Top 40 Well-Meaning Quotes

Your humble critic confesses that he has been wrestling with ‘weight issues’ since leaving college lo these, uh, several years ago, so it’s hard to be receptive to the moralistic scolding and patronizing encouragement offered endlessly by the allegedly well-meaning.

Well-meaning Europeans sometimes argue that unlike the U.S., their countries are traditionally ‘homogeneous’ and have little experience with immigration.

White folks, no matter how well-meaning or open-minded, have no true idea what it’s like to be black in America. That’s not a slam against white people or an accusation of latent bigotry. But the fact is that we all live in an Anglo-dominated society.

That reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black is a matter of concern. It raises questions about our ways of education and about the values that guide our conduct.

School boards are, for the most part,made up of political wannabes who see a board seat as a stepping stone for political office, or well-meaning parents who represent an ethnic group or geography, or have some other narrow interests. Few people on them understand what governance is about.

Many good people serve in Congress. They are patriotic, hard-working, and devoted to the public good as they see it, but the institutional and cultural impediments to change frustrate the intentions of these well-meaning people as rarely before.

The playing field is anything but level when you walk into the grocery store. So much government subsidy goes into processed foods. Even when you’re well-meaning as a parent or a shopper for yourself, you can’t help but be pulled toward the highly processed food.

I thought divorce was for people that threw plates at each other, and I’d have to be an alcoholic or having affairs. But the truth is, sometimes a very sweet, well-meaning person just doesn’t do it for you, and you need to get out of there.

The AAP was not the first group of well-meaning outsiders in politics.

Unfortunately, the boards of art institutions tend to be populated with well-meaning supporters of the arts who often lack any business background or appetite for imposing appropriate discipline.

One immutable trait of the gullible is that they are credulous to a fault. Though no-doubt well-meaning, the naive are Trump’s base.

These are my friends, my family. It would be hell on earth to spend the rest of my life leading them into situations where some of them are going to get killed… but it would be worse watching someone well-meaning but incompetent or untrained double those deaths.

When my father came over here penniless with $100 sewn into his underwear, thank God some well-meaning liberal didn’t come put his arm around him and say, ‘Let me take care of you.’

I’ve seen the government up close and personal, and for the most part, it’s inefficient and hidebound, and it stifles creativity in any industry it clutches within its well-meaning but slimy tentacles.

I had seen so many injustices done in the court by well-meaning people. I had lost fourteen clients to gang violence in only seven years. I was angry at a system I thought had failed my clients, and I was part of it.

Philanthropy is not about giving money but about solving problems. While well-meaning, the idea of writing a check and calling it ‘philanthropy’ is extremely short-sighted and unfortunately, extremely pervasive.

The logical quandaries thrown up by well-meaning systems are clearly something that I find darkly amusing.

I like to razz the Trekkies a little bit. Who doesn’t? It’s trainspotting, isn’t it? But they are very well-meaning, actually. I’ve done a couple of Star Trek conventions, and they’ve only been really welcoming.

Being president of too many well-meaning organizations put my father into an early grave. The lesson in this was not lost on me.

It seems to me virtually any ideology, no matter how intrinsically benign, can be used to oppress. And any group with power, no matter how well-meaning, ultimately corrupts and ends up exploiting its advantage to some extent.

Every leader has the responsibility to hone his or her integrity. Many times, there are integrity traps that have a tendency to catch well-meaning leaders off guard.

I think it’s amusing to watch a naive, well-meaning character kind of undo more cynical characters – kind of like watching Laurel and Hardy or Charlie Chaplin.

In Holland I have seen well-meaning, principled people blinded by multiculturalism, overwhelmed by the imperative to be sensitive and respectful of immigrant culture, while ignoring criminal abuse of women and girls.

Americans have learned to trust free markets. Republican or Democrat, we believe the unimpeded exchange of goods and services will yield better solutions than five-year plans set by even the most well-meaning public servants.

Boys are different from girls, but boys are also different from other boys, just as girls are different from other girls. Calling a book ‘for boys’ or ‘for girls’ is well-meaning, but to me, not terribly helpful.

In a common project, we can bring together well-meaning people from the Left and the Right.

Many well-meaning intelligent people have argued since the May 17, 1954, decision of the United States Supreme Court outlawing segregation in the public schools that communication between the races has broken down.

Libraries are public treasuries. They’re ways in which well-meaning societies leave the wealth of the past arranged A to Z so that anyone walking past can find it.

Safety’ hysteria destroyed MySpace in the press. It got MySpace banned from schools, Apple stores, and by well-meaning parents who had been terrorized by what they were reading.

There seems to be this sense among even well-meaning Americans that Africa is this black hole of murder and mutilation that can never be fixed, no matter what aid is brought in.

Oh, that all the things my father had told me about how disgusting Washington is are true. And again it’s the system – there are lots of nice, well-meaning people there. But it’s a sleazy place. And politics is all about doing favors.

‘Mr. Robot,’ in particular, signals the rise of a fresh post-Occupy portrayal of the wealth gap. No longer is the story of income inequity delivered via a well-meaning, crushingly earnest indie film by John Sayles or in a single laugh line on ‘Roseanne.’

Placing too much emphasis on a yes/no diagnosis, meaning you either have a disease or you don’t, can lead even the most well-meaning physicians to miss underlying causes and early warning signs of illness.

If I have any complaints about my youth… one is that many well-meaning adults lied to me. Not spiteful lies with malicious intent but lies designed to prevent emotional and psychological pain – lies told by the people who cared about me most: my parents, teachers, relatives.

Well-meaning people might stick their fingers in their ears and vote for Biden out of nostalgia for a Democratic Party that no longer exists or out of exhaustion at the relentless anti-Trump barrage.

Smart, well-meaning people get it wrong when they start believing that the world owes them something and that the rules are different for them.

I want to go places where there are really well-meaning people doing work that is interesting and seems to really matter and where everybody looks like at least once a day they have a really good laugh.

Watching well-meaning authors follow in the footsteps of someone going in the wrong direction breaks my heart.

I’m a great aficionado of history. I was deeply affected by seeing the disintegration of any chance of democracy coping with fascism in the Weimar republic, where woolly-minded, well-meaning liberalism actually allowed the forces of darkness to use democracy, to exploit democracy, to overturn democracy.

A harrassed and dubious childhood under the hand of a well-meaning but barbarous mother’s help from County Armagh led me to think of the North of Ireland as prison and the South as a land of escape.