Well Meaning Quotes

#1. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. - Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. United States (1928)

Jane Mayer

#2. The future belongs to the competent. It belongs to those who are very, very good at what they do. It does not belong to the well-meaning.

Brian Tracy

#3. Nothing is so dangerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#4. Admittedly, there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face.

Ronald Reagan

#5. That reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black is a matter of concern. It raises questions about our ways of education and about the values that guide our conduct.

Solomon Asch

#6. Don't listen to anyone's advice. Listen to your baby ... There are so many books, doctors, and well-meaning friends and family. We like to say, 'You don't need a book. Your baby is a book. Just pick it up and read it.'

Mayim Bialik

#7. Hiding inside this well-meaning phrase is a deep cultural assumption that old is bad and young is good.

Susan Moon

#8. Washington has a mysterious power to turn perfectly reasonable, wholesome, well-meaning human beings into equivocating crooked gasbags.

David Harsanyi

#9. Priests are often well-meaning people who haven't yet looked too thoroughly into comparative religion.

Robert Genn

#10. In the United States especially, politics and economics don't mix well. Politicians have all sorts of reasons to pass all sorts of laws that, as well-meaning as they may be, fail to account for the way real people respond to real-world incentives.

Steven D. Levitt

#11. Correct morality can only be derived from what man is - not from what do-gooders and well-meaning aunt Nellies would like him to be.

Robert A. Heinlein

#12. Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind.

Henry Grady Weaver

#13. Well-meaning, helpful, good-natured attitudes of mind have not come to be honored on account of their usefulness, but because they are states of richer souls that are capable of bestowing and have their value in the feeling of the plenitude of life.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#14. I didn't think he was a very 'nice' person,' says Chichilnisky [about Jeff Bezos]. 'I liked him, but he was not warm. I'm not criticising him, not a bit. It was like he could be a Martian for all I knew. A well-meaning, nice Martian.

Richard L. Brandt

#15. And it is a great fact of history that the most mediocre and well-meaning imbeciles can strike down the mighty with surprising effectiveness when there is such a huge disparity of souls.

Anne Rice

#16. I like to razz the Trekkies a little bit. Who doesn't? It's trainspotting, isn't it? But they are very well-meaning, actually. I've done a couple of Star Trek conventions, and they've only been really welcoming.

Malcolm McDowell

#17. A quiet mind is one that is willing to speak the truth that is felt internally. It is a mind that has not yet been conditioned to accept a reality that is being imposed upon it by well-meaning adults and cultural and religious teachings.

Wayne Dyer

#18. What if airplane pilots said, 'my first three years were a wreck'? We worry about the safety of people at the hands of these other professions. Why don't we worry about children being at the hands of an adult, even a well-meaning adult, who doesn't know what he or she is doing?

Deborah

#19. How terrible it would be if all my people had been turned human by well-meaning wizards - exiled,

Peter S. Beagle

#20. Sound the tocsin of national peril and hordes of well-meaning folk with nothing much to do always materialize from nowhere. They itch to meddle in great matters of which their comprehension is usually pretty dim, and have no objection to getting their names and pictures in the papers.

Leslie McFarlane

#21. Your humble critic confesses that he has been wrestling with 'weight issues' since leaving college lo these, uh, several years ago, so it's hard to be receptive to the moralistic scolding and patronizing encouragement offered endlessly by the allegedly well-meaning.

Tom Shales

#22. I do not believe there is a way in which this deeply entrenched evil can be quickly healed. But until this goal is reached there is no greater satisfaction for a just and well-meaning person than the knowledge that he has devoted his best energies to the service of the good cause.

Albert Einstein

#23. Remember that that "rude awakening" which your parents and well-meaning relatives threatened you with as a kid is better than no awakening at all.

Perry Brass

#24. Today's residential segregation in the North, South, Midwest, and West is not the unintended consequence of individual choices and of otherwise well-meaning law or regulation but of unhidden public policy that explicitly segregated every metropolitan area in the United States.

Richard Rothstein

#25. There is no reason to believe that bureaucrats and politicians, no matter how well meaning, are better at solving problems than the people on the spot, who have the strongest incentive to get the solution right.

