom, and many are imprudent enough to reproach the nation through the Admiral.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (August 1778)

People , Error , Understanding , Freedom

“Randy Peone: It's a good day to be indigenous!”

Sherman Alexie (1966) Native American author and filmmaker

Smoke Signals (1998)

“All I can say is, the universe is in a good shape, it's earth that has all the problems.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Neil DeGrasse Tyson talks to CNN's Van Jones about climate change and the intersection of science with the military and politics. (2018-10-14)
2010s

Problem , Universe

“Morally, good theatre and film for that matter disturbs and unnerves us, tries to rid us of our cliched reactions to the world around us by expanding our sympathies, stretching our imaginations, and enriches us”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

English translation of the Spanish language text.
Vogue, Mexico Interview: Una Actirz Multiplicada (July 1992)

World , Imagination

“Soon I must vote for Oscars and BAFTAs, so I've been having marathon screening sessions. Top of my list so far is ROOM, which is brilliant in every way. The boy actor, Jacob Tremblay, is astounding. But most of all, it's a film that never stoops to the rigged mini-plots so often used to generate viewer excitement: it goes its own way, always surprising, always utterly believable. The writer of both the novel and the screenplay, Emma Donoghue, has produced a perfect work. People seem surprised that a first-time screenwriter can be so good, but the truth is screenwriting's not hard, it's having something strong and real and true to write about that's hard. Emma Donoghue is original and wise: that's rare.”

Emma Donoghue (1969) Irish novelist, playwright, short-story writer and historian

William Nicholson, "Oscar voting" http://www.williamnicholson.com/blog/2016/1/3/oscar-voting-2 (January 3, 2016)
About

People , Truth , Way , Boy

“It is curious that money, which is the most valuable thing in life, exceptis excipiendis, should be the most fatal corrupter of music, literature, painting and all the arts. As soon as any art is pursued with a view to money, then farewell, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, all hope of genuine good work.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Money
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XI - Cash and Credit

Life , Money , Hope , Art

“The doctrines that by keeping out foreign goods more wealth, and consequently more employment, will be created at home, are either true or they are not true. We contend that they are not true. We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

From "Why I am a Free Trader" (1905), Churchill revised this several times, the earliest recorded version coming from the speech "For Free Trade" at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 19 February 1904:
It is the theory of the Protectionist that imports are an evil. He thinks that if you shut out the foreign imported manufactured goods you will make these goods yourselves, in addition to the goods which you make now, including those goods which we make to exchange for the foreign goods that come in. If a man can believe that he can believe anything. (Laughter.) We Free-traders say it is not true. To think you can make a man richer by putting on a tax is like a man thinking that he can stand in a bucket and lift himself up by the handle. (Laughter and cheers.)
Early career years (1898–1929)
Source: [Churchill, Winston, Stead, W.T., Coming Men on Coming Questions, 13 April 1905, Chapter 1: Why I am a Free Trader, https://archive.org/details/comingmenoncomin00stea]
Source: [Churchill, Winston, Rhodes James, Robert, Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963, Chelsea House Publishers / R.R. Bowker Company, 1974, 0835206939]

Home , Wealth

“Not all who seem to fail have failed indeed,
Not all who fail have therefor worked in vain.
There is no failure for the good and brave.”

Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886) Irish bishop

Attributed to Trench by Prof. Connington; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 253.

Failure

“What do you think makes a good rock front man? Shamelessness, I’d imagine.”

Jack Terricloth (1970)

http://www.dailynexus.com/artsweek/2006/11307.html
Interviews

Imagination , Thinking

“Perhaps this is what really happens in life to most good men. They are not crucified. They simply pass through life and then die, and their passing influences just a few people to make them just a little happy.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Charles Dickens: The Pickwick Papers (p. 102)
More Classics Revisited (1989)

Life , Men , People , Happiness

“These were days never to be forgotten—to sit under the sound of a voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven, awakened the utmost gratitude of this bosom! Day after day I continued, uninterrupted, to write from his mouth, as he translated with the Urim and Thummim, or, as the Nephites would have said, ‘Interpreters,’ the history or record called ‘The Book of Mormon.’ No men, in their sober senses, could translate and write the directions given to the Nephites from the mouth of the Savior, of the precise manner in which men should build up His Church, and especially when corruption had spread an uncertainty over all forms and systems practiced among men, without desiring a privilege of showing the willingness of the heart by being buried in the liquid grave, to answer a ‘good conscience by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Oliver Cowdery (1806–1850) American Mormon leader

Men , Books , History , Sense

“Spanish for, You have to think that you have to die, that we are here by the way and prepare and do all the good that you can”

Sara García (1895–1980) Mexican actress

Hay que pensar en que se tiene uno que morir que estamos aquí de paso y prepararnos y hacer todo el bien que se pueda.
Sara Garcia

Way , Thinking

“Einstein's theory has the very highest degree of æsthetic merit: every lover of the beautiful must wish it to be true. It gives a vast unified survey of the operations of nature, with a technical simplicity in the critical assumptions which makes the wealth of deductions astonishing. It is a case of an advance arrived at by pure theory: the whole effect of Einstein's work is to make physics more philosophical (in a good sense), and to restore some of that intellectual unity which belonged to the great scientific systems of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but which was lost through increasing specialization and the overwhelming mass of detailed knowledge. In some ways our age is not a good one to live in, but for those who are interested in physics there are great compensations.”

