Mort Sahl Quotes

Today, rather than looking for the worst in people, I encourage you to look for what's best within them.

I think it's more optimistic about human nature to acknowledge that people are the products of their time but then to see that they have moments of grace and dignity that everybody has.

I believe poor people are good people, except the ones that are mean . . .

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

Really to believe in human nature while striving to know the thousand forces that warp it from its ideal development - to call for and expect much from men and women, and not to be disappointed and embittered if they fall short - to try to do good with people rather than to them - this is my religion on its human side. And if God exists, I think that he must be in the warm sun, in the kindly actions of the people we know and read of, in the beautiful things of art and nature, and in the closeness of friendships.

Even before I did stand-up, I've always been the kind of guy - and I talk about it on stage - who says I like people and I always look for the good in people. I say, 'Every person has something good about them, if you can just find it.'

Most people are not good people. In business, in art, in almost every 'world' I've been in, most people I've meet are pretty gray to black. It takes practice to be the person who is a source of compassion and honesty.

I've learned never to expect people to be better than they are, but to always have faith that they can be more.

My own belief is that most people are trying to do their best. It doesn't mean they have no nasty side, or that they don't have a bad temper, or that they have never done anything they feel ashamed of. But fiction operates on people waking up trying to be horrible, and I don't think most people are trying to be horrible.

There are very few misanthropes, thank goodness!

I think the most that I've learned has been, how do I put this? The innate goodness inside of all of us.

I believe people are wonderful. The vast majority of people have never hurt anybody in their lives.

When you read the news, and you see all this bad stuff happening, there's a tendency to lose faith in humanity. But I meet so many people who restore it and realize that, actually, 99 percent of people are great.

People generally are just really nice to each other. You know, the good people.

I believe there's good in everybody.

Not to sound too Pollyanna-ish, but I think most people are decent, caring human beings. You don't necessarily see that reflected in fiction maybe, because possibly it's perceived as not having much dramatic potential.

If life has taught me one thing, it's that there are no villains. Only people, doing their best.

We believe people are basically good. We believe everyone has something to contribute. We encourage you to treat others the way that you want to be treated.

There may not be a hell, but those who judge may create one. I think people are over-taught. They are over-taught everything. You have to find out by what happens to you, how you will react. I'll have to use a strange term here... "good." I don't know where it comes from, but I feel that there's an ultimate strain of goodness born in each of us. I don't believe in God, but I believe in this "goodness" like a tube running through our bodies. It can be nurtured. It's always magic, when on a freeway packed with traffic, a stranger makes room for you to change lanes... it gives you hope.

I hope you will be yourself, human, even a little sentimental, possessed of a sense of humor and a sense of humility. . . . There are arrogant people in this world and, what is worse, arrogant judges.

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.

If it wasn't for good," my mother says, "we human beings would have been wiped out a long time ago. Either the monsters would have gotten us or we would have killed each other off with greed and jealousy and anger. So we have to believe in good. We have to look for the good in ourselves.

People that pick up hitchhikers I believe are basically good people that believe in other people and understand problems and don't judge people. That's always the kind of person I'm looking for.

You don't love hatred and evil, of course. You have to practice and see the real gull, the good in every one of them, and to help them see it in themselves. That's what I mean by love.

Judgment consists not in seeing through deceptions and evil intentions, but in being able to awaken the decency dormant in every person.