Good Quotes

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The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy; I mean that if you are happy you will be good.

- Bertrand Russell

We don't set out to save the world; we set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people's hearts.

- Pema Chodron

What would our world be like if we ceased to worry about "right" and "wrong," or "good" and "evil," and simply acted so as to maximize well-being, our own and that of others? Would we lose anything important?

- Sam Harris

All outward forms of religion are almost useless, and are the causes of endless strife. . . . Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself and never mind the rest.

- Beatrix Potter

I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

- Oscar Wilde

I cannot conceive of a good life which isn't, in some sense, a self-disciplined life.

- Philip Toynbee

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It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.

- Margaret Mead

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

- Albert Einstein

Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

- Bishop Desmond Tutu

Conscience is doubtless sufficient to conduct the coldest character into the road of virtue; but enthusiasm is to conscience what honor is to duty; there is in us a superfluity of soul, which it is sweet to consecrate to the beautiful when the good has been accomplished.

- Madame de Stael

I never could be good when I was not happy.

- Julia Ward Howe

A good picture is equivalent to a good deed.

- Vincent van Gogh

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I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishment after I'm dead.

- Kurt Vonnegut

Let the beauty we love become the good we do.

- Rumi

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Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.

- Eric Hoffer

I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy.

- Thomas Paine

Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be the first in love. I want you to be the first in moral excellence. I want you to be the first in generosity.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

To forgive is indeed the best form of self-interest since anger, resentment, and revenge are corrosive of that "summum bonum," the greatest good.

- Bishop Desmond Tutu

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary, the evil it does is permanent.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

The argument has long been made that we humans are by nature compassionate and empathic despite the occasional streak of meanness, but torrents of bad news throughout history have contradicted that claim, and little sound science has backed it. But try this thought experiment. Imagine the number of opportunities people around the world today might have to commit an antisocial act, from rape or murder to simple rudeness and dishonesty. Make that number the bottom of a fraction. Now for the top value you put the number of such antisocial acts that will actually occur today.

- Daniel Goleman

continued

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. I am not afraid.

- Marcus Aurelius