Elinor Ostrom

#26. They burned this neighbourhood down in the early 1900s to prevent the spread of bubonic plague, and it occurs to me that they should consider doing it again, to purge the blight of well-meaning hipsters desperately trying to paint it rainbow

Lauren Beukes

#27. In Holland I have seen well-meaning, principled people blinded by multiculturalism, overwhelmed by the imperative to be sensitive and respectful of immigrant culture, while ignoring criminal abuse of women and girls.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

#28. Even the most well-meaning
government policies have unintended consequences that have harmed
the economy. If government policies were today held accountable the way
private businesses are, the scoreboard would say government is failing
to help people ... and this is a fact.

Ziad K. Abdelnour

#29. A well-meaning man, Dhai Ma liked to say, is more dangerous because he believes in the rightness of what he does. Give me an honest rascal any day!

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

#30. Many well-meaning intelligent people have argued since the May 17, 1954, decision of the United States Supreme Court outlawing segregation in the public schools that communication between the races has broken down.

Benjamin E. Mays

#31. Forget it, Jonathan, and go back to sleep. And before you go to sleep, pray that no well-meaning god ever makes you immortal.

Peter S. Beagle

#32. The real tragedy of minimum wage laws is that they are supported by well-meaning groups who want to reduce poverty. But the people who are hurt most by higher minimums are the most poverty stricken.

Milton Friedman

#33. Whenever I have met with our elected officials they are invariably thoughtful, well-meaning people. And yet collectively 90% of their effort seems to be focused on how to stick it to the other party.

Sergey Brin

#34. For decades, many therapists have been attempting to help abusive men change by guiding them in identifying and expressing feelings. Alas, this well-meaning but misguided approach actually feeds the abuser's selfish focus on himself, which is an important force driving his abusiveness.

Lundy Bancroft

#35. Blossoming out through one's comfort zone should be well meaning so as to achieve newer levels of excellence

Priyavrat Thareja

#36. There seems to be this sense among even well-meaning Americans that Africa is this black hole of murder and mutilation that can never be fixed, no matter what aid is brought in.

Nicholas D. Kristof

#37. Well-meaning Europeans sometimes argue that unlike the U.S., their countries are traditionally 'homogeneous' and have little experience with immigration.

Noah Feldman

#38. I was almost put out of business by a well-meaning corpse.

W.C. Fields

#39. A mind virus is different in that there is no form to it; these are ideas placed in our heads when we are little. We get programmed by well-meaning people like our parents and their parents, our culture, religions and schools. We get conditioned to believe in our limitations and what's not possible.

Wayne Dyer

#40. General Taylor is, I have no doubt, a well-meaning old man. He is, however, uneducated, exceedingly ignorant of public affairs, and I should judge, of very ordinary capacity.

James K. Polk

#41. Charming villains have always had a decided social advantage over well-meaning people who chew with their mouths open.

Judith Martin

#42. Well-meaning, decent people will condemn the behavior of a Ted Bundy, while they're walking past a magazine rack full of the very kinds of things that send young kids down the road to be Ted Bundys.

Ted Bundy

#43. But if life were a mellow elementary school run by well-meaning education Ph.D.s, the Deliverator's report card would say: Hiro is so bright and creative but needs to work harder on his cooperation skills.

Neal Stephenson

#44. The house ghost is usually a harmless and well-meaning creature. It is put up with as long as possible. It brings good luck to those who live with it.

William Butler Yeats

#45. Just as the medieval church cut off the congregation from participating in the sung worship of the service, today many well-meaning Christian leaders have reconstructed a sung worship wherein congregational participation does not matter.

Douglas Bond

#46. FROM a six-year-old:
Told by a well-meaning friend, 'Alex, do you know what the one thing is that the more you give, the more you get back? It's love, Alex.'
To which Alex asked, 'What about pain?

Susan Hamilton

#47. Every leader has the responsibility to hone his or her integrity. Many times, there are integrity traps that have a tendency to catch well-meaning leaders off guard.

Travis Bradberry

#48. I am never lonely, Galahad. Or rather I never suffer from loneliness. I suffer much from the idea that my loneliness might be taken away from me by a lot of mercilessly well-meaning people.

Leonora Carrington

#49. Author Bruce Feiler believes the problem lies in the offer to "do anything." He writes that "while well meaning, this gesture unintentionally shifts the obligation to the aggrieved. Instead of offering 'anything,' just do something.

Sheryl Sandberg

#50. Contraceptive methods are like putting a premium on vice. It makes men and women reckless ... As it is, man has sufficiently degraded woman for his lust, and [contraception] , no matter how well meaning the advocates may be, will still further degrade her.