Hendrik Lorentz (1853–1928) Dutch physicist

p, 125
Theory of Relativity: A Concise Statement (1920)

Age , Beauty , Way , Lovers

“The left claims that the guilty party in a conflict is not the one who covets another’s goods but the one who defends his own.”

Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913–1994) Colombian writer and philosopher

Sucesivos Escolios a un Texto Implícito (1992)

“Man cannot live on charm alone, and an ambitious man cannot live on anything less than wealth, good social connections and substantial political influence.”

Susan Howatch book The Wheel of Fortune

The Wheel of Fortune (1984), Part 1: Robert

Wealth

“It is a mistake to assume that diplomacy can always settle international disputes if there is "good faith" and "willingness to come to an agreement". For in a revolutionary international order, each power will seem to its opponents to lack precisely these qualities. […] In the absence of an agreement on what constitutes a reasonable demand, diplomatic conferences are occupied with sterile repetitions of basic positions and accusations of bad faith, or allegations of "unreasonableness" and "subversion". They become elaborate stage plays which attempt to attach as yet uncommitted powers to one of the opposing systems.”

Henry Kissinger book A World Restored

A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812-22 (1957), p. 2
1950s

Faith

“Thus I saw full surely that it is readier to us to come to the knowing of God than to know our own Soul. For our Soul is so deep-grounded in God, and so endlessly treasured, that we may not come to the knowing thereof till we have first knowing of God, which is the Maker, to whom it is oned. But, notwithstanding, I saw that we have, for fulness, to desire wisely and truly to know our own Soul: whereby we are learned to seek it where it is, and that is, in God. And thus by gracious leading of the Holy Ghost, we should know them both in one: whether we be stirred to know God or our Soul, both are good and true.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 56

God , Soul , Learning

“A good deal depends on the quality of the lie. You must have intellectual lies for intellectual people and crude lies for popular consumption, but if your popular lies are too blatant and your more intellectual section are shocked and see through them, they may (and indeed they did) begin to be suspicious as to whether they were not being hoodwinked too. Nevertheless, the inmates of colleges are just as credulous as the inmates of the slums.”

Arthur Ponsonby (1871–1946) British Liberal and later Labour politician and pacifist

Falsehood in Wartime (1928), Introduction

People , Lie , Dependency

“True religion, sprung from God above,
Is, like her fountain, full of charity,
Embracing all things with a tender love,
Full of good will and meek expectancy,
Full of true justice and sure verity,
In heart and voice; free, large, even infinite,
Not wedged in straight peculiarity,
But grasping all in her vast active spright:
Bright lamp of God! that men would joy in thy pure light!”

Henry More (1614–1687) British philosopher

The Immortality of the Soul (1662), Book 2, Canto 3

Love , Men , God , Religion

“We who have inherited this Empire are proud of it, and it is right that we should be proud. With our pride there should mingle gratitude to those who have gone before us, by whose efforts this Empire has grown. In a world still suffering from the shock of war, the British Empire stands firm as a great force for good…It stands in the sweep of every wind, by the wash of every sea, a witness to that which the spirit of confidence and brotherhood can accomplish in the world.”

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

Broadcast from 10 Downing Street, London (24 May 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 63.
1927

War , World , Confidence , Effort

“It is better to will the good than to know the truth.”

Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374) Italian scholar and poet

As quoted in The Renaissance : Essays in Interpretation (1982) by André Chastel , p 107

Truth

“As long as I was in Washington I never met anybody that I thought was good enough, who knew enough, or who loved enough to make sexual decisions for anybody else.”

Joycelyn Elders (1933) American pediatrician, public health administrator, and former Surgeon General of the United States

Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, "Abstinence" http://www.sho.com/site/video/player.do?video=/134/2006/abstinence&seriesid=134 [4.10], 5 June 2006

Love , Decision

“They use [the term Isolationist] all the time, and they do that to be very negative. There are a few people in the country who say, "Well, that's good. I sort of like that term." I don't particularly like the term because I do not think I am an isolationist at all. Because along with the advice of not getting involved in entangling alliances and into the internal affairs of other countries, the Founders said – and it's permissible under the Constitution – to be friends with people, trade with people, communicate with them, and get along with them – but stay out of the military alliances. The irony is they accuse us, who would like to be less interventionist and keep our troops at home, of being isolationist. Yet if you look at the results of the policy of the last six years, we find that we are more isolated than ever before. So I claim the policy of those who charge us with being isolationists is really diplomatic isolationism. They are not willing to talk to Syria. They are not willing to talk to Iran. They are not willing to trade with people that might have questionable people in charge. We have literally isolated ourselves. We have less friends and more enemies than ever before. So in a way, it's one of the unintended consequences of their charges. They are the true isolationists, I believe.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview by Scott Horton, April 4, 2007 http://www.antiwar.com/horton/?articleid=10798
2000s, 2006-2009

People , Way , Home , Communication

“A bumper of good liquor
Will end a contest quicker
Than justice, judge, or vicar.”

