It’s better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a terrific cost.

Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.

Modesty is the color of virtue.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

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.

Abortion isn’t a lesser evil, it’s a crime. Taking one life to save another, that’s what the Mafia does. It’s a crime. It’s an absolute evil.

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

It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.

The strength of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.

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

A President’s hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.

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

Let’s pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

The man of life upright has a guiltless heart, free from all dishonest deeds or thought of vanity.

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?

Among the many values in life, I appreciate freedom most.

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.

Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad.

Character isn’t something you were born with and can’t change, like your fingerprints. It’s something you weren’t born with and must take responsibility for forming.

Ordinary morality is innate in my view.

A noble person attracts noble people, and knows how to hold on to them.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.

If co-operation is a duty, I hold that non-co-operation also under certain conditions is equally a duty.

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

Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

I have to live for others and not for myself: that’s middle-class morality.

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

We all have done something unethical.

The American people are bigger than any president. I suppose I have faith in my country and in what it is founded on and the values we hold dear.

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.

Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.

Do right. Do your best. Treat others as you want to be treated.

Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are screwed first.

It makes a great deal of difference whether one wills not to sin or has not the knowledge to sin.

Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.

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

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.

Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.

Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.

I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!

I’ve got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.

One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

Don’t create more enemies than you take out by some immoral act.

I would rather die than do something which I know to be a sin, or to be against God’s will.

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