Morality Quotes

Our American heritage is threatened as much by our own indifference as it is by the most unscrupulous office or by the most powerful foreign threat.

No man can always be right. So the struggle is to do one's best, to keep the brain and conscience clear, never be swayed by unworthy motives or inconsequential reasons, but to strive to unearth the basic factors involved, then do one's duty.

We are particularly thankful to you for your part in the movement to have the words under God added to our Pledge of Allegiance. These words will remind Americans that despite our great physical strength we must remain humble. They will help us keep constantly in our minds and hearts the spiritual and moral principles which alone give dignity to man.

The world thinks of us as a country which is strong, but which will never start a war. The world also thinks of us as a land which has never enslaved anyone and which is animated by humane ideals. This friendship, based on common ideals, is one of our greatest sources of strength.

He who does not oppose evil, commands it to be done.

Good literature proceeds from men of natural probity, and since one ought rather to praise the inception than the result, you should give greater praise to a man of probity unskilled in letters than to one skilled in letters but devoid of probity.

Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or bad acts. All depends on the principles which direct them.

Friends, I promise you this conquest; but there is one condition you must swear to fulfill-to respect the people whom you liberate, to repress the horrible pillaging committed by scoundrels incited by our enemies. Otherwise you would not be the liberators of the people; you would be their scourge...Plunderers will be shot without mercy; already, several have been.

Among so many conflicting ideas and so many different perspectives, the honest man is confused and distressed and the skeptic becomes wicked ... Since one must take sides, one might as well choose the side that is victorious, the side which devastates, loots, and burns. Considering the alternative, it is better to eat than to be eaten.

A cowardly act! What do I care about that? You may be sure that I should never fear to commit one if it were to my advantage.

Well, then, had I been at Martinique, I should also have been on the side of the English, because above all things it is necessary to save one's life. I am for the whites, because I am white; I have no other reason, yet that is reason good enough. How was it possible to grant liberty to the Africans, to men without any kind of civilization, who did not even know what a colony meant, or that there was such a place as France?

Society is impossible without inequality, inequality intolerable without a code of morality, and a code of morality unacceptable without religion.

All systems of morality are fine. The gospel alone has exhibited a complete assemblage of the principles of morality, divested of all absurdity. It is not composed, like your creed, of a few common-place sentences put into bad verse. Do you wish to see that which is really sublime? Repeat the Lord's Prayer.

Conscription is the vitality of a nation, the purification of its morality, and the real foundations of all its habits.

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.

We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.

We may make mistakes-but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principle.

Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.

The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.