What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.

The safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.

I worked in ad sales. I would call up local businesses and try to get them to buy ads in the paper. The whole time, I felt like I was just scamming people.

Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.

Suspicion is far more to be wrong than right; more often unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness.

Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.

The difference is too nice – Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.

Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.

A leader who doesn’t hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.

There is a real danger that computers will develop intelligence and take over. We urgently need to develop direct connections to the brain so that computers can add to human intelligence rather than be in opposition.

There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all its virtues are of no avail.

In honorable dealing you should consider what you intended, not what you said or thought.

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

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

Effective action is always unjust.

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.

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.

We have got to change our ethics and our financial system and our whole way of understanding the world. It has to be a world in which people live rather than die; a sustainable world. It could be great.

I always invest my own money in the companies that I create. I don’t believe in the whole thing of just using other people’s money. I don’t think that’s right. I’m not going to ask other people to invest in something if I’m not prepared to do so myself.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

Justice is truth in action.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

Henry Kissinger should have the door shut in his face by every decent person and should be shamed, ostracized and excluded.

We all have done something unethical.

There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.

Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue.

Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.

There’s strong data that, within companies, the No. 1 reason for ethical violations is the pressure to meet expectations, sometimes unrealistic expectations.

Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness; he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is good… Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place.

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.

It’s okay to eat fish because they don’t have any feelings.

I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

Without a moral framework, there is nothing left but immediate self-indulgence by some and the path of least resistance by others. Neither can sustain a free society.

I don’t have to see a murder in order to condemn murder.

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

There is no austerity equal to a balanced mind, and there is no happiness equal to contentment; there is no disease like covetousness, and no virtue like mercy.

One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.

There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.

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

One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.

Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge.

There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.

When the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal.