25 Quotes That Could Make All Americans Better People

Podcaster Tim Ferriss has a question he likes to ask guests at the end of his podcast that goes, “If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it—metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or billions—what would it say and why?” What Ferriss is trying to tease out there is the one message that could make billions of lives better, but that’s quite difficult. Even John 3:16 needs the rest of the Bible supporting it to truly resonate with people:

So, after thinking about that, it makes you wonder, “If Americans bought into them, what 25 quotes would do the most to help them become better citizens, better neighbors, better friends, and happier people? Bonus points if they cut against harmful societal ideals that we have in our culture.”

These seemed like 25 quotes that fit the bill:

1) “Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of the feeling of inferiority.” — Alfred Adler

2) “Men are anxious to improve their circumstances but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.” — James Allen

3) “Evil is not likely to result where people firmly believe that ends do not justify the means.” — Roy Baumeister

4) “The proud wish God would agree with them. They are not interested in changing their opinions to agree with God’s.” — Ezra Taft Benson

5) “I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t than live my life as if there isn’t and die to find out there is.” — Albert Camus

6) “Feeling sorry for yourself, and your present condition is not only a waste of energy but the worst habit you could possibly have.” — Dale Carnegie

7) “The most satisfying thing in life is to have been able to give a large part of one’s self to others.” — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

8) “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” — Chinese Proverb

9) “To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness.” — Confucius

10) “Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.” — Wayne Dyer

11) “It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.” — Benjamin Franklin

12) “Don’t try to be different. Just be good. To be good is different enough.” — Arthur Freed

13) “I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.” — Edward Gibbon

14) “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” — William James

15) “One kind word can warm three winter months.” — Japanese proverb

16) “Life’s most urgent question is: what are you doing for others?” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

17) “Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.” — C. S. Lewis

18) “If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?” — W. Somerset Maugham

19) “An old man wandering around the Olympic Games looking for a seat was jeered at by the crowd until he reached the seats of the Spartans, whereupon every Spartan younger than him, and some that were older, stood up and offered him their seat. The crowd applauded and the old man turned to them with a sigh, saying ‘All Greeks know what is right, but only the Spartans do it.'” – Frank Miller

20) “What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” — Pericles

21) “What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.” — Albert Pike

22) “The superior man blames himself. The inferior man blames others.” — Don Shula

23) “Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” — Mark Twain

24) “There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the color, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better.” — Oscar Wilde

25) “You can have everything in life you want if you will just help other people get what they want.” – Zig Ziglar

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