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Doing The Right Thing Quotes

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Doing The Right Thing Quotes

“It was the senior stew's position to be at the top of the ramp when the men got off in Vietnam. But when we were about two hours out she would usually ask for a volunteer to take the forward door. All you had to do is stand at the door and say good-bye, but nobody wanted that job. It's nothing disparaging about the other gals, but many just couldn't do it. I'd always take the forward door and I was good at it. I never said "good-bye" or "good luck." I would shake their hand, look them in the eye, smile and say, "See you later." Sometimes I'd say, "See you in twelve months." They really wanted somebody to look at them. At the top of the ramp was the world, at the bottom of the ramp was the war. I saw eyes full of fear, some with real terror. And maybe this sounds crazy, but I saw death in some of those eyes. At that moment, at the top of the ramp, I was their wife, their sister, their girlfriend, and for those troops who had no one else -- and there were many -- I was their mother. That was the most important thing I´ve ever done. I can't imagine doing anything more important than to nudge a troop into war. If he wasn't lucky, I was nudging him to his death with the best "It will be okay" smile I could conjure up. I don't think there was one of us who did not want to keep them on the plane. That's why some of the girls were back in the bathroom crying. They couldn't stand to watch them leave. We were very aware we were sending them to war and that some would never come back. Therein lies the guilt. [Helen Tennant Hegelheimer, World Airways flight attendant accompanying American troops to Vietnam, 1966-67.]”

“Family and friends become oppressors the moment they teach you that loyalty is more important than what is done to people outside your social circle. What they are really saying is this: Save yourself because God is more interested in an intact family or social circle that looks righteous, rather than you being a person of integrity that has compassion for others. It is this absurdity that teaches the wrong version of God and creates the next generation of "me" centered individuals.”

“I think that God puts people in our lives as gifts to us. The children in your class this year, they are some of God’s gifts to you. So please treat each one like a gift from God. Every single one. Baby, if you see a child being left out, or hurt, or teased, part of your heart will hurt a little. Your daddy and I want you to trust that heartache. Your whole life, we want you to notice and trust your heartache. That heartache is called compassion, and it is God’s signal to you to do something. It is God saying, Chase! Wake up! One of my babies is hurting! Do something to help! Whenever you feel compassion, be thrilled! It means God is speaking to you, and that is magic. It means he trusts you and needs you.”

“My dear Gorgas, Instead of being simply satisfied to make friends and draw your pay, it is worth doing your duty, to the best of your ability, for duty’s sake; and in doing this, while the indolent sleep, you may accomplish something that will be of real value to humanity. Your good friend, Reed Dr. Walter Reed encouraging Dr. William Gorgas who went on to make history eradicating Yellow Fever in Havana, 1902 and Panama, 1906, liberating the entire North American continent from centuries of Yellow Fever epidemics.”

“Jordan B. Peterson says self-esteem doesn’t exist… and that SE training mostly results in narcissism. Jack Canfield says he wrote his first book about it. And guess what? They’ve BOTH been to Harvard! What are we to do in this confusing world? I started going to AA meetings and people there tell you to find a loving God… and then to get a job at the Kroger… Something’s wrong with this picture. If self-esteem exists, and I pray to God that it does, I cannot possibly find a job that will pay me enough money without undermining the dignity of my work, after all this Spirituality, and Sobriety, and Self Esteem & Therapy I've accumulated.... don't make me laugh. And I’m a bright guy, too. Officially.”

“Maybe that would be a good thing to do. He wasn't entirely sure, and that bothered him more than anything. How was he meant to judge right from wrong when he had never really striven to do right before? The only good thing he had known was his time with Drin, and Drin had died because of it. I'd do it again Xeras. Even knowing. I would do it all again. 'Oh, Drin, I was never worth it.' Oh, Xeras, that was never for you to say.”

“The truly wise are meek. Yet being small and meek do not make one weak. Arming oneself with true knowledge generates strong confidence and a bold spirit that makes you a lion of God. The Creator does not want you to suffer, yet we are being conditioned by society to accept suffering, weak and passive dispositions under the belief that such conditions are favorable by God. Weakness is not a virtue praised by God. How could he desire for you to be weak if he tells us to stand by our conscience? Doing so requires strength. However, there is a difference between arrogance when inflating your ego, and confidence when one truly gets closer to God. One feels large, while the other feels small. Why? Because a man of wisdom understands that he is just a small pea in a sea of infinite atoms, and that in the end — we are all connected. And did you not know that the smaller a creature is, the bolder its spirit?”

“Call Stella 'Trash Can Girl' again and I'll beat the h--- out of you. In fact, call her or anyone else anything ever again and I'll do the same. I'm done saying nothing. I'm done letting you treat people like crap. Do you hear me?”

“Thaddeus absorbed her, imprinting his mind with her curly brown hair, her delicate chin, her gorgeous big eyes. “You need time to grow up, to find out who you are going to be. You need to do that without me lurking around like some… lecherous old man.” Her lower lip trembled, but before she could protest, he cut her off. “I swim in a deep ocean of regret and self-recrimination, Esmeralda. I don’t need to add despoiling little girls to my conscience.” “We have never done anything to be ashamed of. You’ve never done anything to be ashamed of.” “And I plan to keep it that way,” he said in a strained voice. —Thaddeus ben Todd and Esmeralda ben Claude”

“One day this will end. In liberation, in peace, or in eradication at a scale so overwhelming it resets history. It’ll end when sanctions pile up high enough, or the political cost of occupation and apartheid proves debilitating. When finally there is no other means of preserving self-interest but to act, the powerful will act. The same people who did the killing and financed the killing and justified the killing and turned away from the killing will congratulate themselves on doing the right thing. It is very important to do the right thing, eventually.”

“Most of the time - 99 percent of the time - you just don't know how and why the threads are looped together, and that's okay. Do a good thing and something bad happens. Do a bad thing and something good happens. Do nothing and everything explodes. And very, very rarely - by some miracle of chance and coincidence, butterflies beating their wings just so and all the threads hanging together for a minute - you get the chance to do the right thing.”

“My spiritual life is... sometimes I have access to it and sometimes I don't. When I do have access to it, it's usually a sense of my understanding what the best course of action or the best thing for me to do. By best, I mean when I have a real sense of doing the right thing and doing good for people and the connected universe of everybody.”

“Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”