Harold Kushner Quotes

The majority of men are more capable of great actions than of good ones.

I firmly believe that we're all good people, but sometimes it's hard to understand how to do good.

It's better to die doing good than to live doing evil.

Human beings have a vested interest in being trustworthy.

Integrity in the Moment of Choice: Quality of life depends on what happens in the space between stimulus and response.

Let no man be sorry he has done good, because others have done evil.

A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong - acting the part of a good man or of a bad.

There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules

There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility.

Sensibility appears to me to be neither good nor evil in itself, but in its application. Under the influence of Christian principle, it makes saints and martyrs; ill-directed, or uncontrolled, it is a snare, and the source of every temptation; besides, as people cannot get it if it is not given them, to descant on it seems to me as idle as to recommend people to have black eyes or fair complexions.

Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality.

Philosophers conceive of the passions which harass us as vices into which men fall by their own fault, and, therefore, generally deride, bewail, or blame them, or execrate them, if they wish to seem unusually pious.

The virtuous man is driven by responsibility, the non-virtuous man is driven by profit.

I'm not naive, I know that bad things happen, but most people do the right thing most of the time. Most people wake up and they try to do what's right for their relationships, whether it's marriage or family. They try to do what's right for their job. They try to make a better world for those around them, and that's what I want to write about.

We don't have to be good, you know? No one's telling us that we have to do good things, but we do them because we know it makes other people feel good and it makes us feel good.

People of poor character tend to blame their choices on circumstances. Ethical people make good choices regardless of circumstances. If they make enough good choices, they begin to create better conditions for themselves.

All men of goodwill have this in common - that our works put us to shame.

Keep doing good deeds long enough, and you'll probably turn out a good man in spite of yourself.

People do terrible things all the time, but we don’t regularly disown our humanity. We disavow the terrible things.

It is circumstance and proper measure that give an action its character, and make it either good or bad.

The absence of vices adds so little to the sum of one's virtues.

What we take for virtue is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry knows how to arrange.

People should not worry as much about what they do but rather about what they are. If they and their ways are good, then their deeds are radiant... it is not our works which sanctify us but we who sanctify our works.

Courage is the ability to do the right thing, all the time, no matter how painful or uncomfortable it might be.

Virtue!--to be good and just-- Every heart, when sifted well, Is a clot of warmer dust, Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell.