I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.

I can tell you this: If I’m ever in a position to call the shots, I’m not going to rush to send somebody else’s kids into a war.

A man is great by deeds, not by birth.

I don’t mind telling a dark side.

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

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness.

A vigorous temper is not altogether an evil. Men who are easy as an old shoe are generally of little worth.

Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying.

It is perfectly possible to live a very moral life without a belief in God, and I think it’s perfectly possible to live a life peppered with ill-doing and believe in God.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

The firm, the enduring, the simple, and the modest are near to virtue.

God is the same God, always and everywhere. He is omnipresent not virtually only, but also substantially, for virtue cannot subsist without substance.

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.

Better to die ten thousand deaths than wound my honor.

Where there is no opposition to evil, it multiplies.

Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.

To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.

No such thing as a man willing to be honest – that would be like a blind man willing to see.

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world.

The difference is too nice – Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

When I was married, I definitely went through a lying period.

For I can raise no money by vile means.

Don’t lie about anything, ever. Lying leads to Hell.

‚Tis not enough your counsel still be true; Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do.

If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.

The quality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.

Getting money is not all a man’s business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

Within one’s own family, money is not the measure of things, unless the person is an absolute Scrooge. Only the most extreme kind of monster would put a price on everything.

There’s no difference between one’s killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It’s exactly the same thing, or even worse.

Places I’ve lived since then had to have some kind of uniqueness and character about them. And logically Key West, and then Down Island. So, all of that stuff sort of had it’s roots in New Orleans and went crazy.

The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf.

The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength, and the spiritual fiber of a nation than its wealth.

Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.

There’s no political point worth my son’s life.

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

I think there are a whole host of things that are civil rights, and then there are other things – such as traditional marriage – that, I think, express a community’s concern and regard for a particular institution.

A remark generally hurts in proportion to its truth.

Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice.

Where do the evils like corruption arise from? It comes from the never-ending greed. The fight for corruption-free ethical society will have to be fought against this greed and replace it with ‚what can I give‘ spirit.

It’s so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

I’ll be honest: I haven’t ruled politics out.

People must have righteous principals in the first, and then they will not fail to perform virtuous actions.

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

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

Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.

I believe that economics is based on scarcity of markets. And it’s possible to monetize your art without compromising the integrity of it for commerce.

Don’t believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves.

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

A man does not have to be an angel in order to be saint.

Honor is simply the morality of superior men.

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

If you want to get each individual’s honest opinion, you don’t want that opinion to be influenced by others who are present, much less allow a group to coordinate what they are going to say.