Benevolent Quotes - Page 4

• I hate organized religion. I think you have to love thy neighbor as thyself. I think you have to pick your own God and be true to him. I always say 'him' rather than 'her.' Maybe it's because of my generation, but I don't like the idea of a female God. I see God as a benevolent male.

  Julia Child

  Hate, Thinking, Ideas

  "Julia Child: What I've Learned". Interview with Mike Sager, www.esquire.com. June 2001.

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• While it is possible for intelligence to increase the range of benevolent impulse, and thus prompt a human being to consider the needs and rights of other than those to whom he is bound by organic and physical relationship, there are definite limits in the capacity of ordinary mortals which makes it impossible for them to grant to others what they claim for themselves.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Rights, Ordinary, Needs

  Reinhold Niebuhr (2015). “Reinhold Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics: (Library of America #263)”, p.182, Library of America

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• Preacher who says that the sweet life is made from bitter parts is more or less telling those who have come to mourn the teenage suicide that this is just one bitter ingredient in the sweet thing foreordained by the benevolent god. To which I want to shake my fist and say: There is not one sweet thing about it. It is only bitter.

  Kyle Minor

  Suicide, Sweet, Teenage

  "To Rage Against Meaninglessness". Interview with Matt Bell, logger.believermag.com. February 6, 2014.

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• I am a misanthrope yet utterly benevolent.

  Alfred Nobel

  Misanthrope

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• For instance, dragons are deeply revered by the Chinese. According to legend they have megapowers that include weather control and life creation. And they’re seen as kind, benevolent creatures. Funny. Every fairy tale I’d ever heard involving dragons starred daring knights trotting off to kill said dragons. Probably the real reason every time East meets West they get pissed off and throw tea in our faces.

  Jennifer Rardin

  Real, Knights, Dragons

  Jennifer Rardin (2011). “Another One Bites The Dust: Book two in the Jaz Parks sequence”, p.33, Hachette UK

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• Vanity in its idler moments is benevolent, is as willing to give pleasure as to take it, and accepts as sufficient reward for its services a kind word or an approving smile.

  Alexander Smith

  Vanity, Giving, Idlers

  Alexander Smith (1863). “Dreamthorp: A Book of Essays Written in the Country”, p.181

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• Myth: There's conflict between selfish free markets and a benevolent world of human sympathy.

  Ted Malloch

  Selfish, World, Conflict

  "Doing Virtuous Business: The Remarkable Success of Spiritual Enterprise". Book by Ted Malloch, 2011.

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• We might do well to stay home a few days and walk over the fields, or to stand in the shelter of the barn door and reflect upon the relentless and yet benevolent forces of Mother Nature. The laws of nature are relentless. They can never be disobeyed without exacting a penalty. Yet they are benevolent, for when they are understood and obeyed, nature yields up the abundance that blesses those who understand and obey.

  Wheeler McMillen

  Mother, Nature, Home

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• Under the Providence of God, our means of education are the grand machinery by which the 'raw material' of human nature can be worked up into inventors and discoverers, into skilled artisans and scientific farmers, into scholars and jurists, into the founders of benevolent institutions, and the great expounders of ethical and theological science.

  Horace Mann

  Education, Mean, Science

  Horace Mann (1957). “The Republic and the School: The Education of Free Men”

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• Nobody ever inferred from the multiple infirmities of Windows that Bill Gates was infinitely benevolent, omniscient, and able to fix everything.

  Simon Blackburn

  Bills, Able, Window

  Simon Blackburn (1999). “Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy”, p.118, Oxford University Press

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• I wish to become rich, so that I can instruct the people and glorify honest poverty a little, like those kind hearted, fat, benevolent people do.

  Mark Twain

  People, Greed, Wish

  Mark Twain (1994). “Mark Twain on the damned human race”

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• American citizens are instrumental in carrying on a traffic in enslaved Africans, equally in violation of the laws of humanity and in defiance of those of their own country. The same just and benevolent motives which produced interdiction in force against this criminal conduct will doubtless be felt by Congress in devising further means of suppressing the evil.

  James Madison

  Country, Mean, Law

  James Madison, Robert Allen Rutland (1996). “The Papers of James Madison: Presidential Series”

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• The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Thoughtful, Smoking, Style

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1869). “The Book of Snobs: And, Sketches and Travels in London ; [Character Sketches]”, p.242

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• And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is tender, sympathizing and benevolent in the heart of man.

