48 Goodness Quotes

In a world that often feels chaotic and uncertain, the importance of goodness cannot be overstated. Goodness, in its many forms, has the power to uplift, inspire, and transform lives. Whether it's through simple acts of kindness, profound wisdom, or the timeless words of great thinkers, goodness brings light to the darkest of days. To celebrate this timeless virtue, we've curated a collection of the top 48 Goodness Quotes. These insightful and inspiring quotes serve as a reminder of the inherent goodness in all of us and the positive impact we can make when we choose to act from a place of compassion and empathy. Dive in and let these words of wisdom inspire you to cultivate goodness in your own life and in the lives of those around you.

1. “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always.” - Mahatma Gandhi

2. “A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.” - Nelson Mandela

3. “He's not safe, but he's good (referring to Aslan, the Lion, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)” - C. S. Lewis

4. “When I was young, my ambition was to be one of the people who made a difference in this world. My hope is to leave the world a little better for having been there. ” - Jim Henson

5. “The proper function of a government is to make it easy for the people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil. ” - Daniel Webster

6. “Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day:- I shall not fear anyone on Earth. - I shall fear only God. - I shall not bear ill will toward anyone. - I shall not submit to injustice from anyone. - I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering.” - Mahatma Gandhi

7. “On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.” - George Orwell

8. “There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.” - Leo Tolstoy

9. “Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.” - Marcus Aurelius

10. “But how nice it would be to know that some good Yankee woman - And there must be SOME good Yankee women. I don’t care what people say, they can’t all be bad! How nice it would be to know that they pulled weeds off our men’s graves and brought flowers to them, even if they were enemies. If Charlie were dead in the North it would comfort me to know that someone - And I don’t care what you ladies think of me,” her voice broke again, “I will withdraw from both clubs and I’ll — I’ll pull up every weed off every Yankee’s grave I can find and I’ll plant flowers, too — and — I just dare anyone to stop me!” - Margaret Mitchell

11. “Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.” - Mae West

12. “Everybody's got the seam of goodness in them, Kit," said Grandpa. "Just a matter of whether it can be found and brought out into the light.” - David Almond

13. “Goodness was not a trait you acquired; it was a value you practiced when you were on the verge of doing evil.” - Julius Lester

14. “Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art.” - Charles Baudelaire

15. “In the beginning..when ray and day hadn't yet come into existence at all, there was a kind of radiance that illuminates universe. That radiance is the light of knowledge and goodness. That radiance will persistently and consistently shines brightly even after all the stars and moons in this vast universe died out.” - Toba Beta

16. “There are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

17. “You are protected, in short, by your ability to love!” - J.K. Rowling

18. “Conquer the angry one by not getting angry; conquer the wicked by goodness; conquer the stingy by generosity, and the liar by speaking the truth.[Verse 223]” - Siddhārtha Gautama

19. “God will never disappoint us… If deep in our hearts we suspect that God does not love us and cannot manage our affairs as well as we can, we certainly will not submit to His discipline. …To the unbeliever the fact of suffering only convinces him that God is not to be trusted, does not love us. To the believer, the opposite is true.” - Elisabeth Elliot

20. “I'm not a believer in predetermined fates, being rewarded for one's efforts. I'm not a believer in karma. The reason why I try to be a good person is because I think it's the right thing to do. If I commit fewer bad acts there will be fewer bad acts, maybe other people will join in committing fewer bad acts, and in time there will be fewer and fewer of them.” - Daniel Handler

21. “Poor God, how often He is blamed for all the suffering in theworld. It’s like praising Satan for allowing all the good that happens.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

22. “Imagine that the keeper of a huge, strong beast notices what makes it angry, what it desires, how it has to be approached and handled, the circumstances and the conditions under which it becomes particularly fierce or calm, what provokes its typical cries, and what tones of voice make it gentle or wild. Once he's spent enough time in the creature's company to acquire all this information, he calls it knowledge, forms it into a systematic branch of expertise, and starts to teach it, despite total ignorance, in fact, about which of the creature's attitudes and desires is commendable or deplorable, good or bad, moral or immoral. His usage of all these terms simply conforms to the great beast's attitudes, and he describes things as good or bad according to its likes and dislikes, and can't justify his usage of the terms any further, but describes as right and good the things which are merely indispensable, since he hasn't realised and can't explain to anyone else how vast a gulf there is between necessity and goodness.” - Plato

23. “Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.” - Arthur Schopenhauer

24. “The evil done by men of goodwill is the worst of all ... We have done terrible things, for the best of reasons, and that makes it worse.” - Iain Pears

