Perfectly Good Quotes

• A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Clever, Men, Walking Forward

  81 Copy quote
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  Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.

  Milton Friedman

  Government, Ink And Paper, Political

  86 Copy quote

• I began dividing life in absolutes... Things and people were either perfectly bad, or perfectly good, and when life didn't obey this black-and-white rule, when things or people were complex or contradictory, I pretended otherwise. I turned every defeat into a disaster, every success into an epic triumph, and separated all people into heroes or villains. Unable to bear ambiguity, I built a barricade of delusions against it.

  J. R. Moehringer

  Hero, Black And White, Epic

  5 Copy quote

• Kissing the frog to get the prince is a waste of a perfectly good frog.

  Jim Benton

  Kissing, Frogs, Waste

  17 Copy quote

• My lord...I can explain-," Louis-Cesare began, looking less than certain that he could do anything of the kind. Radu held up a hand. "I am sure there is a perfectly good reason why my niece is naked and tied to her bed. I am also equally certain that I do not wish to hear it".

  Karen Chance

  Niece, Hands, Wish

  Karen Chance (2008). “Midnight's Daughter”, p.283, Penguin

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• At school, our classroom had a small rodent zoo consisting of two rabbits, three hamsters, a litter of baby gerbils and a guinea pig. At first, I’d thought the teacher was raising snack food, which impressed me, being the first sign of intelligence she’d shown. Soon, though, I’d figured out the animals’ true purpose and left them alone, though I would never understand the appeal of petting and coddling perfectly good food.

  Kelley Armstrong

  Baby, Teacher, Zoos

  Kelley Armstrong (2010). “Men of the Otherworld”, p.124, Vintage Canada

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• Please don’t let it be another cop. I’m outta bail money. Wait a minute…I could sell you on eBay and make a killing. (Mark) Not in my current condition. You’d have to sell Caleb or Madaug. I’m sure there’s someone willing to buy two perfectly good white boys. (Nick)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Boys, Ebay, Two

  4 Copy quote

• No theory ever benefited by the application of data, Amy. Data kills theories. A theory has no better time than when it's lying there naked, pure, unsullied by facts. Let's just keep it that way for a while." "So you don't really have a theory?" "Clueless." "You lying bag of fish heads." "I can fire you, you know. Even if Clay was the one that hired you, I'm not totally superfluous to this operation yet. I'm kind of in charge. I can fire you. Then how will you live?" "I'm not getting paid." "See, right there. Perfectly good concept ruined by the application of fact.

  Christopher Moore

  Lying, Clueless, Fire

  4 Copy quote

• He dropped the rest of the Cokes into the grave and pulled out a white paper bag decorated with cartoons. I hadn’t seen one in years, but I recognized it — a McDonald’s Happy Meal. He turned it upside down and shook the fries and hamburger into the grave. “In my day, we used animal blood,” the ghost mumbled. “It’s perfectly good enough. They can’t taste the difference.” “I will treat them with respect,” Nico said. “At least let me keep the toy,” the ghost said.

  Rick Riordan

  Animal, White, Differences

  4 Copy quote

• That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil -- widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.

  George Eliot

  Struggle, Light, Evil

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.261, Penguin

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• I'm a perfectly good carrot that everyone is trying to turn into a rose. As a carrot, I have good color and a nice leafy top. When I'm carved into a rose, I turn brown and wither.

  Mary Pipher

  Nice, Color, Rose

  "Reviving Ophelia: Helping You to Understand and Cope With Your Teenage Daughter". Book by Mary Pipher, 1994.

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• I knew chemistry would be worse, because I'd seen a big card of the ninety-odd elements hung up in the chemistry lab, and all the perfectly good words like gold and silver and cobalt and aluminum were shortened to ugly abbreviations with different decimal numbers after them.

  Sylvia Plath

  Numbers, Gold, Different

  7 Copy quote

• I don't remember my mother ever playing with me. And she was a perfectly good mother. But she had to do the laundry and clean the house and do the grocery shopping.

  Patricia Heaton

  Mother, Shopping, House

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• I've thought about what is an alternative word to feminism. There isn't one. It's a perfectly good word. And it can't be changed.

  Annie Lennox

  Feminism, Alternatives, Changed

  "Cosmo meets... Annie Lennox". Interview With Fiona Cowood, www.cosmopolitan.com. March 7, 2012.

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• There's this expression called postmodernism, which is kind of silly, and destroys a perfectly good word called modern, which now no longer means anything.

  Twyla Tharp

  Stupid, Silly, Mean

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• Harvard takes perfectly good plums as students, and turns them into prunes.

  Frank Lloyd Wright

  Artist, Cynical, Plums

  77 Copy quote

• There is no need of any competition with anybody. U R yourself, and as U R, U R perfectly good. Accept urself

  Rajneesh

  Spiritual, Competition, Needs

  4 Copy quote

• Things that appear unlikely, impossible, or paradoxical from one point of view often make perfectly good sense from another.

  Hugh Nibley

  Views, Impossible, Unlikely

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• States in the world are like individuals in the state of nature. They are neither perfectly good nor are they controlled by law.

  Kenneth Waltz

  Law, World, Individual

  Kenneth N. Waltz (2013). “Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis”, p.163, Columbia University Press

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• There will never be a perfectly good or bad world, because the very idea is a contradiction in terms.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Ideas, World, Contradiction

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.557, Manonmani Publishers

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• So, yeah, I think it had a major effect. I think in franchising younger people, it was just an idea that's never been trotted out before, but it makes perfectly good sense.

  Kurt Loder

  Thinking, Ideas, People

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• Imagine wasting all that perfectly good anger on paranoid fantasies. Not since Emily Litella got upset about "Soviet jewelry" has there been such a waste of anger. You will notice a certain theme to these Emily Litella Moments. Behind them all is a touching faith that someone, somewhere is actually in charge of what's happening - a proposition I beg leave to doubt.

  Molly Ivins

  Upset, Touching, Doubt

  Molly Ivins (2010). “You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You”, p.72, Vintage

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• It's easy to assume people are conforming when we witness them all choosing the same option, but when we choose that very option ourselves, we have no shortage of perfectly good reasons for why we just happen to be doing the same thing as those other people; they mindlessly conform, but we mindfully choose. This doesn't mean that we're all conformists in denial. It means that we regularly fail to recognize that others' thoughts and behaviors are just as complex and varied as our own. Rather than being alone in a crowd of sheep, we're all individuals in sheep's clothing.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Mean, Sheep, People

  4 Copy quote

• There are perfectly good independent small nations.

  David Attenborough

  Independent, Nations, Small Nations

  4 Copy quote

• What a day for the Tea Party people. Did you see that? America's parks and fairgrounds were lost in a sea of man-boobs. They were venting their anger and rage against taxes, which, of course, in most cases for them went down. Protesting their taxes went down, but you know, why let the truth spoil a perfectly good Klan rally.

  Bill Maher

  Party, Men, Sea

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