  Thomas Paine

  Heart, Men, Religion

  Thomas Paine (2007). “The Age of Reason”, p.70, Cosimo, Inc.

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• There is in every breast a sensibility to marks of honor, of favor, of esteem, and of confidence, which, apart from all considerations of interest, is some pledge for grateful and benevolent returns. Ingratitude is a common topic of declamation against human nature; and it must be confessed, that instances of it are but too infrequent and flagrant both in public and in private life. But the universal and extreme indignation which it inspires, is itself a proof of the energy and prevalence of the contrary sentiment.

  James Madison

  Grateful, Inspire, Honor

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2015). “The Federalist Papers: A Collection of Essays Written in Favour of the New Constitution”, p.281, Coventry House Publishing

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• It seems foolhardy to assume that the armed state will necessarily be benevolent. The American political tradition is, for good or ill, based in large measure on a healthy mistrust of the state.

  Sanford Levinson

  Trust, America, Political

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• Nature is not benevolent; Nature is just, gives pound for pound, measure for measure, makes no exceptions, never tempers her decrees with mercy, or winks at any infringement of her laws.

  John Burroughs

  Nature, Law, Giving

  John Burroughs (1913). “The Writings of John Burroughs”

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• Psychologist Nathaniel Branden speaks of a benevolent sense of life possible to those with rational, productive values, vividly contrasted with the coercive parasitic group-culture of mystics and altruists we live in, where people all around you seem a burdensome annoyance, a threat to your survival. Having been told from childhood that life is a zero-sum game in which you owe everything to others, at some level you worry all the time that someday the bastards will collect. And collect they do, every April 15th. Why do you think they call it collectivism?

  L. Neil Smith

  Zero, Thinking, Games

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• One of the great things about a free market is that it's inherently and indefatigably Darwinistic. Left to its own devices, a free market will eventually weed out the stupid from both 'ends' of the food chain otherwise described as supply and demand. As money is liberated from the hands of the stupid, those who would sell products or services to the stupid will eventually lose their share of the marketplace. Devoid of any 'benevolent' interference from government, the process is gloriously relentless, and cannot help but yield a successively smarter class of participants.

  Edward Britton

  Weed, Stupid, Government

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• If the role is right and it's another situation of having a benevolent genius at the head of it, someone who likes actors, and will protect the actors from the ravages of reality-TV drama. It's a brutal world, and you need to have a strong creative team who can stand up to the network.

  Olivia Williams

  Strong, Drama, Team

  Source: film.avclub.com

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• If you don't believe there's some organising principle, or somebody up in the sky pulling the strings, then it can be very stressful. And nature itself is very arbitrary - it's not malevolent or benevolent; it doesn't even know we're here.

  Michael Shannon

  Believe, Sky, Principles

  "Michael Shannon: 'I'm not trying to exorcise any demons'" by Catherine Shoard, www.theguardian.com. November 30, 2011.

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• If I knew a miser, who gave up every kind of comfortable living, all the pleasure of doing good to others, all the esteem of his fellow-citizens, and the joys of benevolent friendship, for the sake of accumulating wealth. Poor man, said I, you pay too much for your whistle.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Men, Joy, Citizens

  Benjamin Franklin (1820). “Poor Richard; or, The way to wealth”, p.23

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• The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so, cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are both able and willing. If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can, but will not, than they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing, then they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent. Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, how does it exist?

  Epicurus

  Atheist, Evil, Doe

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• Lots of people today would never consider themselves guilty of idolatry as far as it is spelled out in the Ten Commandments, but by reducing God to some benevolent "man upstairs" whose only attributes are love and tolerance, and who could not care less about sin, they truly have transgressed God's commandment. They have created a god in their mind who does not actually exist and will on the day of judgment, not be able to offer them any help.

  Charlie Campbell

  Men, People, Tolerance

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• Theologians and philosophers, who make God the creator of Nature and the architect of the Universe, reveal Him to us as an illogical and unbalanced Being. They declare He is benevolent because they are afraid of Him, but they are forced to admit the truth that His ways are vicious and beyond understanding. They attribute a malignity to Him seldom to be found in any human being. And that is how they get human beings to worship Him. For our miserable species would never lavish worship on a just and benevolent God from whom they had nothing to fear.

  Anatole France

  Understanding, Way, Philosopher

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