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Some Of The Greatest Things Ever Said That Will Change Your Life
The Advocate
By Herb Denenberg, The Bulletin
I just read again the book The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said compiled by Robert Byrne, and it inspired me to come up with the best things and most important things ever said that didn’t make the cut of that book.
You’d have to start with the Golden Rule, sometimes referred to as the ethics of reciprocity. It is stated in various forms in 21 religions and is also found in many ethical and philosophic systems. It is sometimes expressed as “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” A briefer formulation is “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” The Baha’i faith even steps the Golden Rule up one notch: “Blessed is he who preferred his brother before himself.”
The importance of the Golden Rule is captured by the famous story of Hillel, the famous Jewish scholar and the Golden Rule. A gentile said to Hillel, “Convert me on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.”
Hillel converted that chap by telling him, “That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah and the rest is commentary.” This story gives no hint as to whether the convert ever finished reading the Torah. (The convert would certainly have to learn more for his Bar Mitzvah.)
A Web site maintained by the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance has this to say about getting all religions to properly interpret the Golden Rule: “In our opinion, the greatest failure of organized religion is its historical inability to convince their followers that the Ethic of Reciprocity [the Golden Rule] applies to all humans, not merely to fellow believers. It is our belief that religions should stress that their membership use the Ethic of Reciprocity when dealing with persons of other religions, the other gender, other races, other sexual orientations, etc. Only when this is accomplished will religiously-related oppression, mass murder and genocide cease.”
Another saying at the top of my list is “Save a life, save the whole world; take a life, destroy the whole world.” One scholar explains that saying as follows:
“The Talmud asks why the human race was created as a single human being, as opposed to creating many people at once (like the animals that were created en masse).
“This teaches us that just as Adam was created in the beginning, and he was the entire human population of the world, likewise we need to look at each individual as if he/she were the entire population of the world. Therefore, when you save one life it is as if you saved the entire world.”
This led to the Talmudic formulation stated in Sanhedrin 37a:
“For this reason man was created alone, to teach thee that whatsoever destroys a single soul … scripture imputes [guilt] to him as though he had destroyed a complete world, and whosoever preserves a single soul … scripture ascribes [merit] to him as though he had preserved a complete world.”
This concept carries special power now as it contrasts the Judeo-Christian tradition of the highest respect for life to the Islamofascist and the Palestinians that now celebrate death, mass murder and genocide as the work of great heroes and role models.
The contrast sends a message as to exactly what is at stake in the worldwide struggle between the free and civilized world and the forces of terror and jihadism. It also suggests a gap not likely to be bridged by sweet talk, negotiations and peace processes.
Another saying at the top of my list is the famed statement of Martin Niemoller, the German theologian and Protestant (Lutheran) pastor. He made a statement about what happened in Nazi Germany as one group of people after another were targeted for dehumanization and death:
“First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Social Democrats, and I didn’t speak up, because I was not a Social Democrat.
“Then they came f or the Trade Unionists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Trade Unionists. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew.
“Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me.”
The Golden Rule can be described as the ethics of reciprocity. Niemoller’s statement can be described as the practical rationale of reciprocity, a corollary to the Golden Rule. In other words, Niemoller says the Golden Rule sounds like it is a formulation to protect your neighbor but in the final analysis it protects you and everyone else, too.
Niemoller’s life is interesting because it involves a transformation from a barbaric U-boat commander and backer of Hitler to someone who became a pastor, a renowned theologian and a leading foe of Hitler. He was finally sent to a concentration camp but survived.
Here is one account of his background as a U-boat commander, which suggests the kind of radical religious transformation he made during his life, perhaps an ad for religion:
“Niemöller was a commander of a German U-boat in World War I. A seminal incident in his moral outlook, as he related in many public speeches later in his life, occurred when he commanded his submarine crew not to rescue the sailors of a boat he torpedoed, but let them drown instead.
“Niemöller began studying theology in Münster in the 1920s. At this time, and at least until the mid-1930s, Niemöller was a typical Christian anti-Semite who openly professed his belief that the Jews had been punished through the ages because they had ‘brought the Christ of God to the cross.’”
Then, of course, there are the Ten Commandments, one of the great religious and legal documents of history. One wise man said if we followed the Ten Commandments we would not need all the laws and legal cases that fill countless libraries. However, they are not always fully understood.