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) Irish-British politician, playwright and writer

Act I, sc. iii.
The Duenna (1775)

Justice

“From our best qualities come our worst. From our urge to pull together comes our tendency to pull apart. From our devotion to higher good comes our propensity to the foulest atrocities. From out commitment to ideals come our excuse to hate. Since the beginning of history, we have been blinded by evil's ability to don a selfless disguise. We have failed to see that our finest qualities often lead us to the actions we most abhor—murder, torture, genocide, and war.”

Howard Bloom (1943) American publicist and author

Who is Lucifer?
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History (1997)

Hate , War , History , Evil

“Anything good that I have written has, at some point during its composition, left me feeling uneasy and afraid. It has seemed, for a moment at least, to put me at risk.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

The Recipe for Life http://www.fiu.edu/~weitzb/Golem-Recipe-for-Life.htm, The Washington Book World (2000)

Feeling

“Without dynamic conquering spirit, even devotion to a divine cause will be of little avail In this hard world which is an arena for trial of strength with brute forces, mere goodness or noble virtues will not hold the field for a single moment. That is why we find that in spite of all the piety, goodness and devotion to God all through the past thousand years, we were trampled under the feet by foreign aggressors who, though total strangers to goodness and virtue, had a passion for heroic action and organised effort.”

M. S. Golwalkar book Bunch of Thoughts

M.S. Golwalkar : ‘Bunch of Thoughts’, third edition, 1996, p. 92 Quoted from Talreja, K. M. (2000). Holy Vedas and holy Bible: A comparative study. New Delhi: Rashtriya Chetana Sangathan.
Bunch of Thoughts

God , World , Effort , Passion

“Good God, what a brute man becomes when ignorant and oppressed. Oh Liberty! What horrors are committed in thy name! May every virtuous revolutionist remember the horrors of Wexford!”

Daniel O'Connell (1775–1847) Irish political leader

Written in his Journal, 2nd Jan 1799, referring to the recent 1798 Rebellion. Quoted from Vol I, p. 205, of O'Neill Daunt, W. J., Personal Recollections of the Late Daniel O'Connell, M.P., 2 Vols, London, 1848.

God

“Interviewer: Is it possible to abolish man's humanity?
Levi: Unfortunately, yes. Unfortunately, yes; and that is really the characteristic of the Nazi lager [concentration camp]. About the others, I don't know, because I don't know them; perhaps in Russia the same thing happens. It's to abolish man's personality, inside and outside: not only of the prisoner, but also of the jailer. He too lost his personality in the lager.
These are two different itineraries, but with the same result, and I would say that only a few had the good fortune of remaining aware during their imprisonment; some regained their awareness of the experience later, but during it, they had lost it; many forgot everything. They did not record their experiences in their mind. They didn't impress on their memory track. Thus it happened to all, a profound modification in their personality. Most of all, our sensibility lost sharpness, so that the memories of our home had fallen into second place; the memory of family had fallen into second place in face of urgent needs, of hunger, of the necessity to protect oneself against cold, beatings, fatigue… all of this brought about some reactions which we could call animal-like; we were like work animals.
It is curious how this animal-like condition would repeat itself in language: in German there are two words for eating. One is essen and it refers to people, and the other is fressen, referring to animals. We say a horse frisst, for example, or a cat. In the lager, without anyone having decided that it should be so, the verb for eating was fressen. As if the perception of the animalesque regression was clear to all.”

Primo Levi (1918–1987) Italian chemist, memoirist, short story writer, novelist, essayist

Interview http://www.inch.com/~ari/levi1.html with Daniel Toaff, Sorgenti di Vita (Springs of Life), a program on the Unione Comunita Israelitiche Italiane, Radiotelevisione Italiana [RAI] (25 March 1983); translated by Mirto Stone

Hunger , People , Family , Home

“The cognitive behavior of Western intellectuals faced with the accomplishments of their own society, on the one hand, and with the socialist ideal and then the socialist reality, on the other, takes one's breath away. In the midst of unparalleled social mobility in the West, they cry "caste." In a society of munificent goods and services, they cry either "poverty" or "consumerism." In a society of ever richer, more varied, more productive, more self-defined, and more satisfying lives, they cry "alienation." In a society that has liberated women, racial minorities, religious minorities, and gays and lesbians to an extent that no one could have dreamed possible just fifty years ago, they cry "oppression." In a society of boundless private charity, they cry "avarice." In a society in which hundreds of millions have been free riders upon the risk, knowledge, and capital of others, they decry the "exploitation" of the free riders. In a society that broke, on behalf of merit, the seemingly eternal chains of station by birth, they cry "injustice." In the names of fantasy worlds and mystical perfections, they have closed themselves to the Western, liberal miracle of individual rights, individual responsibility, merit, and human satisfaction. Like Marx, they put words like "liberty" in quotation marks when these refer to the West.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2000s, Can There Be an "After Socialism"? (2003)

