Human Goodness Quotes

#1. True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which is deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.

Milan Kundera

#2. A religion of human goodness will never sustain a people in times of disaster and threat.

Michael S. Horton

#3. The worst form of badness is human goodness when human goodness becomes a substitute for the new birth.

Adrian Rogers

#4. There was human goodness in the world, she thought-all caught up with desires and dreams, regrets and bitterness, resentments and power, but it was there.

Cassandra Clare

#5. You have to help good people see how they have let their institutions do their sinning for them. All around the world there are those who long to see your human goodness translated into a different, more compassionate way of relating with the rest of this bleeding planet.

Peter Storey

#6. Who will dare to write a history of human goodness?

Will Durant

#7. Our language is primarily for expressing human goodness and beauty.

Yasunari Kawabata

#8. We are here to add to the sum of human goodness. To prove the thing exists.

Josephine Hart

#9. The first condition of human goodness is something to love; the second, something to reverence.

George Eliot

#10. Now the goodness that we have to consider is clearly human goodness, since the good or happiness which we set out to seek was human good and human happiness. But human goodness means in our view excellence of soul, not excellence of body;

Aristotle.

#11. I believe all religions pursue the same goals, that of cultivating human goodness and bringing happiness to all human beings. Though the means may appear different, the ends are the same.

Dalai Lama

#12. I still believe in the nonviolent Jesus and the basic human goodness present in all of us.

Martin Sheen

#13. A piece of simple goodness
a letter gushing from the heart; a beautiful unstudied vindication of the worth and untiring sweetness of human nature
a record of the invulnerability of man, armed with high purpose, sanctified by truth.

Douglas William Jerrold

#14. If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#15. Humans can be as good as they can be bad. Because goodness and evil both are biological traits of the mind.

Abhijit Naskar

#16. There are people who believe in the basic goodness of human nature. I believe in the basic evil of human nature. ~ Aarush Kashyap

Kirtida Gautam

#17. To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being.

Mahatma Gandhi

#18. I have a deep-seated bias against hate and intolerance. I have a bias against racial and religious bigotry. I have a bias that leads me to believe in the essential goodness of my fellow man, which leads me to believe that no problem of human relations is ever insoluble.

Ralph Bunche

#19. The art depicts duplicity and depravity," he said, "but its purpose is to counteract the human tendency to fill in the blanks with goodness. We do that instinctively, and in ignorance, to compensate for breaches of the soul so deplorable that we can barely fathom them." I

Anne McAneny

#20. Even if you do the best you can in all things, your human nature must often fall short; so entrust yourself to God's goodness, for his goodness is greater than your failures.

Hadewijch

#21. Christian feminists can celebrate any sort of feminism that brings more justice and human flourishing to the world, no matter who is bringing it, since we recognize the hand of God in all that is good.

Sarah Bessey

#22. The biggest mischief in the past century has been perpetrated by Rousseau with his doctrine of the goodness of human nature. The mob and the intellectuals derived from it the vision of a Golden Age which would arrive without fail once the noble human race could act according to its whims.

Jacob Burckhardt

#23. The history of man is essentially zoological; it becomes human late in the day, and then only in the beautiful souls, the souls alive to justice, goodness, enthusiasm, and devotion. The angel shows itself rarely and with difficulty through the highly-organized brute.

Henri Frederic Amiel

#24. The second way of finding a meaning in life is by experiencing something - such as goodness, truth and beauty - by experiencing nature and culture or, last but not least, by experiencing another human being in his very uniqueness - by loving him.

Viktor E. Frankl

#25. This is the Easter message, that awakening is possible, to the goodness of God, the sacredness of human life, the sisterhood and brotherhood of all.

Anne Lamott

#26. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite ... Man's goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished.

Nelson Mandela

#27. I encountered among my comrades the most varied human traits, from frankness to reserve, from goodness, uprightness and kindness, to brutality and baseness.

Georg Brandes

#28. We, the human beings in this world, if there is a spark of goodness or kindness in our hearts, avoid judging people. We prefer forgiving to judging.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

#29. An eternal life is a life that one lives according to his or her decree to ultimately be a fine human being, agreeing with the concept of goodness, foreseeing the dangers ahead either by prophesies or by anticipation and to serve our Heavenly Father unselfishly.

Anthony Pan

#30. To make your Opinion Count,
you have to do something more
than just making Money.

Vineet Raj Kapoor

#31. On good days, I can see the inherent goodness in people, and that human beings have a high capacity to learn and adapt. But things like the environment, nuclear weapons and ideas like peak oil - if you think about them too much, they can really freak you out.

Conor Oberst

#32. Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness.

Anne Frank

#33. Often expecting immediate returns for goodness in this world is a sign of a normal human being

Adil Adam Memon

#34. Hell wasn't a major reservoir of evil, any more then Heaven, in Crowley's opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind.

Terry Pratchett

#35. I was raised to believe in the innate goodness of humanity, developed a deep sense of the dignity of the individual human being, and had great appreciation for the miracle of life and our existence on this earth.

