A Quote by Roger Kimball

Intelligence, like fire, is a power that is neither good nor bad in itself but rather takes its virtue, its moral coloring, from its application.

Roger Kimball

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Application Bad Fire Good Intelligence Itself Like Moral Neither Nor Power Rather Takes Virtue

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Roger Kimball
American - Editor
Born: 1953

Power has destroyed many people - not really. Power doesn't destroy anyone. People apply it poorly and it can ruin their lives. Power is like fire. Fire is neither good nor bad. It's how you use it.

Frederick Lenz

We are all prone to brood on the evil done us. That brooding becomes as a gnawing and destructive canker. Is there a virtue more in need of application in our time than the virtue of forgiving and forgetting? There are those who would look upon this as a sign of weakness. Is it? I submit that it takes neither strength nor intelligence to brood in anger over wrongs suffered, to go through life with a spirit of vindictiveness, to dissipate one’s abilities in planning retribution. There is no peace in the nursing of a grudge. There is no happiness in living for the day when you can ‘get even.

Gordon B. Hinckley

Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.

Eric Hoffer

Good taste" is a virtue of the keepers of museums. If you scorn bad taste, you will have neither painting nor dancing, neither palaces nor gardens.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Liberty, according to my metaphysics, is an intellectual quality, an attribute that belongs not to fate nor chance. Neither possesses it, neither is capable of it. There is nothing moral or immoral in the idea of it. The definition of it is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power; it can elect between objects, indifferent in point of morality, neither morally good nor morally evil.

John Adams

The world is ruled by neither justice nor morality; crime is not punished nor virtue rewarded, one is forgotten as quickly as the other. The world is ruled by power and power is obtained with money. To work is senseless, because money cannot be obtained through work, but through exploitation of others. And if we cannot exploit as much as we wish, at least let us work as little as we can. Moral duty? We believe neither in the morality of man nor in the morality of systems. [p. 168]

Tadeusz Borowski

Death and life, success and failure, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty, all these happen to good and bad alike, and they are neither noble nor shameful - and hence neither good nor bad.

Marcus Aurelius

Lies are neither bad nor good. Like a fire they can either keep you warm or burn you to death, depending on how they're used.

Max Brooks

Technology itself is neither good nor bad. People are good or bad.

Naveen Jain

Actually, power is like money; neither good nor bad. Its negative or positive spin depends upon how we use it.

Pat Heim

If we are to become the masters of science, not its slaves, we must learn to use its immense power to good purpose. The machine itself has neither mind nor soul nor moral sense. Only man has been endowed with these godlike attributes. Every age has its destined duty. Ours is to nurture an awareness of those divine attributes and a sense of responsibility in giving them expression.

David Sarnoff

If thou desire the love of God and man, be humble, for the proud heart, as it loves none but itself, is beloved of none but itself. Humility enforces where neither virtue, nor strength, nor reason can prevail.

Francis Quarles

From the moral as from the intellectual point of view, the child is born neither good nor bad but master of his destiny.

Jean Piaget

Change itself is neither good nor bad, but knowledge is always useful.

Christopher Paolini

Eyes are bold as lions,--roving, running, leaping, here and there, far and near. They speak all languages. They wait for no introduction; they are no Englishmen; ask no leave of age or rank; they respect neither property nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through and through you in a moment of time. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another through them!

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If the moral good of fiction stems mainly from a habit of mind it inculcates in the reader, styles are neither good nor bad, and to describe some fictional enterprises as false is pointless.

Mary Gordon

A Quote by Roger Kimball

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