Quotes About Good

The halo effect helps keep explanatory narratives simple and coherent by exaggerating the consistency of evaluations: good people do only good things and bad people are all bad. The statement "Hitler loved dogs and little children" is shocking no matter how many times you hear it, because any trace of kindness in someone so evil violates the expectations set up by the halo effect. Inconsistencies reduce the ease of our thoughts and the clarity of our feelings.

Most importantly, of course, we all care intensely for the narrative of our own life and very much want it to be a good story, with a decent hero.

When action is needed, optimism, even of the mildly delusional variety, may be a good thing.

The halo effect helps keep explanatory narratives simple and coherent by exaggerating the consistency of evaluations: good people do only good things and bad people are all bad.

Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, explored these so-called expert predictions in a landmark twenty-year study, which he published in his 2005 book Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?

In der mittelalterlichen Kunst entspricht das Aussehen der Menschen ihren Seelen: die Bösen hässlich, die Guten schön. Das neunzehnte Jahrhundert hat uns beigebracht, das sei Unsinn. Aber mit ein bisschen Lebenserfahrung merkt man, es ist gar nicht so falsch.

Humanism: The stance that the good of humankind is of prime importance. In modern times, humanism means that pursuing this good has nothing to do with a god; doing good works for other humans is a value in itself, not the fulfillment of a duty to a god.

through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.

Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards. —DIOGENES

Gaining experience is good, but it is also an obstacle because in some ways you have to forget what you know. You have to cease being an expert in order to do something new and something good.

I like to see things through the lens of Greek tragedy, which teaches us, among other things, that real tragedy is never a straightforward confrontation between Good and Evil, but is rather much more exquisitely and much more agonizingly, a conflict between two irreconcilable views of the world.

from the beginnings of history, we have used the critique of consumption to confirm ourselves as essentially good and moral beings. Once upon a more religious time it was common to translate this into an actual asceticism, and I still think it gives us reason to lash out against a consumption we can't seem to control even in ourselves.

What a most unreasonably stubborn man," he said. "One must be more open to opposing views in this world." "You don't say." "Oh, indeed! As our late father often said, 'Toleration is good for all or it is good for non.

What a most unreasonably stubborn man," he said. "One must be more open to opposing views in this world." "You don't say." "Oh, indeed! As our late father often said, 'Toleration is good for all or it is good for none.

Toleration is good for all or it is good for none.

In the narrow application of logic to limited problems some degree of objectivity is perhaps possible. But in the broil of the wider human experience, in deciding what is good and true and beautiful and worth living for in this world, there is so much sheer humanness at work (and there should be, that the claim of cool, rational objectivity is almost laughable.

Magic is dangerous: it's neither good nor bad, right nor wrong; it can be both a blessing and a curse. It takes strength, the strength of a man, to make the magic his own, to make it serve him, and not the other way around.

The proper function of a government is to make it easy for the people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil.

Everyone confusedly conceives of a good in which the mind may be at rest, and desires it; wherefore everyone strives to attain to it.

Even in the former Soviet Union, they have good copies of my movies.

decided that good scholarship demanded taking the losers' point of view, and that made the revision of claims about historic fact inevitable.

Robert Heinlein once wrote that fulfillment in life involved "loving a good woman and killing a bad man.

Troubles, they may come and go, but good times, they're the gold.

I know what you're going to say! 'They are men, and men should be free.' A free man is dangerous to himself and everyone else. Freedom should be left to those who can put it to good use.