That it is a bad thing to be tortured and starved, humiliated or hurt, is not an opinion; it is a fact. That it is better for people to be loved and attended to, rather than hated or neglected, is again a plain fact, not a matter of opinion.

- G. J. Warnock

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

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

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

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

- Eric Hoffer



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



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



Truth, and goodness, and beauty are but different faces of the same all.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do.

- Voltaire



The meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



Religion is a pilgrimage through ages of hard experience in quest of the good society.

- A. Eustace Haydon



We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.



Things which are accidentally the causes either of hope or fear are called good or evil omens.

- Baruch Spinoza



Keep in mind that our community is not composed of those who are already saints, but of those who are trying to become saints. Therefore let us be extremely patient with each other's faults and failures.

- Mother Teresa



I have spoken of a thousand points of light, of all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the Nation, doing good.

- George H. W. Bush



On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

- George Orwell



The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.

- Rene Descartes



It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

- Oscar Wilde



On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

- George Orwell



We frail humans are at one time capable of the greatest good and, at the same time, capable of the greatest evil. Change will only come about when each of us takes up the daily struggle ourselves to be more forgiving, compassionate, loving, and above all joyful in the knowledge that, by some miracle of grace, we can change as those around us can change too.

- Mairead Maguire



The survival of democracy depends on the renunciation of violence and the development of nonviolent means to combat evil and advance the good.

- A. J. Muste



I have known many good people who did not believe in God. But I have never known a human being who was good who did not believe in people. [language slightly modified]

- John Lovejoy Elliott



It is better to be beautiful than good, but it is better to be good than ugly.

- Oscar Wilde



The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. . . . The ordinary objects of human endeavour -- property, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.

- Albert Einstein



Our true wealth is the good we do in this world. None of us has faith unless we desire for our neighbors what we desire for ourselves.

- Mohammed



The noblest worship is to make yourself as good and as just as you can.

- Isocrates



Reverence for Life affords me my fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, assisting, and enhancing life and that to destroy, harm, or to hinder life is evil. Affirmation of the world -- that is affirmation of the will to live, which appears in phenomenal forms all around me -- is only possible for me in that I give myself out for other life.

- Albert Schweitzer



I always try to believe the best of everybody -- it saves so much trouble.

- Rudyard Kipling



The ordinary surroundings of life which are esteemed by men (as their actions testify) to be the highest good, may be classed under the three heads -- Riches, Fame, and the Pleasures of Sense: with these three the mind is so absorbed that it has little power to reflect on any different good.

- Baruch Spinoza



Religion is a shared quest for the values of the good life, the age-long, groping effect of [humanity] to create the social order in which human powers may flower in joyous fulfillment.

- A. Eustace Haydon