Good men must not obey the laws too well.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principles which direct them.

Drones overall will be more impactful than I think people recognize, in positive ways to help society.

We only need so much to survive, but this world we live in tells us we need more stuff to be happy. We’re inundated with our televisions, the Internet and advertising that says in order to be happy you have to have these things. When you say, ‚Gimme, gimme, gimme,‘ you will always be in short supply.

I’m not a reality-TV kind of guy. But it’s almost like we’re living in a reality show. Every day in this country, everybody keeps worrying about the deterioration of America, and it’s like a big reality show.

Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

There is a moral obligation that those who have should give to those who don’t.

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.

For my own part, I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly.

Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

I know that I’ve been guided by God. I am obedient.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.

I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

I believe in the Golden Rule – The Man with the Gold… Rules.

I have no doubt but that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate whenever the Government assumes a freer aspect and the laws favor a subdivision of Property.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

The book, ’12 Rules For Life,‘ is a very serious book. There’s elements of humor in it, but I’m trying to struggle with things at the deepest possible level and to explain to people why it’s necessary to live a upstanding and noble and moral and truthful and responsible life, and why there’s hell to pay if you don’t do that.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

I just know what is right and I want to do what is right.

In order to acquire a growing and lasting respect in society, it is a good thing, if you possess great talent, to give, early in your youth, a very hard kick to the right shin of the society that you love. After that, be a snob.

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.

Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.

Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.

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

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

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

Ordinary morality is innate in my view.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

Never give an order that can’t be obeyed.

Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.

Americans are rising to the tasks of history, and they expect the same of us.

What you’re seeing with Occupy Wall Street and the others are people who are unhappy and they’re directing their unhappiness now toward Wall Street and toward those they think are doing too well in our society.

Obedience of the law is demanded; not asked as a favor.

Understand, when you eat meat, that something did die. You have an obligation to value it – not just the sirloin but also all those wonderful tough little bits.

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.

It is right to give every man his due.

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

I think God’s justice is making wrongs right.

I think that the Bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin, but the Bible also teaches that pride is a sin, jealousy is a sin, and hate is a sin, evil thoughts are a sin. So I don’t think that homosexuality should be chosen as the overwhelming sin that we are doing today.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

A man should be upright, not be kept upright.

In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion-, and even nation-centred cultures.

Our modern society – especially in the West, and especially now – reveres youth.

I don’t think even ungodly people realize what a society would be like that had no godly influence at all.

Although the big word on the left is ‚compassion,‘ the big agenda on the left is dependency.

When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous. The individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you can imagine.

To be ashamed of one’s immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one’s morality.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

If people lose faith in their government, the result is the same whether or not the loss of confidence is justified.

We moralize among ruins.

One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory.

The upward course of a nation’s history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.

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

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.

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

Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.