Life is about conduct and how we conduct ourselves. But two wrongs never make a right.

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

If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

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.

Well, I’ll put it this way: you can certainly say belief in God makes people behave worse. That can be proved beyond a doubt.

People who think too much before they act don’t act too much.

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

Sometimes there are no good guys. There are no bad guys. It seems like everybody is in the middle.

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

We just seem to have lost all our morals and principles and values these days.

Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.

If you’re in favour of any policy – reform, revolution, stability, regression, whatever – if you’re at least minimally moral, it’s because you think it’s somehow good for people. And good for people means conforming to their fundamental nature.

I’m mischievous, but I’m calculated.

People who eat with their mouth open should be punched in the face.

It is right to give every man his due.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.

There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

I’m quite a chauvinistic person.

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

Wrinkles will only go where the smiles have been.

Experience teaches only the teachable.

I’m very much a creature of habit.

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.

Teach us that wealth is not elegance, that profusion is not magnificence, that splendor is not beauty.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.

For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.

Those who have virtue always in their mouths, and neglect it in practice, are like a harp, which emits a sound pleasing to others, while itself is insensible of the music.

Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.

Without a moral framework, there is nothing left but immediate self-indulgence by some and the path of least resistance by others. Neither can sustain a free society.

He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.

After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.

Lost time is never found again.

Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.

It takes no more time to see the good side of life than it takes to see the bad.

Honor is the reward of virtue.

Note, besides, that it is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without.

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

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.

I do not recognize the right of the public to break in the front door of a man’s private life in order to satisfy the gaze of the curious… I do not think it right to dissect living men even for the advancement of science. So far as I am concerned, I prefer a post mortem examination to vivisection without anaesthetics.

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

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

I want to thank God, obviously for the health, for the talent He’s given me, for my family who supports me, for the things that basketball’s taught me on and off the court. For the people that I’ve been able to meet through the game of basketball.

Happiness is a hard master, particularly other people’s happiness.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

I didn’t just invent saying offensive things.

Speakers who talk about what life has taught them never fail to keep the attention of their listeners.

There should be a point to movies. Sure, you’re giving people a diversion from the cold world for a bit, but at the same time, you pass on some facts and rules and maybe a little bit of wisdom.

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

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

Actions are visible, though motives are secret.

It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.

In honorable dealing you should consider what you intended, not what you said or thought.

I think God’s justice is making wrongs right.

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.