Busybodies Quotes

But when no risk is taken there is no freedom. It is thus that, in an industrial society, the plethora of laws made for our personal safety convert the land into a nursery, and policemen hired to protect us become selfserving busybodies.

Jane had that happy disposition which would like to imagine that every one really wishes the well-being of his neighbour and struggles, though sometimes rather disastrously, to help him towards it.

Usually, so far as improvement in the people's economic conditions is concerned, humanitarians simply play the role of the busybody.

There is an element of the busybody in our conception of virtue: unless a man makes himself a nuisance to a great many people, we do not think he can be an exceptionally good man.

Think about it: What the busybodies are saying is that third parties like themselves -- who are paying nothing to anybody -- should be determining how much somebody else should be paying those who work for them.

Literature remains an indispensable human activity, in which the reader and the writer are engaged of their own volition. Hence, literature has no duty to the masses or society, and ethical or moral pronouncements added by busybody critics are of no concern to the writer.

Nest of Soviet fellow travelers clacking busybodies in a Soviet jellyfish front, sitting here in Leesburg oozing out their funny little propaganda and making nuisances of themselves.

A writer's occupational hazard: I think of eavesdropping as minding my business.

I, who fall short in managing my own affairs, can see just how it would profit my neighbor if I managed his.

Zeus hates busybodies and those who do too much.

It's dangerous business, thinking you can make people over.

Making those we love happy sounds innocent as a dove, but it can be as destructive as a lion.

The weather is nature's disruptor of human plans and busybodies. Of all the things on earth, nature's disruption is what we know we can depend on, as it is essentially uncontrolled by men.

The one prediction that never comes true is, 'You'll thank me for telling you this.

Insistent advice may develop into interference, and interference, someone has said, is the hind hoof of the devil.

Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment.

Be not unwilling in what thou doest, neither selfish nor unadvised nor obstinate; let not over-refinement deck out thy thought; be not wordy nor a busybody.

"Family" this and "family" that. If I had a family I'd be furious that moral busybodies are taking the perfectly good word family and using it as a code for censorship the same way "states' rights" was used to disguise racism in the mid-sixties.

There is no robbery so terrible as the robbery committed by those who think they are doing right.

People who seek political power are, with exceptions too rare to matter, never to be trusted; at best, such people are vain and officious busybodies. People who actually achieve political power are to be trusted even less than those who seek it without success; winning elections requires a measure of deceitfulness and Machiavellian immorality that no decent person comes close to possessing.

God save us from the people who want to do what's best for us.

It's a mystery to me how anyone ever gets any nourishment in this place. They must eat their meals standing up by the window so as to be sure of not missing anything.

There is nothing more revolting than an old busybody.

It is personal vanity of the most flagrant type which intrudes itself, unasked, into other people's affairs. There are few of us who do not feel capable of ordering the daily lives of others, down to the most minute detail.

There was nothing more dangerous than people convinced of their own good intentions.

You know how some people are - they always feel they have to do things for other people's good, no matter what happens to the other people in the process!

Don't you meddle with me, and I won't meddle with you.

Do I look like someone who has something to do here on earth?' —That's what I'd like to answer the busybodies who inquire into my activities.

A busybody's work is never done.

People should always mind their own business. More trouble is caused in this world by interference than any other single thing.

The goat's business is none of the sheep's concern.

Busy souls have no time to be busybodies.

Busy people are never busybodies.

Critics, mathematicians, scientists and busybodies want to classify everything, marking the boundaries and limits... In art, there is room for all possibilities.

We don't want a busybody government - a boss - that butts into our lives every chance it gets to tell us how to work, how to play, where to live and on and on.

there is nothing so easy as to be wise for others; a species of prodigality, by-the-by - for such wisdom is wholly wasted.

People used to complain about 'the idle rich.' But the idle rich did not do the kind of harm being done by today's busybody rich, who feed their own egos by bankrolling political crusades on the left which hurt the very people that the left claims to care about -- working people, minorities, and children.

There are plenty of people, in Avonlea and out of it, who can attend closely to their neighbours' business by dint of neglecting their own; but Mrs. Rachel Lynde was one of those capable creatures who can manage their own concerns and those of other folks into the bargain.

The fatal attraction of government is that it allows busybodies to impose decisions on others without paying any price themselves. That enables them to act as if there were no price, even when there are ruinous prices - paid by others.

Every person - whether Greek or Barbarian - who is in training for wisdom, leading a blameless, irreproachable life, chooses neither to commit injustice nor return it unto others, but to avoid the company of busybodies, and hold in contempt the places where they spend their time - courts, councils, marketplaces, assemblies - in short, every kind of meeting or reunion of thoughtless people. ... People such as these, who find their joy in virtue, celebrate a festival their whole life long.

We are living in the era of the busybody. In ancient Greece, if a person wanted guidance, it involved a long, arduous expensive journey to consult the oracle at Delphi. Today, if you want guidance, all you have to do is unplug your ears.

Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment. In the last analysis, the welfare of the workers depends upon their own initiative. Whatever is done under the guise of philanthropy or social morality which in any way lessens initiative is the greatest crime that can be committed against the toilers. Let social busybodies and professional "public morals experts" in their fads reflect upon the perils they rashly invite under this pretense of social welfare.

The busybodies have begun to infect American society with a nasty intolerance - a zeal to police the private lives of others and hammer them into standard forms - A Nation of Finger Pointers.

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Great mischief comes from attempts to steady other people's altars.

I'm a civic busybody and I've been blessed with an active career.

Fairness' is one of the great mantras of the left. Since everyone has his own definition of fairness, that word is a blank check for the expansion of government power. What fairness means in practice is that third parties -- busybodies -- can prevent mutual accommodations by others.