Those who commit injustice bear the greatest burden.

There is still much debate about whether torture has been effective in eliciting information – the assumption being, apparently, that if it is effective, then it may be justified.

Feels good to try, but playing a father, I’m getting a little older. I see now that I’m taking it more serious and I do want that lifestyle.

Morality is contraband in war.

Being prime minister is a lonely job… you cannot lead from the crowd.

We tell lies, yet it is easy to show that lying is immoral.

Modesty forbids what the law does not.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

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.

In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.

We are proud of the history of our country; we learned it in school and have grown up hearing of freedom, justice and human rights.

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.

People who truly understand what is meant by self-reliance know they must live their lives by ethics rather than rules.

One of the great attractions of patriotism – it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity.

No cause justifies the deaths of innocent people.

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

Make crime pay. Become a lawyer.

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.

The happiest people in the world are those who feel absolutely terrific about themselves, and this is the natural outgrowth of accepting total responsibility for every part of their life.

We might come closer to balancing the Budget if all of us lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule.

It is justice and respect that I want the world to dust off and put – without delay, and with tenderness – back on the head of the Palestinian child. It will be imperfect justice and respect because the injustice and disrespect have been so severe. But I believe we are right to try.

Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.

Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.

We’ve become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that’s been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I’ve ever seen in my life.

We want justice, but at the same time, we gotta love and come together and bring unity, and I feel it’s gonna happen.

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.

If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end.

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

We are not punished for our sins, but by them.

The first rule of business is: Do other men for they would do you.

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

It started to weigh on me that I was responsible for the moves that had made me successful, but I wasn’t reaping the lion’s share of the profits, and that was problematic for me.

With the development of industrial capitalism, a new and unanticipated system of injustice, it is libertarian socialism that has preserved and extended the radical humanist message of the Enlightenment and the classical liberal ideals that were perverted into an ideology to sustain the emerging social order.

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

I do not recognize the right of the public to break in the front door of a man’s private life in order to satisfy the gaze of the curious… I do not think it right to dissect living men even for the advancement of science. So far as I am concerned, I prefer a post mortem examination to vivisection without anaesthetics.

Trouble brews when we steal from the poor and give to the rich.

The crimes against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and elsewhere, particularly Lebanon, are so shocking that the only emotionally valid reaction is rage and a call for extreme actions. But that does not help the victims. And, in fact, it’s likely to harm them.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

Life is about conduct and how we conduct ourselves. But two wrongs never make a right.

If an injustice requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the government machine.

I think what’s going on in Guantanamo Bay and other places is a disgrace to the U.S.A. I wouldn’t say it’s the cause of terrorism, but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts.

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.

It’s better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a terrific cost.

I love to go to the zoo. But not on Sunday. I don’t like to see the people making fun of the animals, when it should be the other way around.

Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad.

What is permissible is not always honorable.

One way to make sure crime doesn’t pay would be to let the government run it.

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

I am not deeply involved in Australian politics but I know there are prime ministers, governments around the world who are not acting responsibly in relation to climate change.

It’d be stupid for me to sit here and say that there aren’t kids who look up to me, but my responsibility is not to them. I’m not a baby sitter.

I said that America’s role would be limited; that we would not put ground troops into Libya; that we would focus our unique capabilities on the front end of the operation, and that we would transfer responsibility to our allies and partners.