Women , World , Dreams , Behavior

“The supreme trial of the Constitution came at last under the tremendous pressure of civil war. We ourselves are witnesses that the Union emerged from the blood and fire of that conflict purified and made stronger for all the beneficent purposes of good government.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1880s, Inaugural address (1881)

War

“(On the Day of Judgment, a group would be seen in the most excellent and honourable of states. They would be asked if they were of the Angels or of the Prophets. In reply they would state): "We are‑neither Angels nor Prophets but of the indigent ones from the ummah of Muhammad (S. A. W.)". They would then be asked: "How then did you achieve this lofty and honourable status?" They would reply: "We did not perform very many good deeds nor did we pass all the days in a state of fasting or all the nights in a state of worship but yes, we used to offer our (daily) prayers (regularly) and whenever we used to hear the mention of Muhammad (S. A. W.), tears would roll down our cheeks".”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Mustadrak al‑Wasail, vol 10, pg. 318
Shi'ite Hadith

Angels , Tear , Night

“…the power to control the supply of money, which is one of the fundamental aspects of sovereignty, has passed from government into other hands; and therefore new institutions must be set up which will in effect exercise some of the major functions of government. They would set the level of public expenditure, and settle fiscal policy, the exercise of taxing and borrowing powers of the state, since these are indisputedly the mechanism by which the money supply is determined. But they would do more than this. They would be supreme over the economic ends and the social structure of society: for by fixing prices and incomes they would have to replace the entire automatic system of the market and supply and demand—be that good or evil—and put in its place a series of value judgments, economic or social, which they themselves would have to make…There is a specific term for this sort of polity. It is, of course, totalitarian, because it must deliberately and consciously determine the totality of the actions and activities of the members of the community; but it is a particular kind of totalitarian regime, one, namely, in which authority is exercised and the decisions are taken by a hierarchy of unions or corporations—to which, indeed, on this theory the effective power has already passed. For this particular kind of totalitarianism the Twentieth Century has a name. That name is "fascist."”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech in Leamington (18 September 1972), quoted in The Times (19 September 1972), p. 12
1970s

Money , Exercises , Communication , Decision

“I’m looking forward to the peace of mind to just write… Songwriting is something that I just fell into. I never expected to love it. But I’ve always had to kind of treat it like a hobby. Now it’s going to feel so good to know that I can just sit down and write.”

Scott Clifton (1984) American television actor, musician, internet personality.

Responding to the end of his contract with General Hospital, as quoted in "Going Going... Gone" by Rosemary A. Rossi, for ABC Soaps in Depth.

Love , Peace , Feeling

“You cannot do anything without rousing the masses to action. A plenary meeting of the Soviet must be called to decide on mass searches in Petrograd and the goods stations. To carry out these searches, each factory and company must form contingents, not on a voluntary basis: it must be the duty of everyone to take part in these searches under the threat of being deprived of his bread card. We can't expect to get anywhere unless we resort to terrorism: speculators must be shot on the spot. Moreover, bandits must be dealt with just as resolutely: they must be shot on the spot.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

“Meeting of the Presidium of the Petrograd Soviet With Delegates From the Food Supply Organisations" (27 January 1918) http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/MPPS18.html Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 501.
1910s

Search , Parting

“She's a good hearted woman in love with a good timin' man.
She loves him in spite of his ways she don't understand.
With teardrops & laughter they pass through this world hand in hand,
A good hearted woman, lovin' a good timin' man.”

Waylon Jennings (1937–2002) American country music singer, songwriter, and musician

Good Hearted Woman, title track from Good Hearted Woman, written with Willie Nelson (1972).
Song lyrics

Love , World , Way , Understanding

“Jehovah and the Christian version of God brought about a direct conflict between the so-called forces of good and the so-called forces of evil by largely cutting out all of the intermediary gods, and therefore destroying the subtle psychological give-and-take that occurred between them -- among them -- and polarizing man’s own view of his inner psychological reality.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 921, Page 400
Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Volume Two (1986)

God , Reality , Evil

“Irony is a form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Aphorism 48, as translated in Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms (1968), p. 151

Time

“The Residents knew what they wanted of their Malayan Civil Service cadets as early as 1883: "What we require out here are young public school men - Cheltenham, for preference - who have failed conspicuously at all bookwork and examinations in proportion as they have excelled at sports." As Resident of Perak, Swettenham “kept an eye out for men who would do credit to both the civil service and the state cricket team, which one sporting official judged as the equal of a good English county team.” Oliver Marks, who performed brilliantly for a visiting Ceylon eleven, was at once urged to come and work for the Perak government….”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

Men , School , Sport

“Want the best. The highest happiness, the greatest freedom. Desirelessness is the highest bliss. (…) Only God’s energy is infinite – because he wants nothing for Himself. Be like Him and all your desires will be fulfilled. The higher your aims and vaster desires, the more energy you will have for their fulfillment. Desire the good of all and the universe will work for you. But if you want your own pleasure, you must earn it the hard way. (…).”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Desire and fear
Source: "I am That." P.49-50.

