Nice vs Good

People often confuse being nice with being good. Often times nice is given priority over being good and it's largely misplaced.

I suppose in an ideal world there would be a huge overlap between being nice and good and there is some, but perhaps not enough.

Osama Bin Laden could've been nice to a few people, I mean if you went to his house it's very much possible he could've offered you coffee and cookies and would not let you go without having some, surely that might make him nice to you ( unless you had blood sugar issues ) but that doesn't mean he was a good person. But it follows that a person may be nice but not good and a person may be good but not necessarily nice.

This one is, I suppose a linguistic difference, niceness is usually measured anecdotally and on an individual level and being good at the aggregate level. No one would say the murder was a good person, but their neighbors might say he was a nice person.

Why does it matter? Why do we need to understand the difference between nice and good?

It's because niceness is very easily susceptible to society's perception, goodness might also, succumb to it but it is far more resilient and as a society, we have placed far more importance in being nice to others and identifying nice people as opposed to good people 

For instance, if you knew someone going through something in his life, you might be tempted to ask about him, inquire about him and it might be perceived as a nice thing to do, you might across as caring and thoughtful. But is it really a good thing to do, it's good to show them you are there if they need you, but to constantly inquire about it might make their life difficult maybe they are trying to get things out of their mind, maybe they need a distraction and you constantly asking them might sour them. But society dictates you keep on asking under the garb of niceness, so it might be a nice thing but I am not sure it's a good thing to do.

Given a chance I think it's important to select being good over being nice. It's also important to understand people who are nice against people who are good. People who are good, do things for an altruistic cause from which they may not gain anything, a person who is nice will try to appear good even at the cost of causing you harm.

Honest is a person who wants you to know the truth, good is a person who wants to shape your future with your current truth and nice is a person who has no relation to truth or your future but doesn't want to spoil your mood now and doesn't mind sacrificing his minute or coffee and cookies on you.