George Lee Butler

#36. Without moral progress, stimulated by faith in God, immorality in all its forms will proliferate and strangle goodness and human decency. Mankind will not be able to fully express the potential nobility of the human soul unless faith in God is strengthened.

James E. Faust

#37. Nature will not forgive those who fail to fulfill the law of their being. The law of human beings is wisdom and goodness, not unlimited acquisition.

Robert M. Hutchins

#38. I've always thought, and it gets tested at times, that I have a great faith in the fundamental goodness of human beings.

Bob Brown

#39. God rejoices. Not because the problems of the world have been solved, not because all human pain and suffering have come to an end, nor because thousands of people have been converted and are now praising him for his goodness. No, God rejoices because one of his children who was lost has been found.

Philip Yancey

#40. Poor God, how often He is blamed for all the suffering in the
world. It's like praising Satan for allowing all the good that happens.

E.A. Bucchianeri

#41. Only a life of goodness and honesty leaves us feeling spiritually healthy and human.

Harold S. Kushner

#42. We signal that good can be achieved amongst human beings who are prepared to trust, prepared to believe in the goodness of people.

Nelson Mandela

#43. Good and evil are both fundamental features of the human mind.

Abhijit Naskar

#44. There is something mean in human nature that prefers to think evil, that gives a willing ear and a ready welcome to calumny, a sort of jealousy of goodness and greatness and things of good report.

Richard Le Gallienne

#45. A man who has trained himself in goodness come to have certain direct intuitions about character, about the relations between human beings, about his own position in the world
intuitions that are quite different from the intuitions of the average sensual man..

Aldous Huxley

#46. Goodness makes our world a better place because human beings are kinder to each other when we feel safe and secure.

Arthur P. Ciaramicoli

#47. The discovery of magic can happen only when we transcend our embarrassment about being alive, when we have the bravery to proclaim the goodness and dignity of human life, without either hesitation or arrogance. Then magic can descend onto our existence.

Chogyam Trungpa

#48. For some reason we human beings seem to learn best how to love when we're a bit broken, when our plans fall apart, when our myths of our self-sufficiency and goodness and safety are shattered.

Kathleen Norris

#49. Central to America's rise to global leadership is our Judeo-Christian tradition with the vision of the goodness and possibilities of every human life.

Mitt Romney

#50. [The human mind] finds more facility in assenting to the self-existence of an invisible cause possessing infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, than in the self-existence of the universe, visibly destitute of these attributes, and which may be the effect of them.

James Madison

#51. There is within human nature an amazing potential for goodness.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#52. The family remains the basic unit of society and the first school in which children learn the human, spiritual and moral values which enable them to be a beacon of goodness, integrity and justice in our communities.

Pope Francis

#53. Every man possesses that which is according to the image of God, for the gifts of God are irrevocable (Rom. 11:29). But only a few ? those who are virtuous and holy, and have imitated the goodness of God to the limit of human powers ? possess that which is according to the likeness of God.

John Of Damascus

#54. From this it follows that con-sideration for other persons or for other living beings is very vital for goodness and want of consideration for other people makes human beings selfish, regardless for other people's good.

Morarji Desai

#55. I was brought up a Catholic, so I suppose I have to believe in the goodness of human beings. I think we're not so bad after all.

Pauline Collins

#56. I think when you don't know where you stand with someone, they can surprise you in their goodness and their badness, and that makes them human.

David Morrissey

#57. The harvested fields bathed in the autumn mist speak of God and his goodness far more vividly than any human lips.

Albert Schweitzer

#58. And let us not trust to human effort alone, but humbly acknowledging the power and goodness of Almighty God, who presides over the destiny of nations, and who has at all times been revealed in our country's history, let us invoke His aid and His blessings upon our labors.

Grover Cleveland

#59. All the goodness, beauty, and perfection of a human being belong to the one who knows how to recognize these qualities.

Georgette Leblanc

#60. By becoming aware of the dignity of the mind, we realize the true ground of the dignity of man and therewith the goodness of the world, whither we understand it as created or uncreated, which is the home of man because it is the home of the human mind.

Leo Strauss

#61. I thought being faithful was about becoming someone other than who I was ... it wasn't until I failed that I began to wonder if my human wholeness might be more useful to God than my exhausting goodness.

Barbara Brown Taylor

#62. A good heart is a universal key that opens the door of the unthinkable gate of goodness

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

#63. For Aristotle, goodness is a kind of prospering in the precarious affair of being human.

Terry Eagleton

#64. There do remain dispersed in the soil of human nature divers seeds of goodness, of benignity, of ingenuity, which, being cherished, excited, and quickened by good culture, do, by common experience, thrust out flowers very lovely, and yield fruits very pleasant of virtue and goodness.

Isaac Barrow

#65. Enlightened Society is all about nurturing the human spirit - waking up to the goodness, kindness and strength that we already have.

Sakyong Mipham

#66. Cat lovers display an intensity lacking - thank goodness - in most human relationships.

Jonathan Safran Foer

#67. I guess what I get excited about when I'm thinking about projects is that toothy, complex area of goodness and badness and the gray areas of human behavior and existence.

