Integrity has no need of rules.

SEALs are human beings. We may all have the same haircuts, but we aren’t robots. Some SEALs are great people. Some are not great people. Some have done unspeakably terrible things. You’re dealing with different people, different dreams, different desires.

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that ‚Oryx and Crake‘ is anti-science. Science is a way of knowing, and a tool. Like all ways of knowing and tools, it can be turned to bad uses. And it can be bought and sold, and it often is. But it is not in itself bad. Like electricity, it’s neutral.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives; who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts.

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.

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

There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.

And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values, like you work hard for what you want in life. That your word is your bond; that you do what you say you’re going to do. That you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them and even if you don’t agree with them.

Rather leave the crime of the guilty unpunished than condemn the innocent.

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.

I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

My parents were the same in the pulpit as they were at home. I think that’s where a lot of preachers‘ kids get off base sometimes. Because they don’t see the same things at both places.

I would like to be remembered as a guy who had a set of priorities, and was willing to live by those priorities. In terms of accomplishments, my biggest accomplishment is that I kept the country safe amidst a real danger.

When in doubt tell the truth.

As a former resident with strong personal and ministry ties to the North Star State, I pray that the good people of Minnesota will show their support for God’s definition of marriage, between a man and a woman.

It’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

If anything, I get most upset because I wanna read a good paper first thing in the morning. And if I see a lie about myself flash across the front of the cover, I don’t think much of the rest of the newspaper.

The best thing is to always keep honest people around, because when you have a bunch of yes men around that know that you’re making a mistake but let you go on with it, that’s when it ruins your mind state as an artist.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

Character is power.

We can’t just choose to tell some facts and not others because we don’t want to upset people. We have to tell it like it is.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

I’ll promise to go easier on drinking and to get to bed earlier, but not for you, fifty thousand dollars, or two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars will I give up women. They’re too much fun.

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.

If one has a good disposition, what other virtue is needed? If a man has fame, what is the value of other ornamentation?

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.

Henry Kissinger should have the door shut in his face by every decent person and should be shamed, ostracized and excluded.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

To see the right and not to do it is cowardice.

To do a great right do a little wrong.

The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.

If there is no God, everything is permitted.

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

For I can raise no money by vile means.

Men are only as great as they are kind.

George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.

Order is heaven’s first law.

My brother Bob doesn’t want to be in government – he promised Dad he’d go straight.

We do not covet anything from any nation except their respect.

Abortion is clearly wrong.

If you want someone to say, ‚She’s so sweet, and she’s so cute, and, honey, point your foot,‘ that’s not my school. You can go to the YMCA and have a nobody teach your kid if that’s what you want to hear.

Convictions, in the end, they can be dangerous, but a world without them is just kind of an awful kind of gray, amorphous mass.

It is better to do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.

Treat those who are good with goodness, and also treat those who are not good with goodness. Thus goodness is attained. Be honest to those who are honest, and be also honest to those who are not honest. Thus honesty is attained.

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

There’s no point in saying anything but the truth.

I’m always pushing for human responsibility. Given that chimpanzees and many other animals are sentient and sapient, then we should treat them with respect.

Laws control the lesser man… Right conduct controls the greater one.

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.

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.

Every time somebody speaks of my honesty, there is someone who quivers inside me.

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.

Is science of any value? I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

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