I can hardly eat meat because it has to look like something what it was not when it was alive.

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

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.

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

Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.

The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.

How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense, and love the offender, yet detest the offence?

It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.

Never order food in excess of your body weight.

Meals make the society, hold the fabric together in lots of ways that were charming and interesting and intoxicating to me. The perfect meal, or the best meals, occur in a context that frequently has very little to do with the food itself.

I love a Hebrew National hot dog with an ice-cold Corona – no lime. If the phone rings, I won’t answer until I’m done.

Oh yes, there’s lots of great food in America. But the fast food is about as destructive and evil as it gets. It celebrates a mentality of sloth, convenience, and a cheerful embrace of food we know is hurting us.

I know of only one duty, and that is to love.

The Kobe craze really annoyed me. Most of the practitioners had no real understanding of the product and were abusing it and exploiting it in terrible and ridiculous ways. Kobe beef should not be used in a hamburger. It’s completely pointless.

Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.

I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of ‚escape of energy,‘ that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.

Why can’t I just eat my waffle?

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

I’ll never tell a lie. I’ll never make a misleading statement. I’ll never betray the confidence that any of you had in me. And I’ll never avoid a controversial issue.

For I can raise no money by vile means.

Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing.

Good jokes are gems. A good idea is hard to come by. I couldn’t give them to someone else, even for money. It just wouldn’t seem right.

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.

There is one thing I have never taught my body how to do and that is to figure out at 6 A.M. what it wants to eat at 6 P.M.

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

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

I believe it is universally understood and acknowledged that all men will ever act correctly, unless they have a motive to do otherwise.

Modesty forbids what the law does not.

Doing what’s right isn’t the problem. It is knowing what’s right.

To be safe at the expense of the liberty of other people is a difficult equation.

Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

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

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

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.

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.

The violence in the Bible is appalling.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

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 that wonderful old-fashioned idea that others come first and you come second. This was the whole ethic by which I was brought up. Others matter more than you do, so ‚don’t fuss, dear; get on with it.‘

Lawless are they that make their wills their law.

I like chicken a lot because chicken is generous – that is to say, it’s obedient. It will do whatever you tell it to do.

Violence is both unavoidable and unjustifiable.

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.

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.

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

We all have done something unethical.

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.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

I don’t have much patience for people who are self-conscious about the act of eating, and it irritates me when someone denies themselves the pleasure of a bloody hunk of steak or a pungent French cheese because of some outdated nonsense about what’s appropriate or attractive.

I’m evangelical on the subject of some chefs and writers.

The vulgar boil, the learned roast, an egg.

We never repent of having eaten too little.

You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.