Mahatma Gandhi

#51. He [an earnest young reporter] seemed to share the view of many intelligent, well-educated, well-meaning people that, while adult literature may aim to be art, the object of children's books is to whip the little rascals into shape.

Katherine Paterson

#52. I had seen so many injustices done in the court by well-meaning people. I had lost fourteen clients to gang violence in only seven years. I was angry at a system I thought had failed my clients, and I was part of it.

Richard Helms

#53. All of this was well meaning bullshit. But bullshit is still bullshit and will never be mistaken for McDonald's secret sauce.

Stephen King

#54. Anger elicits anger, fear elicits fear, no matter how well meaning we may be.

Martha Beck

#55. When I first started working on 'Staying Dead,' I got some well-meaning but negative feedback from industry folk because - back in 2001 - epic fantasy was still the big thing, alternate history a tight runner-up.

Laura Anne Gilman

#56. Global warming, indeed much of environmentalism, has become a new religion. Like the old religions, environmentalism preaches much good sense, is well meaning, but has a worrying lack of logic at its core.

Michael Hanlon

#57. Hunger and cold, ill-health and pain are nothing. They pass. The thing that remains is ignorant criticism, well-meaning but futile advice, the contempt of a subordinate, the feelings of the underdog.

Alice Foote MacDougall

#58. Americans have learned to trust free markets. Republican or Democrat, we believe the unimpeded exchange of goods and services will yield better solutions than five-year plans set by even the most well-meaning public servants.

John Katzman

#59. If not you, who? If not now, when? The worst thing well-meaning people can do is simply let things remain as they are.

Christine Pope

#60. (F)or 50 years, the well-meaning leftist agenda has been able to do to blacks what Jim Crow and harsh discrimination could never have done: family breakdown, illegitimacy and low academic achievement.

Walter E. Williams

#61. Unless you frame yourself, others will frame you - the media, your enemies, your competitors, your well-meaning friends.

George Lakoff

#62. The only prayer which a well-meaning man can pray is, O ye gods, give me whatever is fitting unto me!

Apollonius Of Tyana

#63. Though some of us like to get on stage, many introverts are content to put on their invisibility cloaks and watch. But well-meaning extroverts will have none of that! They need to draw us out, invite us to participate - repeatedly - and question why we are so depressed as to not want to join.

Laurie A. Helgoe

#64. A harrassed and dubious childhood under the hand of a well-meaning but barbarous mother's help from County Armagh led me to think of the North of Ireland as prison and the South as a land of escape.

Louis MacNeice

#65. Is there anything more unjust than to build gold and brass and iron on poor, well-meaning clay,
and then blame the clay when the whole image falls into dust?

Margaret Deland

#66. She responded to Letty's well-meaning suggestions with the unblinking disdain perfected by cats in their dealings with their humans.

Lauren Willig

#67. On the wall of Amshad's office there was a poster that made me laugh: DO NOT GIVE ME A BANGLE, GIVE ME A PEN. Well-meaning charities often train illiterate slum women to make cheap trinkets.

Edward Luce

#68. I have frequently said, and I will repeat again, in the manner of any well-meaning seriality, that I'm interested in mixing the ingratiation of wishful thinking with the criticality of knowing better.

Barbara Kruger

#69. The well-meaning white people, I said, had to combat, actively and directly, the racism in other white people. And

Malcolm X

#70. The President is no more than a well-meaning baboon. I went to the White House directly after tea, where I found "The Original Gorilla", about as intelligent as ever. What a specimen to be at the head of our affairs now.

George B. McClellan

#71. The well-meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me little different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have any merit.

Carl Sagan

#72. The greatest injustice I had ever seen humans perpetrate against themselves was unwholesome as I was yet to come to terms with the pitiable situation where well-meaning people argued about the lives of soccer players who did not even know that they, the debaters, existed.

S.A. David

#73. Think through the well-meaning motivations of both your Dictator and your Wild Child, until you really understand that within their limited perspectives they're doing their very best. Then offer them both kindness.

Martha N. Beck

#74. So often, well-meaning Christians pray for a visitation from God, but what He really wants is a habitation with us. He doesn't want to come into our lives as a guest while we are on our best behavior around Him until He leaves.