For example, many do not know why there have been so many legal cases challenging those who would put the Ten Commandments in court houses across the country. Many think it is because of constitutional objections relating to separation of church and state. Few realize if you put up the commandments, “Thou shalt not lie,” “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not commit adultery” in buildings where so many lawyers work, you would be guilty of creating a hostile work environment.
There are three versions of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament. They contain 19 commandments and prohibitions, but they are typically boiled down to the 10. The text of the most commonly used version from the King James Version of the Bible reads:
“2 I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
“3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
“4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likenesses of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
“5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
“6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
“7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
“8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
“9 Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work:
“10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
“11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
“12 Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
“13 Thou shalt not kill.
“14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.
“15 Thou shalt not steal.
“16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
“17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.”
Congratulations, you just read the Ten Commandments. In about 336 words, that document has retained its moral force and authority down through about 35 centuries according to common belief. Of course, later day, wags have often modified and modernized those commandments. For example, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” has become “Thou shalt not admit adultery,” and “Thou shalt not bear false witness” has become “Thou shalt not bear false witness under oath.”
Those are some of the greatest things ever said, but the books are filled with invaluable flashes of wit and wisdom that incredibly compress ages of wisdom into well-chosen words. For example, the famous heart surgeon Paul Dudley White said, “A vigorous 5-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.”
There are many other classic medical statements such as that of Maimonides who said almost all of us will die of life style, something only many centuries later we are coming to appreciate ... The real causes of most deaths are bad diet, lack of exercise, uncontrolled stress and lack of sleep, not the diseases they cause. I also find great wisdom in the comment that the function of the doctor is to entertain the patient, while nature heals him. And with the incredible overprescribing of medicine, we can still appreciate the piece of truth in Oliver Wendell Holmes famous statement that if all the drugs were dumped in the ocean, everyone would be better off — but the fish.
The great quotations are often packed with a lifetime of wisdom in a short line. Abraham Lincoln said we are about as happy as we want to be. That’s true in the sense that our reaction to events is sometimes more important than the events themselves. Of course, Aristotle was ahead of Lincoln, as he was ahead of about everyone else, when he said, “Happiness depends on ourselves.” And this idea that we can control our destiny by our approach was the kernel in the famous statement of Helen Keller: “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
And so many of these nuggets of wisdom help us understand what is going on now in our financial meltdown. Herbert Hoover, who knew something about the subject said, “Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.” Will Durst, a comedian, said the voters are looking for a fraud they can believe in. And George Bernard Shaw was far ahead in understanding the politics of tax, spend and redistribution. He said, “A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”
And after a majority of Congress voted for a trillion-dollar stimulus bill without even reading it, I came around to realizing that Mark Twain told the truth when he said, “Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” And Will Rogers was on target when he said, “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.” I also like this one from Robert Orben, suddenly very timely: “Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.”
If you’re thinking about investing, listen to John D. Rockefeller: “The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets.” But perhaps it takes an observation of one of the great thinkers of all time to capture what is going on now Albert Einstein said, “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
I’ve also found that some of these famous sayings often confirm what you suspected but were unwilling to accept. John Gardner said, “Eight-seven percent of all people in all professions are incompetent.”
I remember when I put out a shopper’s guide to insurance agents, and said 50 percent of them were incompetent. I immediately got a call from the president of a large agents’ association. I assumed he was going to complain the figure was too high. I was wrong. He said my estimate was to low. I think George Bernard Shaw confirmed my thinking on professions when he said, in effect, that every profession is a conspiracy against the public interest. That rang home because of my experience with trial lawyers fighting no-fault auto insurance reform.
Some of the wits come up with rather entertaining lines about God and religion. Jules Feiffer said, “Christ died for our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by not committing them.” Samuel Butler said, “God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.” Lenny Bruce said, “Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.” And I love a good short critique of the universe: “My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.” And Paul Valery echoed a similar sentiment when he said, “God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.” How about, “The chicken came before the egg, because it’s hard to imagine God sitting on an egg.”
But some of the statements have a more serious ring. A Dutch proverb says, “God does not pay weekly, but he pays at the end.” A Turkish proverb echoes a similar sentiment: “God postpones, he does not overlook.”
I’ll end on a more positive note. I favor the sayings that push people to do some good here and now and in a hurry. It is better to light on candle than curse the darkness. Another saying of great wisdom advises those that want to change the world for the better act as if it all depends on them. Emily Dickinson, one of America’s great poets made that point perfectly and poignantly:
“If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.”
Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.
You’d have to start with the Golden Rule, sometimes referred to as the ethics of reciprocity. It is stated in various forms in 21 religions and is also found in many ethical and philosophic systems. It is sometimes expressed as “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” A briefer formulation is “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” The Baha’i faith even steps the Golden Rule up one notch: “Blessed is he who preferred his brother before himself.”
The importance of the Golden Rule is captured by the famous story of Hillel, the famous Jewish scholar and the Golden Rule. A gentile said to Hillel, “Convert me on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.”
Hillel converted that chap by telling him, “That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah and the rest is commentary.” This story gives no hint as to whether the convert ever finished reading the Torah. (The convert would certainly have to learn more for his Bar Mitzvah.)
A Web site maintained by the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance has this to say about getting all religions to properly interpret the Golden Rule: “In our opinion, the greatest failure of organized religion is its historical inability to convince their followers that the Ethic of Reciprocity [the Golden Rule] applies to all humans, not merely to fellow believers. It is our belief that religions should stress that their membership use the Ethic of Reciprocity when dealing with persons of other religions, the other gender, other races, other sexual orientations, etc. Only when this is accomplished will religiously-related oppression, mass murder and genocide cease.”
Another saying at the top of my list is “Save a life, save the whole world; take a life, destroy the whole world.” One scholar explains that saying as follows:
“The Talmud asks why the human race was created as a single human being, as opposed to creating many people at once (like the animals that were created en masse).
“This teaches us that just as Adam was created in the beginning, and he was the entire human population of the world, likewise we need to look at each individual as if he/she were the entire population of the world. Therefore, when you save one life it is as if you saved the entire world.”
This led to the Talmudic formulation stated in Sanhedrin 37a:
“For this reason man was created alone, to teach thee that whatsoever destroys a single soul … scripture imputes [guilt] to him as though he had destroyed a complete world, and whosoever preserves a single soul … scripture ascribes [merit] to him as though he had preserved a complete world.”
This concept carries special power now as it contrasts the Judeo-Christian tradition of the highest respect for life to the Islamofascist and the Palestinians that now celebrate death, mass murder and genocide as the work of great heroes and role models.
The contrast sends a message as to exactly what is at stake in the worldwide struggle between the free and civilized world and the forces of terror and jihadism. It also suggests a gap not likely to be bridged by sweet talk, negotiations and peace processes.
Another saying at the top of my list is the famed statement of Martin Niemoller, the German theologian and Protestant (Lutheran) pastor. He made a statement about what happened in Nazi Germany as one group of people after another were targeted for dehumanization and death:
“First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Social Democrats, and I didn’t speak up, because I was not a Social Democrat.
“Then they came f or the Trade Unionists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Trade Unionists. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew.
“Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me.”
The Golden Rule can be described as the ethics of reciprocity. Niemoller’s statement can be described as the practical rationale of reciprocity, a corollary to the Golden Rule. In other words, Niemoller says the Golden Rule sounds like it is a formulation to protect your neighbor but in the final analysis it protects you and everyone else, too.
Niemoller’s life is interesting because it involves a transformation from a barbaric U-boat commander and backer of Hitler to someone who became a pastor, a renowned theologian and a leading foe of Hitler. He was finally sent to a concentration camp but survived.
Here is one account of his background as a U-boat commander, which suggests the kind of radical religious transformation he made during his life, perhaps an ad for religion:
“Niemöller was a commander of a German U-boat in World War I. A seminal incident in his moral outlook, as he related in many public speeches later in his life, occurred when he commanded his submarine crew not to rescue the sailors of a boat he torpedoed, but let them drown instead.
“Niemöller began studying theology in Münster in the 1920s. At this time, and at least until the mid-1930s, Niemöller was a typical Christian anti-Semite who openly professed his belief that the Jews had been punished through the ages because they had ‘brought the Christ of God to the cross.’”
Then, of course, there are the Ten Commandments, one of the great religious and legal documents of history. One wise man said if we followed the Ten Commandments we would not need all the laws and legal cases that fill countless libraries. However, they are not always fully understood.