Liz Garbus

#68. Our only reliable source of strength is the goodness of our hearts. Our only foundation for coming to terms with the suffering of the times is our innate need to be decent human beings.

Sakyong Mipham

#69. I think the wonderment of seeing my two sons developing makes me incredibly optimistic about human potential. It makes you think: 'My goodness. It's a miracle that's going on here. What could the human race do together?'

David Miliband

#70. The old gods have the beauty and goodness of the sun, the sea, the wind, the mountains, great wild animals; splendid, powerful, and dangerous realities that do not come within the sphere of human morality, and are in no way concerned about the human race.

A.H. Armstrong

#71. Your life is something opaque, not transparent, as long as you look at it in an ordinary human way. But if you hold it up against the light of God's goodness, it shines and turns transparent, radiant and bright. And then you ask yourself in amazement: Is this really my own life I see before me?

Albert Schweitzer

#72. Whoever invented adding melted cheese over starchy goodness was surely the most brilliant human ever.

Rachel Cohn

#73. Sometimes, there is a lot of darkness in this world. As I see it, you have two choices. You can be a part of that darkness or you can be the light. Be the light.

Tom Giaquinto

#74. Goodness is a special kind of truth and beauty. It is truth and beauty in human behavior.

Harry Allen Overstreet

#75. I always have the feeling we are merely fearfully trying to save room for God; I would rather speak of God at the center than at the limits, in strength rather than weakness, and thus in human life and goodness rather than in death and guilt.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#76. There are, then, these three means of effecting persuasion. The man who is to be in command of them must, it is clear, be able (1) to reason logically, (2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and (3) to understand the emotions-that is, to name them and

Aristotle.

#77. The people of Africa have learned the lessons of patience and endurance in their long struggle for freedom.
In a cynical world we have become an inspiration to many. We signal that good can be achieved amongst human beings who are prepared to trust, prepared to belief in the goodness of people.

Nelson Mandela

#78. Human nature is evil, and goodness is caused by intentional activity.

Xun Zi

#79. But what about love, compassion, moral goodness, and self-transcendence? Many people still imagine that religion is the true repository of these virtues. To change this, we must talk about the full range of human experience in a way that is as free of dogma as the best science already is.

Sam Harris

#80. Have not all theists painted their Deity as the god of love and goodness? Yet after thousands of years of such preachments the gods remain deaf to the agony of the human race.

Emma Goldman

#81. The more I see the world, most dislike, and the time confirms my belief in the inconsistency of human nature and how little can one trust the appearances of goodness or intelligence

Jane Austen

#82. The capacity for emotional sobriety belongs to everybody in the human family and leads to a fully human response to the adventure and goodness of the gift of human life.

Thomas Keating

#83. I believe in the goodness of fellow human beings. We have a true desire for greatness and genuine good intention to be helpful to others. That's enough. Change is possible.

Ilchi Lee

#84. Fill the seats of justice with good men, not so absolute in goodness as to forget what human frailty is.

Thomas Noon Talfourd

#85. When people lose faith in the natural goodness of the human character, the lack of trust in spiritual goodness, that is one reason why corruption has become so widespread today.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

#86. Nonviolence is a way of life, where the task is to awaken the underlying goodness of every human being.

Amit Ray

#87. I don't know how to talk to you, Mrs. Huntingdon ... you are only half a woman
your nature must be half human, half angelic. Such goodness overawes me; I don't know what to make of it.

Anne Bronte

#88. It is the duty and high privilege of every human being to endeavor to improve himself. Effort at self-improvement is the definition sometimes given for religion. It may relate to our actions or to our convictions. In our actions we should aim at goodness; in our convictions, at truth.

Joseph P. Bradley

#89. As mercy is God's goodness confronting human misery and guilt, so grace is his goodness directed toward human debt and demerit.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

#90. Morality is not just any old topic in psychology but close to our conception of the meaning of life. Moral goodness is what gives each of us the sense that we are worthy human beings.

Steven Pinker

#91. To be united to God in unity of person was not fitting to human flesh, according to its natural endowments, since it was above his dignity; nevertheless, it was fitting that God, by reason of his infinite goodness, should unite it to himself for human salvation.

Thomas Aquinas

#92. Because of our selfishness and inclination toward personal comfort and convenience, we'd rather not have to deal with constant change and uncertainty. We have difficulty reconciling the goodness of God with the mystery of his ways.

Chris Hodges

#93. Tell them that we have some good in us, too. And the only thing worth living for is the good. That's why we've got to make sure we pass it on.

Billie Letts

#94. ...rewilding is all about being nice, kind, compassionate, empathic, and harnessing our inborn goodness and optimism. We must all work together at this. It's about time we focus on the good side of human and animal nature. ... nature offers many lessons for kinder society. Blood shouldn't sell.

Marc Bekoff

#95. She's got zero interest in honest-to-goodness human-on-human action. No. It's magic farmyard creatures or nothing for her.

Charlie Brooker

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

George Orwell

#97. Despite all of the ghastliness in the world, human beings are made for goodness. The ones that are held in high regard are not militarily powerful, nor even economically prosperous. They have a commitment to try and make the world a better place.

Desmond Tutu