Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.

I think God’s justice is making wrongs right.

War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

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.

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

Men are only as great as they are kind.

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

Do not be very upright in your dealings for you would see by going to the forest that straight trees are cut down while crooked ones are left standing.

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.

Any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose.

Conscience is a man’s compass.

Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks.

Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.

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

I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.

I think that when you’re making your way up in the music industry, you have all these heroes and the reasons why they are your heroes. As soon as you get into the industry, your guidelines change a little bit. For me, my heroes now are great people first and great artists second.

Duty, Honor, Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods.

The Trump phenomenon is in large part a reaction of Middle America to attacks on its values by intellectual and academic communities. There are other reasons, but this is a significant one.

The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief.

I don’t use Twitter for bad.

He incurs a fearful amount of guilt who in the least promotes the aim of the Evil One by trampling upon a tender conscience in a child.

My parents taught me service – not by saying, but by doing. That was my culture, the culture of my family.

For everything I do, I think about a 6-year-old girl and her mom that I saw at my concert last night. I think about what those two individuals would think if I were at a club last night. I never want to be arrested, and I never want to get a DUI, those are my moral values.

I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.

I just usually go with my own taste. If I like something, and it happens to be against the law, well, then I might have a problem.

And whether you’re an honest man, or whether you’re a thief, depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.

What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.

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

Morality which depends upon the helplessness of a man or woman has not much to recommend it. Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts.

I have a very good family. I’m very fortunate to have a very good family. I believe very strongly in the family. It’s one of the things we have in our platform, is to talk about it.

In my view, the only thing worse than a rock star is a rock star with a conscience.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.

I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality.

Rascals are always sociable, more’s the pity! and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others‘ company.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

The more people rationalize cheating, the more it becomes a culture of dishonesty. And that can become a vicious, downward cycle. Because suddenly, if everyone else is cheating, you feel a need to cheat, too.

You’ve all seen over the last eight years what President Obama means to this country. He is the embodiment of honor, resolve, and character – one of the finest presidents we have ever had.

He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

We learned about dignity and decency – that how hard you work matters more than how much you make… that helping others means more than just getting ahead yourself.

The role of the intellectual cannot be to excuse the violence of one side and condemn that of the other.

Of course, animals have to be killed for food or to prevent their doing injury to others or to property. But such killing is too often carried out without regard to the pain inflicted.

Well, I thought the deal was, when you went to work for the government you weren’t supposed to make money!

Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.

To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.

The murder of Lumumba, in which the U.S. was involved, in the Congo destroyed Africa’s major hope for development. Congo is now total horror story, for years.

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.

Regardless of what society says, we can’t go on much longer in the sea of immorality without judgment coming.

A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls… saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.