Greatest Good Quotes

“The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to him his own.”

— Benjamin Disraeli

“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.”

— John Maynard Keynes

“God doesn't work on our timetable. He has a plan that He will execute perfectly and for the highest, greatest good of all, and for His ultimate glory.”

— Charles R. Swindoll

“He felt that there is a loose balance of good and evil, and that the art of living consists in getting the greatest good out of the greatest evil.”

— Machado De Assis

“But what does the "greatest good" mean when it comes to medicine? Is it the number of lives saved? Years of life saved? Best "quality" years of life saved? Or something else?”

— Sheri Fink

“Historians, I think, should be keepers of truth. We must tell things as they are - honestly, and without subversion. That is the greatest good one can do.”

— Robert Jackson Bennett

“Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards.”

— Diogenes Of Sinope

“You shouldn't hate something you don't know, because it may turn out to be the bearer of your greatest good fortune.”

— Izzeldin Abuelaish

“Duty is but a pot. It holds whatever is put in it, from the greatest evil to the greatest good.”

— John Fowles

“Our country in general assumes that "the pursuit of happiness" really means "the pursuit of pleasure" and that therefore pleasure is the greatest good.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

“Mistake to suppose that mere good will is, by itself, a sufficient guarantee that all our efforts will finally attain to a good result. Serious mistakes can be made, even with the greatest good will.”

— Thomas Merton

“I never make a movie for awards consideration. I will use the hope of getting an Academy Award a) to honor the people who work so hard and also b) it's the greatest Good Housekeeping seal in the world. It's the greatest brand. It's as good as Louis Vuitton and Dior in the world of moviemaking. It's the Super Bowl.”

— Harvey Weinstein

“It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong.”

— Jeremy Bentham

“Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

“Conservatism vests in and depends on the widespread, informed understanding of human nature, self-governance and the First Principle of Progress: free people interacting in free markets produce the greatest good for the greatest number always, but only, when tethered to virtue and morality.”

— Mary Matalin

“The greatest good fortune of my return to Cambridge in 1946 was that there, in the spring, I met Elizabeth Fay Ringo. We were married a few months later.”

— James Tobin

“What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough; for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.”

— Pedro Calderon De La Barca

“If God is truly the greatest good on this earth, would He be loving us if He didn't draw us toward what is best for us (even if that happens to be Himself)?”

— Francis Chan

“Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.”

— Joseph Addison

“In the ego's world, power means having the ability to control circumstances to your benefit, to manipulate or dominate people in order to get your own way. If what you want is the greatest good for everyone, ego has little to say. The kind of strength that is giving, selfless, devout, trusting, and patient is decidedly feminine. It belongs to saints and mothers. By affirming this kind of strength, you are demonstrating faith that there can be power without aggression, domination, and control. Is there real power in the feminine aspect? Certainly there is, and even though the ego has exercised control for a long time, spiritual power has always been in charge. Spiritual power pervades every aspect of life as the intelligence that nurtures and organizes all forms, atom to cosmos. This power is yours to tap into. It comes from inside, and nothing can stop it once you have found its source in the true self.”

— Deepak Chopra

“But on a utilitarian level, I realize that to try to accomplish the greatest good for the greatest number of people, sometimes we have to become salesmen for what we believe, and part of being a salesman is being effective.”

— Moby

“Whatsoever is good for God's children they shall have it, for all is theirs to further them to heaven; therefore, if poverty be good, they shall have it; if disgrace be good, they shall have it; if crosses be good, they shall have them; if misery be good, they shall have it; for all is ours, to serve for our greatest good.”

— Richard Sibbes

“The utilitarian morality does recognise in human beings the power of sacrificing their own greatest good for the good of others. It only refuses to admit that the sacrifice is itself a good. A sacrifice which does not increase, or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers as wasted.”

— John Stuart Mill

“The United States, after all, was founded by men of liberal sentiment who were seeking to promote the greatest good for the greatest number, by creating a constitutional order for the creation and expansion of liberty.”

— Douglas Massey

“We frail humans are at one time capable of the greatest good and, at the same time, capable of the greatest evil. Change will only come about when each of us takes up the daily struggle ourselves to be more forgiving, compassionate, loving, and above all joyful in the knowledge that, by some miracle of grace, we can change as those around us can change too.”

— Mairead Corrigan

“The greatest evils, are from within us; and from ourselves also we must look for the greatest good.”

— Jeremy Taylor

“Our greatest good, and what we least can spare,
Is hope: the last of all our evils, fear.”

