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

Who sows virtue reaps honor.

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.

For an author, the nice characters aren’t much fun. What you want are the screwed up characters. You know, the characters that are constantly wondering if what they are doing is the right thing, characters that are not only screwed up but are self-tapping screws. They’re doing it for themselves.

If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.

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

In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.

The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs.

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.

I notice that young men go to the universities in order to become doctors or philosophers or anything, so long as it is a title, and that many go in for those professions who are utterly unfit for them, while others who would be very competent are prevented by business or their daily cares, which keep them away from letters.

Sin, also for those who don’t have faith, exists when one goes against one’s conscience. To listen to and obey it means, in fact, to decide in face of what is perceived as good or evil. And on this decision pivots the goodness or malice of our action.

I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.

I left school to concentrate on racing. It was a family decision between my mum, dad and myself.

The dropping of bombs on people – isn’t that terrorism?

In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan’s writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way.

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.

No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

In poor countries, we still need better ways to measure the effectiveness of the many government workers providing health services. They are the crucial link bringing tools such as vaccines and education to the people who need them most. How well trained are they? Are they showing up to work?

A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.

No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.

Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business.

I should tie myself to no particular system of society other than of socialism.

Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.

Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.

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.

You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.

We must, I believe, start teaching our children the sanity of nonviolence much earlier.

What the Pope thinks of being gay does not matter to the world. It matters to the people who like the Pope and follow the Pope… It is not a reflection of all religious people.

We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.

Information is not knowledge.

I would fain grow old learning many things.

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.

To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.

I truly believe that when the history books are written, our age will be remembered for three things: the war on terror, the digital revolution, and what we did – or did not do – to put the fire out in Africa. History, like God, is watching what we do.

I have never thought it necessary to patronize the American people.

Those who know how to think need no teachers.

We’re a diverse society, and I think the TV is doing a great job in showing that we’re all human beings, that we can all get along, that we can all be together, and I think that’s a marvelous thing.

When I write, I try to become different characters.

Creationists make it sound as though a ‚theory‘ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.

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

I was a smart kid, but I hated school.

If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

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

If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.

I didn’t go to university. Didn’t even finish A-levels. But I have sympathy for those who did.

Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.

Only a man’s character is the real criterion of worth.