Beneficence Quotes

• I do not understand a mind which sees a gracious beneficence in spending money to slay and maim human beings in almost unimaginable numbers and deprecates the expenditure of a smaller sum to patch up the ills of mankind.

  Harry S. Truman

  Numbers, Mind, Patch Up

  Harry S. Truman, Robert J. Donovan (1994). “The Words of Harry S. Truman”

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• One act of beneficence, one act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world.

  Ann Radcliffe

  Real, World, Action

  Ann Radcliffe (1795). “The Mysteries of Udolfo: A Romance Interspersed with Some Pieces of Poetry”, p.214

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• Beneficence is a duty; and he who frequently practices it, and sees his benevolent intentions realized comes, at length, really to love him to whom he has done good.

  Immanuel Kant

  Kindness, Practice, Done

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• Even though many people prove to be ungrateful, do not let that stop you from benefiting others-for not only is beneficence in itself a noble and almost divine quality, it may also happen that while you practice it, you will encounter someone so grateful that he will make up for all the others' ingratitude.

  Francesco Guicciardini

  Grateful, Practice, People

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• Beneficence is a duty. He who frequently practices it, and sees his benevolent intentions realized, at length comes really to love him to whom he has done good. When, therefore, it is said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," it is not meant, thou shalt love him first and do him good in consequence of that love, but, thou shalt do good to thy neighbor; and this thy beneficence will engender in thee that love to mankind which is the fulness and consummation of the inclination to do good.

  Immanuel Kant

  Practice, Done, Charity

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• Beneficence is always free, it cannot be extorted by force.

  Adam Smith

  Force

  Adam Smith (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Adam Smith (Illustrated)”, p.96, Delphi Classics

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• The indescribable innocence of and beneficence of Nature,-of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter,-such health, such cheer, they afford forever!

  Henry David Thoreau

  Summer, Nature, Cheer

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.84, Simon and Schuster

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• The moral duty of man consists of imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of God, manifested in the creation towards all his creatures. Everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals is a violation of moral duty

  Thomas Paine

  Revenge, Animal, Men

  Thomas Paine (2015). “The Thomas Paine Collection: Common Sense, Rights of Man, Age of Reason, An Essay on Dream, Biblical Blasphemy, Examination Of The Prophecies”, p.246, Ravenio Books

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• Beneficence is a duty.

  Immanuel Kant

  Duty

  Immanuel Kant (2015). “The Ethics of Immanuel Kant: Metaphysics of Morals - Philosophy of Law & The Doctrine of Virtue + Perpetual Peace + The Critique of Practical Reason: Theory of Moral Reasoning”, p.319, e-artnow

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• I cannot persuade myself that a beneficient and omnipotent God would have designedly created...that a cat should play with mice.

  Charles Darwin

  Cat, Play, Should

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• But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created that a cat should play with mice.

  Charles Darwin

  Cat, Play, Design

  Charles Darwin (2015). “Darwin on Evolution: Words of Wisdom from the Father of Evolution”, p.28, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Freedom, Independent, Men

  Olmstead v. United States (dissenting opinion) (1928)

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• Piety practiced in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendor of beneficence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Flower, Men, Wind

  Samuel Johnson (1912). “The works of Samuel Johnson”

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• All other love is extinguished by self-love; beneficence, humanity, justice, philosophy, sink under it.

  Epicurus

  Philosophy, Love Is, Self

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• To act and act wisely when the time for action comes, to wait and wait patiently when it is time for repose, put man in accord with the rising and falling tides (of affairs). So that with nature and law at his back, and truth and beneficence as his beacon light, he may accomplish wonders. Ignorance of this law results in periods of unreasoning enthusiasm on the one hand, and depression on the other. Man thus becomes the victim of the tides when he should be their Master.

  H. P. Blavatsky

  Change, Time, Truth

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• I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout.

  Dean Alfange

  Dignity, Bartering, Trade

  Who's who in America: 43rd Edition, 1984-1985, Volume 1, (p. 42), 1984.

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• The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature-of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter-such health, such cheer, they afford forever! and such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun's brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer, if any man should ever for a just cause grieve.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Summer, Nature, Cheer

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.84, Simon and Schuster

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• The obligations of law and equity reach only to mankind; but kindness and beneficence should be extended to the creatures of every species, and these will flow from the breast of a true man, as streams that issue from the living fountain.

  Plutarch

  Kindness, Philosophical, Animal

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• 'Knowledge, without common sense,' says Lee, is 'folly; without method, it is waste; without kindness, it is fanaticism; without religion, it is death.' But with common sense, it is wisdom with method, it is power; with charity, it is beneficence; with religion, it is virtue, and life, and peace.

  Austin Farrer

  Life, Peace, Kindness

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• Simplicity is a pleasant thing in children, or at any age, but it is not necessarily admirable, nor is affectation altogether a thing of evil. To be normal, to be at home in the world, with a prospect of power, usefulness, or success, the person must have that imaginative insight into other minds that underlies tact and savoir-faire, morality and beneficence. This insight involves sophistication, some understanding and sharing of the clandestine impulses of human nature. A simplicity that is merely the lack of this insight indicates a sort of defect.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Nature, Children, Home

  Charles Horton Cooley (1909). “Two Major Works: Social Organization. Human Nature and the Social Order”, Glencoe, Ill., Free P

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• We ought to regard ourselves and to act as socialists--believers in the wholesomeness and beneficence of the body politic.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Government, Body, Socialism

  Woodrow Wilson (1898). “The State: Elements of Historical and Practical Politics”

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  Angels are the dispensers and administrators of the divine beneficence toward us.

  John Calvin

  Angel, Divine, Solicitude

  Jean Calvin, John Allen (1844). “Institutes of the Christian Religion”, p.155

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• While dwelling with pleasing satisfaction upon the superior excellence of our political institutions, let us not be unmindful that liberty is power; that the nation blessed with the largest portion of liberty must in proportion to its numbers be the most powerful nation upon earth, and that the tenure of power by man is, in the moral purposes of his Creator, upon condition that it shall be exercised to ends of beneficence, to improve the condition of himself and his fellow men.

  John Quincy Adams

  Powerful, Blessed, Men

  John Quincy Adams (1965). “John Quincy Adams and American continental empire: letters, papers and speeches”, Chicago, Quadrangle Books

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• The state has physical power and uses it when necessary; the power of religion is love and beneficence

  Moses Mendelssohn

  Use, States

  Moses Mendelssohn (2013). “Jerusalem: Or on Religious Power and Judaism”, p.45, Brandeis University Press

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• Every man who becomes heartily and understandingly a channel of the Divine beneficence is enriched through every league of his life. Perennial satisfaction springs around and within him with perennial verdure. Flowers of gratitude and gladness bloom all along his pathway, and the melodious gurgle of the blessings be bears is echoed back by the melodious waves of the recipient stream.

  Bill Vaughan

  Gratitude, Spring, Flower

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