Where the environment is stupid or prejudiced or cruel, it is a sign of merit to be out of harmony with it.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Conquest of Happiness, Part 1, ch. 9 “Fear of Public Opinion” (1930)
(Source)
Quotations about:
nastiness
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
Miss Manners is amazed at the number of otherwise gentle souls who turn nasty when they are driving. And they all suffer from the wonderful, ostrich-like delusion that they cannot be identified because they are safely inside their cars. It seems silly to her to have to say what good driving manners are. They are the same as the simplest, most obvious of non-driving manners, except that each person is surrounded by thousands of dollars of treacherous metal.
Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
“Miss Manners,” syndicated column (1981-03-29)
(Source)
[Capitalism is] the astonishing belief that the nastiest motives of the nastiest men somehow or other work for the best results in the best of all possible worlds.
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) English economist
(Attributed)
Attributed by Sir George Schuster, Christianity and Human Relations in Industry (1951). Frequently quoted, but no direct citation found.
A common variant, also not found in Keynes' work (and also attributed, without citation, to John Kenneth Galbraith):Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
E. A. G. Robinson was a close colleague of Galbraith, and in his book Monopoly (1941), he wrote:The great merit of the capitalist system, it has been said, is that it succeeds in using the nastiest motives of nasty people for the ultimate benefit of society.
Another variant:Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all.
More discussion and research into this quote:
- Quote Origin: Capitalism: The Nastiest of Men for the Nastiest of Motives Will Somehow Work for the Benefit of All – Quote Investigator®
- "Capitalism is the belief that the wickedest of men…
- John Maynard Keynes: Capitalism and the "Nastiest/Wickedest of Men" | Steve Cotler | One man's squint at the metaphorical signposts, songbirds, soapboxes, street musicians, and hot dog stands of life. Criticism, lyricism, polemics, performance, and making change...all with mustard.