— John Armstrong

“The greatest good [a man] can do is to cultivate himself in order that he may be of greater use to humanity.”

— Marshall Field

“The [Oregon] Journal in its head and heart will stand for the people, be truly Democratic and free from political entanglements and machinations, believing in the principles that promise the greatest good to the greatest number-to ALL MEN, regardless of race, creed or previous condition of servitude ... It will be a fair newspaper, not a dull and selfish sheet ...”

— Samuel L. Jackson

“The purpose of conservation: The greatest good to the greatest number of people for the longest time.”

— Gifford Pinchot

“So large a portion of those who hold much capital, instead of using their various advantages for the greatest good of those around them, employ the chief of them for mere selfish indulgences; thus inflicting as much mischief on themselves, as results to others from their culpable neglect. A great portion of the rich seem to be acting on the principle, that the more God bestows on them, the less are they under obligation to practise any self-denial, in fulfilling his benevolent plan of raising our race to intelligence and holiness.”

— Catharine Beecher

“To seek the greatest good is to live well, and to live well is nothing other than to love God with the whole heart, the whole soul, and the whole mind: It is therefore obvious that this love must be kept whole and uncorrupt, that is temperance; it should not be overcome with difficulties, that is fortitude, it must not be subservient to anything else, that is justice; it must discriminate among things so as not to be deceived by falsity or fraud, that is prudence.”

— Saint Augustine

“To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?”

— Socrates

“If I tell you that I would be disobeying the god and on that account it is impossible for me to keep quiet, you won't be persuaded by me, taking it that I am ionizing. And if I tell you that it is the greatest good for a human being to have discussions every day about virtue and the other things you hear me talking about, examining myself and others, and that the unexamined life is not livable for a human being, you will be even less persuaded.”

— Socrates

“Every man should be responsible to others, nor should anyone be allowed to do just as he pleases; for where absolute freedom is allowed there is nothing to restrain the evil which is inherent in every man. But the principle of responsibility secures that which is the greatest good in states; the right persons rule and are prevented from doing wrong, and the people have their due. It is evident that this is the best kind of democracy, and why? because the people are drawn from a certain class.”

— Aristotle

“The things ... are esteemed as the greatest good of all ... can be reduced to these three headings: to wit, Riches, Fame, and Pleasure. With these three the mind is so engrossed that it cannot scarcely think of any other good.”

— Baruch Spinoza

“The greatest good is the knowledge of the union which the mind has with the whole nature.”

— Baruch Spinoza

“What is the elevation of the soul? A prompt, delicate, certain feeling for all that is beautiful, all that is grand; a quick resolution to do the greatest good by the smallest means; a great benevolence joined to a great strength and great humility.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

“The greatest good on this earth is God”

— Francis Chan

“The best work we can all do is create the highest vision possible for our lives and be led by that vision to the greatest good.”

— Oprah Winfrey

“But the challenge is always the same whether each generation facing its own circumstances can summon the practical devotion to attain and retain that greatest good for the greatest number which this government of the people was created to ensure.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

“What is wanting to restore us to our station among our confederates? not more money from the people. enough has been raised by them, and appropriated to this very object. it is that it should be employed understandingly, and for their greatest good. that good requires that, while they are ...”

— Thomas Jefferson

“The greatest good suffering can do for me is to increase my capacity for God.”

— Joni Eareckson Tada

“The disciple of Jesus gives up all he has, all his goods, because he has found in him the greatest Good from which every other good receives its full value and meaning: family bonds, other relationships, work, cultural and economic goods and so on ... The Christian detaches himself from everything and rediscovers all of it in the logic of the Gospel, the logic of love and service.”

— Pope Francis

“Tears and sorrows and losses are a part of what must be experienced in this present state of life: some for our manifest good, and ail, therefore, it is trusted, for our good concealed;
for our final and greatest good.”

— Leigh Hunt

“No one can take less pains than to hold his tongue. Hear much, and speak little; for the tongue is the instrument of the greatest good and greatest evil that is done in the world.”

— Walter Raleigh

“Genius, even, as it is the greatest good, is he greatest harm.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A votary of ahimsa cannot subscribe to the utilitarian formula (of the greatest good of the greatest number). He will strive for the greatest good of all and die in the attempt to realize that ideal.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

“The greatest good we can do in helping others become what they can become will be to lead them to the Savior.”

— D. Todd Christofferson

“The greatest good we can do for anyone is not to share our wealth with them, but rather to reveal their own wealth to them. It's astonishing how much talent and ability rests inside a human being”

— Zig Ziglar