All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.

Many religious confessions share common values. They teach that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.

I want to reform the tax code so that it’s simple, fair, and asks the wealthiest households to pay higher taxes on incomes over $250,000 – the same rate we had when Bill Clinton was president; the same rate we had when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest surplus in history, and a lot of millionaires to boot.

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

Wealthy men can’t live in an island that is encircled by poverty. We all breathe the same air. We must give a chance to everyone, at least a basic chance.

Where there is righteousness in the heart, there is beauty in the character. When there is beauty in the character, there is harmony in the home. When there is harmony in the home, there is order in the nation. When there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world.

For me, my secularism is, India first. I say, the philosophy of my party is ‚Justice to all. Appeasement to none.‘ This is our secularism.

Forgiveness is not a feeling – it’s a decision we make because we want to do what’s right before God. It’s a quality decision that won’t be easy and it may take time to get through the process, depending on the severity of the offense.

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.

Secrecy is the element of all goodness; even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

Ken Lay, the disgraced former chairman of Enron, found a way to escape his legal problems: He died after being convicted of fraud and conspiracy charges.

There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.

To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness.

A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

If there is no God, everything is permitted.

Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.

A precedent embalms a principle.

Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.

There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity – the law of nature and of nations.

I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.

It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.

I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.

For a war to be just three conditions are necessary – public authority, just cause, right motive.

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.

It is better to do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

Those who commit injustice bear the greatest burden.

Our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity’s belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul, and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.

Ethics is the activity of man directed to secure the inner perfection of his own personality.

How accurately can the law fix the crime? There has to be a mechanism for very fast action. The law is like this: catch them and punish them.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.

Evil is whatever distracts.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

After all, every murderer when he kills runs the risk of the most dreadful of deaths, whereas those who kill him risk nothing except promotion.

God made and governs the world invisibly, and has commanded us to love and worship him and no other God; to honor our parents and masters, and love our neighbours as ourselves; and to be temperate, just, and peaceable, and to be merciful even to brute beasts.

Virtue is persecuted more by the wicked than it is loved by the good.

Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.

Abortion is clearly wrong.

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.

We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.

All the goodness I have within me is totally from the Lord alone. When I sin, it is from me and is done on my own, but when I act righteously, it is wholly and completely of God.

Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.

Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.

Some people will have to be afraid. Those who plunder the nation, deliver injustice, will have to feel scared of me. And I am not afraid of admitting this. Government cannot be so lenient that it forgives them.

Morality is contraband in war.

There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

Lord keep us all from sin. Teach us how to walk circumspectly; enable us to guard our minds against error of doctrine, our hearts against wrong feelings, and our lives against evil actions.

The object of the superior man is truth.