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Quotes of the day: righteous and righteousness
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Published Tuesday, February 10, 2015 @ 8:21 PM EST
Feb 10 2015

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A little righteous anger really brings out the best in the American personality. Our nation was born when 56 patriots got mad enough to sign the Declaration of Independence. We put a man on the moon because Sputnik made us mad at being number two in space. Getting mad in a constructive way is good for the soul- and the country.
-Lee Iacocca

Among life's perpetually charming questions is whether the truly evil do more harm than the self-righteous and wrong.
-Jon Margolis

An orgy looks particularly alluring seen through the mists of righteous indignation.
-Malcolm Muggeridge

Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be- or to be indistinguishable from- self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.
-Neal Stephenson

But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness- each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked- each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity.
-Herbert Butterfield

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.
-Charlotte Bronte

Democracy is an experiment, and the right of the majority to rule is no more inherent than the right of the minority to rule; and unless the majority represents sane, righteous, unselfish public sentiment, it has no inherent right.
-William Allen White

God knows it is emotionally satisfying to be righteous with that righteousness that nourishes itself on the blood of sinners. But God also knows that what is emotionally satisfying can be spiritually devastating.
-William Sloane Coffin, Jr.

Honesty is the cruelest game of all, because not only can you hurt someone- and hurt them to the bone- you can feel self-righteous about it at the same time.
-Dave Van Ronk

I celebrate everyone's religious holidays. If it's good enough for the righteous, it's good enough for the self-righteous, I always say.
-Bette Midler

I do believe that America's deepest political sickness is that it is a self-righteous nation.
-Norman Mailer

If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.
-Leo Tolstoy

If I have to choose between peace and righteousness, I'll choose righteousness.
-Theodore Roosevelt

If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.
-Isaac Asimov

If we had any nerve at all, if we had any real balls as a society, or whatever you need, whatever quality you need, real character, we would make an effort to really address the wrongs in this society, righteously.
-Jerry Garcia

My dear sister, I hope, when God Almighty in his righteous providence shall take me out of time into eternity, that it will be by a flash of lightning.
-James Otis, Jr.

Neither the adventure of goodness nor the pursuit of righteousness gets headlines.
-Eugene H. Peterson

Righteousness cannot be born until self-righteousness is dead.
-Bertrand Russell

Righteousness is easy in retrospect.
-Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Self-righteous people can talk themselves into forgetting they are part of a civilization. They can then feed on that culture, bringing it down. It's happened many times in the past. It could happen to us.
-David Brin

Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.
-Eric Hoffer

Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
-Reinhold Neibuhr

The company of just and righteous men is better than wealth and a rich estate.
-Euripides

There is nothing that robs a righteous cause of its strength more than a millionaire's money.
-Andrew Carnegie

These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defense, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush.
-Yann Martel (Life of Pi)

To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation'- this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.
-Aldous Huxley

Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self-righteousness.
-Robert Hutchinson

We are obligated to be more scrupulous in fulfilling the commandment of charity than any other positive commandment because charity is the sign of a righteous man.
-Maimonides

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(February 11 is also the birthday of Thomas Edison and Burt Reynolds.)


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