For example, many do not know why there have been so many legal cases challenging those who would put the Ten Commandments in court houses across the country. Many think it is because of constitutional objections relating to separation of church and state. Few realize if you put up the commandments, “Thou shalt not lie,” “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not commit adultery” in buildings where so many lawyers work, you would be guilty of creating a hostile work environment.
There are three versions of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament. They contain 19 commandments and prohibitions, but they are typically boiled down to the 10. The text of the most commonly used version from the King James Version of the Bible reads:
“2 I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
“3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
“4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likenesses of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
“5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
“6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
“7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
“8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
“9 Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work:
“10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
“11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
“12 Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
“13 Thou shalt not kill.
“14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.
“15 Thou shalt not steal.
“16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
“17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.”
Congratulations, you just read the Ten Commandments. In about 336 words, that document has retained its moral force and authority down through about 35 centuries according to common belief. Of course, later day, wags have often modified and modernized those commandments. For example, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” has become “Thou shalt not admit adultery,” and “Thou shalt not bear false witness” has become “Thou shalt not bear false witness under oath.”
Those are some of the greatest things ever said, but the books are filled with invaluable flashes of wit and wisdom that incredibly compress ages of wisdom into well-chosen words. For example, the famous heart surgeon Paul Dudley White said, “A vigorous 5-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.”
There are many other classic medical statements such as that of Maimonides who said almost all of us will die of life style, something only many centuries later we are coming to appreciate ... The real causes of most deaths are bad diet, lack of exercise, uncontrolled stress and lack of sleep, not the diseases they cause. I also find great wisdom in the comment that the function of the doctor is to entertain the patient, while nature heals him. And with the incredible overprescribing of medicine, we can still appreciate the piece of truth in Oliver Wendell Holmes famous statement that if all the drugs were dumped in the ocean, everyone would be better off — but the fish.
The great quotations are often packed with a lifetime of wisdom in a short line. Abraham Lincoln said we are about as happy as we want to be. That’s true in the sense that our reaction to events is sometimes more important than the events themselves. Of course, Aristotle was ahead of Lincoln, as he was ahead of about everyone else, when he said, “Happiness depends on ourselves.” And this idea that we can control our destiny by our approach was the kernel in the famous statement of Helen Keller: “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
And so many of these nuggets of wisdom help us understand what is going on now in our financial meltdown. Herbert Hoover, who knew something about the subject said, “Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.” Will Durst, a comedian, said the voters are looking for a fraud they can believe in. And George Bernard Shaw was far ahead in understanding the politics of tax, spend and redistribution. He said, “A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”
And after a majority of Congress voted for a trillion-dollar stimulus bill without even reading it, I came around to realizing that Mark Twain told the truth when he said, “Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” And Will Rogers was on target when he said, “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.” I also like this one from Robert Orben, suddenly very timely: “Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.”
If you’re thinking about investing, listen to John D. Rockefeller: “The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets.” But perhaps it takes an observation of one of the great thinkers of all time to capture what is going on now Albert Einstein said, “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
I’ve also found that some of these famous sayings often confirm what you suspected but were unwilling to accept. John Gardner said, “Eight-seven percent of all people in all professions are incompetent.”
I remember when I put out a shopper’s guide to insurance agents, and said 50 percent of them were incompetent. I immediately got a call from the president of a large agents’ association. I assumed he was going to complain the figure was too high. I was wrong. He said my estimate was to low. I think George Bernard Shaw confirmed my thinking on professions when he said, in effect, that every profession is a conspiracy against the public interest. That rang home because of my experience with trial lawyers fighting no-fault auto insurance reform.
Some of the wits come up with rather entertaining lines about God and religion. Jules Feiffer said, “Christ died for our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by not committing them.” Samuel Butler said, “God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.” Lenny Bruce said, “Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.” And I love a good short critique of the universe: “My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.” And Paul Valery echoed a similar sentiment when he said, “God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.” How about, “The chicken came before the egg, because it’s hard to imagine God sitting on an egg.”
But some of the statements have a more serious ring. A Dutch proverb says, “God does not pay weekly, but he pays at the end.” A Turkish proverb echoes a similar sentiment: “God postpones, he does not overlook.”
I’ll end on a more positive note. I favor the sayings that push people to do some good here and now and in a hurry. It is better to light on candle than curse the darkness. Another saying of great wisdom advises those that want to change the world for the better act as if it all depends on them. Emily Dickinson, one of America’s great poets made that point perfectly and poignantly:
“If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.”
Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.
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