Jack Frost

#75. Unfortunately, the boards of art institutions tend to be populated with well-meaning supporters of the arts who often lack any business background or appetite for imposing appropriate discipline.

Eli Broad

#76. The Kingdom of Heaven is not for the well-meaning: it is for the desperate.

James Denney

#77. In a culture in which interpersonal relationships are generally considered to provide the answer to every form of distress, it is sometimes difficult to persuade well-meaning helpers that solitude can be as therapeutic as emotional support.

Anthony Storr

#78. It's like I have a sensor in my head, but she works on a seven-second delay ... well-meaning, but perpetually about seven seconds too late to actually do anything to stop the horrific avalanche of shit-you-shouldn't- say-out-loud-but-I-just-did.

Jenny Lawson

#79. These are my friends, my family. It would be hell on earth to spend the rest of my life leading them into situations where some of them are going to get killed ... but it would be worse watching someone well-meaning but incompetent or untrained double those deaths.

Mercedes Lackey

#80. After all, if you're going to kick authority in the teeth, it helps to have a manic smile on your face and a middle finger outstretched. Or, at the very least, armed with an ironic turn of phrase. Just ask any well meaning punk. Or Bob Dylan.

Unknown

#81. What volunteers bring is the human touch, the individual, caring approach that no government program, however well-meaning and well- executed, can deliver.

Edward James Olmos

#82. well-meaning Christians almost killed the faith eight hundred years ago

Jon M. Sweeney

#83. School boards are, for the most part,made up of political wannabes who see a board seat as a stepping stone for political office, or well-meaning parents who represent an ethnic group or geography, or have some other narrow interests. Few people on them understand what governance is about.

Eli Broad

#84. Some people think they can just decree that everything will be fine. The world doesn't work like that. I'm not sure the world gives a crap about anyone's promises, well-meaning or otherwise. Sometimes the Universe just takes what it wants.

Paula Stokes

#85. Libraries are public treasuries. They're ways in which well-meaning societies leave the wealth of the past arranged A to Z so that anyone walking past can find it.

Francis Spufford

#86. You know, the one with all the well meaning rules that don't work out in real life, uh, Christianity.

Homer

#87. Oh, that all the things my father had told me about how disgusting Washington is are true. And again it's the system - there are lots of nice, well-meaning people there. But it's a sleazy place. And politics is all about doing favors.

Esther Dyson

#88. For the traveler we see leaning on his neighbor is an honest and well-meaning man and full of melancholy, like those Chekhov characters so laden with virtues that they never know success in life.

Orhan Pamuk

#89. The greatest dangers to liberty," said Mr. Brandeis, "lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

E.B. White

#90. The meeting began well, meaning it had the potential for being short.

Tucker Elliot

#91. If the church is the body of Christ [who was disguised in servant form], why would we think the world would be able to pick us out of a crowd of other well-meaning organizations?

Mark Galli

#92. For there's nothing we read of in torture's inventions, Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of intentions.

James Russell Lowell

#93. Well, she asked him questions about his age and his attainments. The fact that he was a Catholic gave her pause, but when I explained to her that the present Pope was a well-meaning sort of chap, she said she was prepared to meet him halfway.

Elizabeth Cadell

#94. Boys are different from girls, but boys are also different from other boys, just as girls are different from other girls. Calling a book 'for boys' or 'for girls' is well-meaning, but to me, not terribly helpful.

Marie Lu

#95. Not to let anyone convince you that your dream, your vision to be an entrepreneur is something that you shouldn't do. What often happens is that people who are well meaning, who really care for us are afraid for us and talk us out of it.

Cathy Hughes

#96. I will say that comic books are not the easiest things to translate to film, number one. Even the most well meaning of filmmakers find what's acceptable on the printed page is very difficult to bring to film.

Mark Hamill

#97. He was left-leaning and well-meaning, crippled by his acknowledgement of his own many privileges. He never allowed himself to have an opinion. 'Yes, I see what you mean,' he said often.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#98. Placing too much emphasis on a yes/no diagnosis, meaning you either have a disease or you don't, can lead even the most well-meaning physicians to miss underlying causes and early warning signs of illness.

Mark Hyman

#99. North Carolina is temperate and populated with well-meaning people; therefore I will engage in oral sex with another man.

David Sedaris

#100. Being president of too many well-meaning organizations put my father into an early grave. The lesson in this was not lost on me.

Roy Blount Jr.