God , Pleasure , Way , Freedom

“We have a saying in the union: "If a fellow looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, the possibility is that he is a duck." That is the way with a Communist. If the guy does everything that the party does, the prospects are very good that he is a party member or fellow traveler.”

Walter Reuther (1907–1970) Labor union leader

Regarding Communists; hearing before the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare (1953)

Way , Travel , Guy

“Young Knight learn to love God and revere women so that your honour grows. Practice knighthood and learn the Art that dignifies you, and brings you honour in wars. Wrestle well and wield lance, spear, sword, and dagger manfully, whose use in others' hands is wasted. Strike bravely and hard there! Rush to strike or miss. Those with wisdom loath the one forced to defend. This you should grasp: All arts have length and measure. Whatever you undertake, use deliberation. In earnest or in play, be of good cheer and vitality, so you may be attentive and with good courage ponder what action you should take, so that none may touch you, since good courage and strength make your enemies hesitate. Keep in mind to give no-one any advantage. Avoid foolhardiness, do not attempt to match four or six opponents at once. Restrain your ambition, this will benefit you. He is a courageous man who can stand against his equal, while it is no shame to flee from four or six.”

Johannes Lichtenauer (1300–1389) Founder and grand master of the German School of Swordsmanship

MS 3227a

Love , Wisdom , Women , God

“I like working on sponge because it's a simple, light material and always ready to use. The colour and texture meet my aesthetic requirements and it has a lolof volume and physically, is very present in the space. The ink or paint is immediately absorbed into the foam surface, making any corrections almost impossible. It is a material which lends itself to quick, fast application and is particularly good for spontaneous sketching with paint squeezed directly from the tube. The fact that these works will not last (sponge is not a very durable material) does not deter me; it suits the character of the work very well and to an extent reflects my ideas about art.”

Tomasz Vetulani (1965) Polish artist

At the time of writing exhibition catalogue, the Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, 1998.

Art , Idea , Light , Painting

“I thank the goodness and the grace
Which on my birth have smiled,
And made me in these Christian days,
A happy English child.”

Ann Taylor (poet) (1782–1866) British female poet and literary critic

Jane Taylor, "A Child's Hymn of Praise," from Hymns for Infant Minds (1810)
Misattributed

Smile , Birth , Happiness

“I'd never malign another performer, but the style is not good enough. They've done away with laugh pay-offs. We were given nine minutes or eight minutes. Now they wander wherever they like, they don't get to any jokes before they've been on for two minutes. We had to make an impact in ten seconds.”

Max Bygraves (1922–2012) Singer, comedian, actor

Deprecating modern comedians; Metro, 2002 http://www.metro.co.uk/showbiz/interviews/202-max-bygraves#ixzz1hg6bdBeK

“I have made no distinction between the circulation of goods and of money, because there really is none.”

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book I, On Production, Chapter XVI, p. 142

Money

“How would we think and feel about predatory dinosaurs if they were alive today? Humans have long felt antipathy toward carnivores, our competitors for scarce protein. But our feelings are somewhat mollified by the attractive qualities we see in them. For all their size and power, lions remind us of the little creatures that we like to have curl up in our laps and purr as we stroke them. Likewise, noble wolves recall our canine pets. Cats and dogs make good companions because they are intelligent and responsive to our commands, and their supple bodies make them pleasing to touch and play with. And, very importantly, they are house-trainable. Their forward-facing eyes remind us of ourselves. However, even small predaceous dinosaurs would have had no such advantage. None were brainy enough to be companionable or house-trainable; in fact, they would always be a danger to their owners. Their stiff, perhaps feathery bodies were not what one would care to have sleep at the foot of the bed. The reptilian-faced giants that were the big predatory dinosaurs would truly be horrible and terrifying. We might admire their size and power, much as many are fascinated with war and its machines, but we would not like them. Their images in literature and music would be demonic and powerful - monsters to be feared and destroyed, yet emulated at the same time.”

Gregory Scott Paul (1954) U.S. researcher, author, paleontologist, and illustrator

Gregory S. Paul (1988) Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, Simon and Schuster, p. 19
Predatory Dinosaurs of the World

War , Fear , Dogs , Music

“He was just Ron and I kinda liked him, mostly because he wrote well, and I never felt he took all that Scientology nonsense seriously but knew how to make a good buck, and he liked me, and… well, he was a friend who died.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

Introduction to Angry Candy (1988)

“The mammalian record thus confirms our statement that any animal which is not too strongly conditioned by some special sort of experience is capable of responding to any adequate stimulus. This is what we find in the more uninhibited segments of our human species, and this is what we find among young children who are not too rigorously restrained in their early sex play. Exclusive preferences and patterns of behavior, heterosexual or homosexual, come only with experience, or as a result of social pressures which tend to force an individual into an exclusive pattern of one or the other sort. Psychologists and psychiatrists, reflecting the mores of the culture in which they have been raised, have spent a good deal of time trying explain the origins of homosexual activity; but considering the physiology of sexual response and the mammalian backgrounds of human behavior, it is not so difficult to explain why a human animal does a particular thing sexually. It is more difficult to explain why each and every individual is not involved in every type of sexual activity.”

Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956) American scientist (1894–1956)

Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953)

Children , Sex , Behavior , Time

“Now I been out in the desert, just doin' my time.
Searchin' through the dust, lookin' for a sign.
If there's a light up ahead well brother I don't know.
But I got this fever burnin' in my soul.
So let's take the good times as they go,
And I'll meet you further on up the road.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Further On (Up the Road)"
Song lyrics, The Rising (2002)

Soul , Light , Time

“The Hindus saw clearly that if the arithmetic operations… were properly defined for negative numbers, these numbers could be employed to as good advantage as people had previously derived from positive numbers. …To people to whom the word number had always meant positive whole numbers and positive fractions, the very idea that there could be other numbers came hard. For many centuries negative numbers were either rejected or treated as second-class citizens.
What was especially difficult for mathematicians to swallow was that negative numbers could be acceptable roots of equations.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematics and the Physical World (1959), p. 51.

People , Idea

“The job satisfiers deal with the factors involved in doing the job, whereas the job dissatisfiers deal with the factors that define the job context. Poor working conditions, bad company policies and administration, and bad supervision will lead to job dissatisfaction. Good company policies, good administration, good supervision, and good working conditions will not lead to positive job attitudes.”

Frederick Herzberg (1923–2000) American psychologist

Source: The motivation to work, 1959, p. 82

“If the doctrine of free-will has raised up fanatics and persecutors, who, assuming that men may be good under all conditions if they merely wish to be so, have sought to persuade other men's wills with threats, fines, imprisonments, torture, the spike, the wheel, the axe, the fagot, in order to make them good and save them against their obdurate wills; if the doctrine of Spiritualism, the soul supreme, has done this, the doctrine of Materialistic Determinism has produced shifting, self-excusing, worthless, parasitical characters, who are this now and that at some other time, and anything and nothing upon principle. "My conditions have made me so," they cry, and there is no more to be said; poor mirror-ghosts! how could they help it!”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

The Dominant Idea (1910)

Men , Soul , Time , Help

“A key characteristic of the engineering culture is that the individual engineer’s commitment is to technical challenge rather than to a given company. There is no intrinsic loyalty to an employer as such. An employer is good only for providing the sandbox in which to play. If there is no challenge or if resources fail to be provided, the engineer will seek employment elsewhere. In the engineering culture, people, organization, and bureaucracy are constraints to be overcome. In the ideal organization everything is automated so that people cannot screw it up. There is a joke that says it all. A plant is being managed by one man and one dog. It is the job of the man to feed the dog, and it is the job of the dog to keep the man from touching the equipment. Or, as two Boeing engineers were overheard to say during a landing at Seattle, “What a waste it is to have those people in the cockpit when the plane could land itself perfectly well.” Just as there is no loyalty to an employer, there is no loyalty to the customer. As we will see later, if trade-offs had to be made between building the next generation of “fun” computers and meeting the needs of “dumb” customers who wanted turnkey products, the engineers at DEC always opted for technological advancement and paid attention only to those customers who provided a technical challenge.”

Edgar H. Schein (1928) Psychologist

Edgar H. Schein (2010). Dec Is Dead, Long Live Dec: The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equiment Corporation. p. 60

People , Dogs , Loyalty

“If humans were inclined to goodness, religion would not be necessary.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 46

Religion

“Though ye loue not to bye the pyg in the poke,
Yet snatche ye at the poke, that the pyg is in,
Not for the poke, but the pyg good chepe to wyn.”

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

Though you love not to buy the pig in the poke,
Yet snatch you at the poke, that the pig is in,
Not for the poke, but the pig good cheap to win.
Part II, chapter 9.
Proverbs (1546)

“A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)

Heart

“For approximately 500 years [science's] argument for its pre-eminence was that it could create beautiful toys: aircraft, railroads, global economies, television, spacecraft. But that is a fool’s argument for truth! I mean, that’s after all how a medicine show operates, you know: the juggler is so good, the medicine must be even better! This is not an entirely rational way to proceed.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

The World and Its Double

Truth , Beauty , Fools , Way

“Everything in the varying human affairs is due to chance, according to Aristotle, to the Divine Will alone according to the Ashariyah, to Divine Wisdom according to the Mu'tazilites, to the merits of man according to our opinion. It is therefore possible, according to the Ashariyah, that God inflicts pain on a good and pious man in this world, and eeps him forever in fire, which is assumed to rage in the world to come; they simply say it is the will of God. The Mu'tazilites would consider this an injustice, and therefore assume that every being, even an ant, that is stricken with pain, has compensation for it… and it is due to God's Wisdom, that a being is struck and afflicted in order to receive compensation. We, however, believe that all these human affairs are managed with justice; far be it from God to do wrong, to punish any one unless the punishment is necessary and merited. It is distinctly stated in the Law, that all is done in accordance with justice; and the words of our Sages generally express the same idea.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.17

