Background: Kevin, a loser contestant in season 1 of Bravo's Project Runway, said this. He got booted off the show partly because he tried to be nice to another contestant (who happened to the bitch of the century), and then got stabbed at, front and center, by the niceness recipient.

Foreground: I got honked at this morning. While I was busy giving my thank-you/am-sorry wave I thought about this sentence. Then I thought about it again, in a crunching peanuts between my teeth way, when the jerk honked at me for the second time.

It was my fault but I still don't see the point of the second honk. Do you want me to crush my car into yours by giving me a scare? You can try but you ain't worth it!

A few things I wanted to say on this topic:

1. it's wrong/unrealistic/ludicrous to expect payment from being nice. Being nice is its own reward. this is not sarcastic or hypocritical. I genuinely believe so.

2. not everyone is capable of being mean impromptu. it takes intense venom to be mean 24/7. most people are nice although they are fully capable of doing mean things justifiably or not

3. it's pointless/moronic to be nice to a mean person (unless you believe that rigorous nurturing will make a rock bloom - the way Monkey King was born in Journey into West), although this is an error most of nice people make

4. although i'm very very pissed, i still won't retaliate by starting to honk at someone for her/his unintentional misdemeanors on the road. can't, won't, don't have the time.

When I'm destined to be on a high road, I have no reason to stray. Heng.

P.s. a bit more on this thread: mean people may be very sucessful in life while nice persons suffer. This has nothing to do with the fairness of life since nice or mean has little correlation with a person's intellectual or emotional capacity/capability. JMHO.