Van Wyck Brooks Quotes

I still have great faith in what is good and right in all of us.

If everyone were a good person, it'd obviously be a better world.

Man's nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.

We must show there is good in society. If you read the newspapers, you think there are only crooks in this world, but that's not true.

As pessimistic as I am about the nature of human beings and our capacity for atrocity and malevolence and betrayal and laziness and inertia, and all those things, I think we can transcend all that and set things straight.

We have to always hope in humanity that people will make the right choices.

There is always a type of man who says he loves his fellow men, and expects to make a living at it.

Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes, and men grow better as the world grows old.

We must not indulge in unfavorable views of mankind, since by doing it we make bad men believe they are no worse than others, and we teach the good that they are good in vain.

The act of feeling what you believe other people feel is morally corosive.... If we want to be good and caring people, if we want to make the world a better place, then we are better off withouit empathy.

Buckminster Fuller - he never lost faith in the goodness of humanity.

Spiritual men have taken into their head something that is to be realized. They have concepts of love, goodness, and the like, which they would like to see realized; therefore they want to set up a kingdom of love on earth, in which no one any longer acts from selfishness, but each one 'from love.' Love is to rule.

Be good to others, that will protect you against evil.

If we all make a concerted effort and try to improve the life of someone else, then this world would be a better place to live in.

My biggest aspiration is to inspire people to do good. I believe that our wish for a harmonious world begins and ends with doing good. To inspire and empower people to focus on goodness, I wrote a new book called 'Activate Your Goodness: Transforming the World through Doing Good.'

I've always thought, and it gets tested at times, that I have a great faith in the fundamental goodness of human beings.

Men are only as great as they are kind.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

Cynics will say there are no good people out there. And if you read the papers and watch TV news you could be convinced of that. But there are good people.

I haven't lost faith in human nature and I haven't decided to be less compassionate to strangers.

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.

Mankind at its most desperate is often at its best.

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.

My husband believes that he can make a difference. He loves people.