Wisdom , God , Pain , World

“Music was his life, it was not his livelihood,
And it made him feel so happy and it made him feel so good.
And he sang from his heart and he sang from his soul.
He did not know how well he sang; It just made him whole.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Mr. Tanner
Song lyrics, Short Stories (1974)

Life , Music , Feeling , Soul

“Under the Socialists, rapid strides have been taken towards the Iron Curtain State. We have seen increased nationalisation measures, increased powers of central Government over both large and small companies, increased levels of tax on the pay packet and on savings alike, and an increased proportion of the national income spent not by the wage-earner but by the Government or Government agencies. In the result, the Prime Minister has become the first Socialist Minister since the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1951 to say that his policies will mean a reduced standard of living for our people…it is clear that Socialist systems are not good at creating wealth; they can only spend the wealth that others create.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech in the House of Commons (9 June 1976) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103046
Leader of the Opposition

People , Wealth

“Poor shepherdless sheep! it was His delight, as the Good Shepherd, to lead them to rich pastures; and as they sat and stood around Him, they forgot their bodily wants in the beauty and power of His words.”

John Cunningham Geikie (1824–1906) Scottish Presbyterian minister and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 59.

Beauty

“Plato argued that in a good society the ratio of the richest to the poorest person's income should be at the most four to one.”

Harvey S. Rosen (1949) American economist

Source: Public Finance - International Edition - Sixth Edition, Chapter 7, Income Redistribution Conceptual Issues, p. 147

Personality

“Narrated Abu Huraira: The Prophet said, "Whoever believes in Allah and His Apostle, offer prayer perfectly and fasts the month of Ramadan, will rightfully be granted Paradise by Allah, no matter whether he fights in Allah's Cause or remains in the land where he is born." The people said, "O Allah's Apostle! Shall we acquaint the people with the is good news?" He said, "Paradise has one-hundred grades which Allah has reserved for the Mujahidin who fight in His Cause, and the distance between each of two grades is like the distance between the Heaven and the Earth. So, when you ask Allah (for something), ask for Al-firdaus which is the best and highest part of Paradise." (i. e. The sub-narrator added, "I think the Prophet also said, 'Above it (i. e. Al-Firdaus) is the Throne of Beneficent (i. e. Allah), and from it originate the rivers of Paradise."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Sunni Hadith

People , Thinking , Fight , Parting

“The idea of objectivity in the evaluation of pictures introduces the concept of rational and scientific assessment. There are some sciences involved in the making and in the study of pictures, but the art itself is finally not a science and will not submit to scientific regimentation because its life depends on the degree to which it is inhabited by mystery, speaks to us of the unknown. It is simply an avoidance of the interesting difficulty to subject the inexplicable to the process of rational explanation. For since the real pleasures of painting and the reality of its meaning exist in the part of its structure which cannot be explained, all suggestions and pretensions at explanation must lead us away from the area of greatest interest. This is to say that such analysis as purports to lay bare the machinery which makes a painting work — makes it a good painting — not only leaves out the most important factor, the element of mystery, but actively denies the reality which is the justification for the art at all.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

X magazine (1959-62)

Life , Pleasure , Art , Idea

“We are all the sum total of our pasts, good and evil.”

Glen Cook book She Is the Darkness

Source: She Is the Darkness (1997), Chapter 95 (p. 614)

Evil , Past

“The object of this paper is fivefold. The first objective is to derive a practical system of demand equations which possess properties usually considered desirable from the standpoint of elementary economic theory. The second is to consider the statistical problems involved in applying the system of equations. The third is to analyse the pattern of demand for consumers' goods in terms of this system on the basis of annual data relating to the United Kingdom over the years 1920-38. The fourth is to compare the results of this system, and systems like it, with the actual state of demand in 1900. Finally, the fifth is to compare the post-war structure of demand with what might be expected from the inter-war relationshipp under free-market condition.”

Richard Stone (1913–1991) British economist, Nobel Memorial Prize winner

Stone, Richard. " Linear expenditure systems and demand analysis: an application to the pattern of British demand http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2227743?uid=3738736&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104302232953." The Economic Journal (1954): 511-527.

War , Problem

“What was needed was a literary theory which, while preserving the formalist bent of New Criticism, its dogged attention to literature as aesthetic object rather than social practice, would make something a good deal more systematic and 'scientific' out of all this. The answer arrived in 1957, in the shape of the Canadian Northrop Fryes mighty 'totalization' of all literary genres, Anatomy of Criticism.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Source: 1980s, Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), Chapter 3, 79

Dogs , Literature

“There were women in the golden age of Greece, called hetaerae, who were celebrated by Socrates and philosophers of his time. Although they existed solely for their own pleasure and that of men, they were respected for their independence of mind and spirit and thought of highly by the Greeks. Single women in today's world can function like hetaerae, learning from many and giving back to whom they will, and for the woman who enjoys such a life, it can be a good one, and one both she and society can be the better for.”

