Ellen Key Quotes

Reason perhaps teaches certain bourgeois virtues, but it does not make either heroes or saints.

Heroes are those who can somehow resist the power of the situation and act out of noble motives, or behave in ways that do not demean others when they easily can.

Heroes represent the best of ourselves, respecting that we are human beings. A hero can be anyone from Gandhi to your classroom teacher, anyone who can show courage when faced with a problem. A hero is someone who is willing to help others in his or her best capacity.

What is the purpose of our might if we do not use it for good.

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, 'What's in it for me?'

One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

Morality binds people into groups. It gives us tribalism, it gives us genocide, war, and politics. But it also gives us heroism, altruism, and sainthood.

People confuse goodness with weakness. It is weak people, not good people (goodness demands strength), who are taken advantage of.

Virtues, like viruses, have their seasons of contagion. When catastrophe strikes, generosity spikes like a fever. Courage spreads in the face of tyranny.

To be compassionate is not a joke. It's not that simple. One has to discover a certain bigness in oneself. That bigness should be centered on oneself, not in terms of money, not in terms of power you wield, not in terms of any status that you can command in the society, but it should be centered on oneself.

You must not forget that you have been given worldly means to use and employ against human arrogance and wrong.

You can see how he changed on the surface. But at the core of it all, I think Superman has remained the same - a character with incredible powers but almost superhuman humility and restraint.

The time has come for all good men to rise above principle.

It's kind of the yin and yang that fascinate me. That for all the evil men do, there are also people who work obnoxiously long hours and sacrifice their personal lives because it is a calling - if they don't keep our streets safe, if they aren't there to advocate for and save beaten women and children and murder victims, who will?

I think that the good and the great are only separated by the willingness to sacrifice.

There are men whom a happy disposition, a strong desire of glory and esteem, inspire with the same love for justice and virtue which men in general have for riches and honors... But the number of these men is so small that I only mention them in honor of humanity.

Courage without compassion can wreak havoc on our civilization.

The number of people that put their lives at risk, just totally overwhelmed the evil of the act.

Men who have sacrifice their well-being, and even their lives, for the cause of truth or the public good, are, from an empirical point of view -- which scorns virtue and altruism -- regarded as insane or fools; but, from a moral standpoint, they are heroes who do honor to humanity..

America has a genius for great unselfish deeds, and into the hands of America, God has placed an afflicted mankind.

I believe that to have interfered as I have done—in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right.

I never knew Mother Teresa, but I admired her, especially in this day and age when there aren't many heroes.

Jealousy, greed, fear. We're all full of these things. But also love and compassion. If you saw a drowning baby, it wouldn't matter if you were wearing a tuxedo on the way to your own wedding. You'd jump in to save him.

It is these undeniable qualities of human love and compassion and self-sacrifice that give me hope for the future. We are, indeed, often cruel and evil. Nobody can deny this. We gang up on each one another, we torture each other, with words as well as deeds, we fight, we kill. But we are also capable of the most noble, generous, and heroic behavior.

Do good to another man, even when they do not do you good; another will certainly do you good. if there is still shame and fear in one's heart to do good, there will certainly be no progress at all.