A Quote by Dinah Maria Murlock Craik
About the greatest virtue a friend can have, is to be able to hold her tongue; and through this, like all virtues carried to extremity, may grow into a fault, and do great harm, still, it never can do so much harm as that horrible laxity and profligacy of speech which is a the root of half the quarrels, cruelties, and injustices of the world.
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False speech does harm to readers, who are misled by it; it does harm to journalism, which is weakened by it; and it does harm to the subjects of the speech, whose reputations and careers are damaged by it.
Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them.
Heather Badcock meant no harm. She never did mean harm, but there is no doubt that people like Heather Badcock (and like my old friend Alison Wilde), are capable of doing a lot of harm because they lack - not kindness, they have kindness - but any real consideration for the way their actions may affect other people. She though always of what an action meant to her, never sparing a thought to what it might mean to somebody else.
Do you know that I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world? Certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance.
It is not enough to ask, 'Will my act harm other people?' Even if the answer is No, my act may still be wrong, because of its effects on other people. I should ask, 'Will my act be one of a set of acts that will together harm other people?' The answer may be Yes. And the harm to others may be great. If this is so, I may be acting very wrongly, like the Harmless Torturers.
Whatever harm the evil may do, the harm done by the good is the most harmful harm.
I mean you ACRES of harm,' Dalrymple growled. 'Untold QUANTITIES of harm. I will visit a whole CONTINENT of harm upon you before we are through.
Our repentances are generally not so much a concern and remorse for the harm we have done, as a fear of the harm we may have brought upon ourselves.
There are as many kinds of missionaries as there are human beings. There are the terrible, colonialist power-grabbers, still, and there are plenty of the sort of well-intentioned villains who do great harm and don’t understand that they are doing great harm.
Our long memories hold the stories of what our people accomplished, but they also hold the prejudices, the injustices, the harm that we've received from others.
The media loves to take things like that [Rocky Marciano couldn't hold my jockstrap] out of context. There was no harm meant when I said that, but plenty of harm came from it.
No one can take less pains than to hold his tongue. Hear much, and speak little; for the tongue is the instrument of the greatest good and greatest evil that is done in the world.
Ocean acidification looks suspiciously like a back-up plan by the environmental pressure groups in case the climate fails to warm: another try at condemning fossil fuels. [...] Even if the world warms as much as the consensus expects, the net harm still looks small alongside the real harm now being done by preventable causes; and if it does warm this much, it will be because more people are rich enough to afford to do something about it.
And finally remember that nothing harms him who is really a citizen, which does not harm the state; nor yet does anything harm the state which does not harm law [order]; and of these things which are called misfortunes not one harms law. What then does not harm law does not harm either state or citizen.
Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.
The governors of the world believe, and have always believed, that virtue can only be taught by teaching falsehood, and that any man who knew the truth would be wicked. I disbelieve this, absolutely and entirely. I believe that love of truth is the basis of all real virtue, and that virtues based upon lies can only do harm.
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