Merle Shain (1935–1989) Canadian writer

Some Men are More Perfect Than Others (1973)

Life , Women , Men , Pleasure

“That is why, perhaps, all of us derive Pissarro. He had the good luck to be born in the West Indies, where he learned how to draw without a teacher. He told me all about it. In 1865 he was already cutting out black, bitumen, raw sienna and the ocher's. That's a fact. Never paint with anything but the three primary colours and their derivatives, he used to say me. Yes, he was the first Impressionist.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Camille Pissarro was Cézanne's 'teacher' in impressionistic landscape painting; they frequently painted together in open air.
Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 164, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif'

Learning , Teachers , Drawing , Painting

“Actually, the father of mixed martial arts, if you will, was Bruce Lee. If you look at the way Bruce Lee trained, the way he fought, and many of the things he wrote, he said the perfect style was no style. You take a little something from everything. You take the good things from every different discipline, use what works, and you throw the rest away.”

Dana White (1969) President of the UFC

Dana White and the future of UFC (2004)

Art , Way , Perfection , Training

“Take a good look at this world, how riddled it is with huge, gaping holes, how full of Nothingness, the Nothingness that fills the bottomless void between the stars, how everything about us has become lined with it, how it darkly lurks behind each shred of matter. This is your work, envious one! And I hardly think the future generations will bless you for it…”

Stanisław Lem book The Cyberiad

In "How The World Was Saved"
The Cyberiad (1967)

World , Star , Thinking , Future

“I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man's word should be as good as his bond; that character — not wealth or power or position — is of supreme worth.”

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (1874–1960) American financier and philanthropist

I Believe

Wealth

“Nothing progresses more rapidly in a heart set upon doing good than an ability to be useful. They who at first are timid, shy, awkward, in such efforts, soon acquire courage, expertness, and efficiency.”

John Angell James (1785–1859) British abolitionist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 121.

Courage , Effort , Heart

“That’s a nice little flip camera you got there? They’re good those.”

Dhani Harrison (1978) English musician

Dhani Harrison " Dhani Harrison 3/31/09 Los Angeles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-nsECK3Dl8" at Youtube.com, 3 April, 2009: at a Amoeba Records in Los Angeles.

“In fact, all kinds of men, and not merely architects, can recognize a good piece of work…”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book VI, Chapter VIII, Sec. 10

Men

“You're alright honey. Anyone who'll stand up to "The Cline" is alright. We're going to be good friends.”

Patsy Cline (1932–1963) American country music singer

Responding to Jan Howard's angry retort to Cline's accusation of arrogance, backstage at the Opry, unidentified date
Attributed by Howard in Remembering Patsy (1993 documentary film)
Attributed

“The good tidings which the historian of the past brings with throbbing heart may be lost in a void the very moment he opens his mouth.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Source: (1940), V

Past , Heart

“I don’t spend my time perusing message boards to find out what people think about me or if people think my songs are good or if people love that lyric or this or that. I just want to be happy with it myself — and if other people like it, that’s great.”

Ben Gibbard (1976) American singer, songwriter and guitarist

Source: The Meaning Of Life, III

Love , People , Thinking , Time

“I kept stumbling and falling and stumbling and falling as I searched for the good. 'Why?' I asked myself. Now I believe that I was on the right path all along, particularly with the Green Belt Movement, but then others told me that I shouldn't have a career, that I shouldn't raise my voice, that women are supposed to have a master. That I needed to be someone else. Finally I was able to see that if I had a contribution I wanted to make, I must do it, despite what others said. That I was OK the way I was. That it was all right to be strong.”

Wangari Maathai (1940–2011) Kenyan environmental and political activist

As quoted in the article Wangari Maathai:"You Strike The Woman ..." by Priscilla Sears in the quarterly In Context #28 (Spring 1991)

Women , Way , Search , Strong

“Compassion is something individual and voluntary. You cannot compel somebody to be compassionate; nor can you be vicariously compassionate by compelling somebody else. The Good Samaritan would have lost all merit if a Roman soldier were standing by the road with a drawn sword, telling him to get on with it and look after the injured stranger. Because there can be no such thing as compulsory compassion or vicarious compassion, therefore it is a humbugging abuse of language, intended to deceive, to talk about a 'compassionate Government' or a 'compassionate party'—or even a 'compassionate society', unless one simply means by that a society which happens to contain a lot of compassionate individuals. Nor let anyone protest: 'Oh, but when I vote for a party which will "make provision on an unprecedented scale for those in need of help", it means I too shall have to pay my whack and so I am being compassionate after all.'”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Nonsense! The purpose of your vote is not to make yourself subscribe—that you can freely do at any time—but to compel others.
Speech to the Harborough Division Conservative Association Gala, Leicester (27 September 1969), from Still to Decide (Elliot Right Way Books, 1972), pp. 22-23
1960s

Time , Help