25. “ينبغي ألا نندم على حبٍ أو احساس عشناهُ يومًا بكل الصدق، فسوفَ تكشفُ لنا الأيامُ أن ما بقى داخلنا من مشاعر الحب كان أجمل و أبقى مما في أعماقِ انسانٍ تخلّى عنا او غدرَ بنا، لأن الذي يصنعُ الفضيلة لا يندمُ عليها، والذي يرسمُ خطوطَ الجمال لا يعنيه أبدًا أن يرسم غيره أشكالَ القبح.” - فاروق جويدة

26. “Don't go on discussing what a good person should be. Just be one.” - Marcus Aurelius

27. “Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to throw away. Death stands at your elbow. Be good for something while you live and it is in your power.” - Marcus Aurelius

28. “In the sense of Lewis, I am a moderately 'good man'".~R. Alan Woods [2012]” - R. Alan Woods

29. “I don't understand why people care so much about showing that they are good; because I am rather comfortable with having badness, quite okay with being inexplicable. They tire themselves so. The light is beautiful; but light can't hide treasures like the darkness can.” - C. JoyBell C.

30. “Be nice. Be good. Be happy. If people everywhere were to keep to this simple creed, there'd be few problems left in the world to fret about.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

31. “He keeps his deepest belief tight to him: that people are good and want to be good, if only you give them a chance.” - Lauren Groff

32. “The thing I got to thinking about,' he said, 'is--what are the conditions that lead to larger portions of society being generous, humble, and selfless? While we have the conditions for economic opportunity here--and that is a blessing--do we have the conditions to learn how to self-regulate our own passions for the good of the whole?” - Warren St. John

33. “There are those who do not hold that there is any innate goodness to mankind. To them I say, had you lived my life, you would not believe it. I have known the depths to which mortals are capable of descending, and I have seen the heights. I have seen how kindness and compassion may grow in the unlikeliest of places, as the mountain flower forces its way through the stern rock.” - Jacqueline Carey

34. “We each have words for "love" in our languages. What would the world look like if we acted on that one word for humanity's sake?” - Julie Saffrin

35. “I cannot encourage any fabrication even for the sake of making people feel good. If I were to fabricate consciously and knowingly, I would not only be ordaining myself their enemy, but also ordaining myself God's enemy.” - Criss Jami

36. “Happiness and goodness, according to canting moralists, stand in the relation of effect and cause. There was never anything less proved or less probable: our happiness is never in our own hands; we inherit our constitution; we stand buffet among friends and enemies; we may be so built as to feel a sneer or an aspersion with unusual keenness and so circumstanced as to be unusually exposed to them; we may have nerves very sensitive to pain, and be afflicted with a disease very painful. Virtue will not help us, and it is not meant to help us.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

37. “In my ninety-plus years, I have learned a secret. I have learned that when good men and good women face challenges with optimism, things will always work out! Truly, things always work out! Despite how difficult circumstances may look at the moment, those who have faith and move forward with a happy spirit will find that things always work out.” - Gordon B. Hinckley

38. “But as far as true goodness was concerned, that didn't exist - not in the land of cowardly men.” - Paulo Coelho

39. “I want something good to die for. . . to make it beautiful to live.” - Stacey T. Hunt

40. “Miss B. says, "It's a mama's faith what keeps her children right. I'm not talkin' 'bout the churchgoin' kind, neither. Miss Mabel's got faith in goodness. Tell me you can't help but believe in it too just by lookin' at her.” - Ami McKay

41. “I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.” - Arthur Golden

42. “Good and bad exist always, everywhere” - R. Alan Woods

43. “No,' said Gould, with an unusual and convincing gravity; 'I do not believe that being perfectly good in all respects would make a man merry.' 'Well,' said Michael quietly, 'will you tell me one thing? Which of us has ever tried it?” - G.K. Chesterton

44. “If Innocent is happy, it is because he is innocent. If he can defy the conventions, it is just because he can keep the commandments. It is just because he does not want to kill but to excite to life that a pistol is still as exciting to him as it is to a schoolboy. It is just because he does not want to steal, because he does not covet his neighbour's goods, that he has captured the trick (oh, how we all long for it!), the trick of coveting his own goods. It is just because he does not want to commit adultery that he achieves the romance of sex; it is just because he loves one wife that he has a hundred honeymoons.” - G.K. Chesterton

45. “We too often forget that not only is there 'a soul of goodness in things evil,' but very generally also, a soul of truth in things erroneous.” - Herbert Spencer

46. “The evil in the world must not make me doubt the existence of God. There could be no evil if there were no God. Before there can be a hole in a uniform, there must be a uniform; before there is death, there must be life; before there is error, there must be truth; before there is a crime, there must be liberty and law; before there is a war, there must be peace; before there is a devil, there must be a God, rebellion against whom made the devil.” - Fulton J. Sheen

47. “But with your life you make a few bad decisions, get unlucky a few times, whatever, but you have to keep going, right?” - Cecelia Ahern

48. “Evil is predicable; Good is paradoxical.” - Lara Biyuts