Benevolent Quotes - Page 4

• 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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• I don't think we need to agree with anyone in order to love the person. The command for Christians to love the other person, to be benevolent and beneficent toward them, is independent of what the other believes.

  Miroslav Volf

  Christian, Believe, Independent

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• The strife of politics tends to unsettle the calmest understanding, and ulcerate the most benevolent heart. There are no bigotries or absurdities too gross for parties to create or adopt under the stimulus of political passions.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Party, Passion, Heart

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1866). “Character and Characteristic Men”, p.49

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• I am a misanthrope yet utterly benevolent.

  Alfred Nobel

  Misanthrope

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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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• 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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• I came to the realization that I had failed in some respects because I had been more of a benevolent narrator than the world I saw reflected around me, and in the lives of the people in my community, and in my family. There was no benevolent God sparing us pain and loss and grief and struggle. If I was going to continue to write about the place where I am from, and the kind of people who live in my community and who are in my family, I owed it to them to be honest with what our lives are like.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Pain, Grief, Struggle

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• And that the best things that grownups do, we do for the children, and that they inspire great good in us. I also want them to remember that the world is intertwined and that we therefore have to be gentle in the way that we treat one another and the Earth, so that our impact on others is benevolent and good.

  Maya Soetoro-Ng

  Children, Impact, Inspire

  "The First Sister Reflects on Family from Motherhood to Brother Barack". Interview with Kam Williams, newsblaze.com. May 3, 2011.

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• The original Zal story by Ferdowsi gives a very moving account of an infant who had all odds against him - he was left to die in the wilderness and a giant, benevolent bird rescued him and became his guardian angel. This tale thrilled me; I've always wanted to write about it.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Moving, Writing, Angel

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays.

  Margaret Atwood

  Nice, Thinking, People

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• Under the present dispensation, the great majority of factories are little despotisms, benevolent in some cases, malevolent in others. Even where benevolence prevails, passive obedience is demanded by the workers, who are ruled by overseers, not of their own election, but appointed from above. In theory they may be the subjects of a democratic state; but in practice they spend the whole of their working lives as the subjects of a petty tyrant.

  Aldous Huxley

  Practice, Tyrants, Majority

  Aldous Huxley (1937). “Ends and Means: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Ideals and Into the Methods Employed for Their Realization”, p.84, Transaction Publishers

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• Today I weep for my country. No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. ... Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned. We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance....After war has ended the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe.

  Robert Byrd

  Country, Strong, War

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• Religion of every kind involves the promise that the misery and futility of existence can be overcome or even transfigured. One might suppose that the possession of such a magnificent formula, combined with the tremendous assurance of a benevolent God, would make a person happy. But such appears not to be the case.: unease and insecurity and rage seem to keep up with blissful certainty, and even to outpace it.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Insecurity, Promise, Overcoming

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• For the Christian there can be no social or political panaceas, no easy escapes from personal responsibility achieved by collectivising guilt or virtue. The true ends of temporal life lie beyond it, and, though the tyrannical State may diminish virtue, the benevolent State cannot procure it.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Christian, Lying, Responsibility

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• No man can possibly be benevolent or religious, to the full extent of his obligations, without concerning himself, to a greater or less extent, with the affairs of human government.

  Charles Grandison Finney

  Religious, Men, Affair

  Charles Grandison Finney, George REDFORD (D.D.) (1851). “Lectures on systematic theology, embracing moral government, the atonement, etc. Revised, enlarged, and partly re-written by the Author ... Edited ... by G. Redford”, p.357

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• I know that my work in this case is magnified by the fact that the streets of heaven are too crowded with angels. We know their names. They number a thousand for each one of the red ribbons that we wear here tonight. They finally rest in the warm embrace of the gracious creator of us all. A healing embrace that cools their fevers, that clears their skin, and allows their eyes to see the simple, self-evident, common sense truth that is made manifest by the benevolent creator of us all...

  Tom Hanks

  Healing, Eye, Angel

  Tom Hanks' Academy Award Acceptance Speech, aaspeechesdb.oscars.org. March 21, 1994.

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