No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.

I would probably have more in common with a whale than with a bourgeois married couple employed at worthy institutions that I would wipe from the face of the earth if it was given to me to do so.

To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent, and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence?

To be ashamed of one’s immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one’s morality.

Children are all foreigners.

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

Should surveillance be usable for petty crimes like jaywalking or minor drug possession? Or is there a higher threshold for certain information? Those aren’t easy questions.

To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage, or of principle.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

Richard Nixon was an evil man – evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency.

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.

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.

Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

The violence in the Bible is appalling.

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

Honesty is the best policy – when there is money in it.

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

I didn’t just invent saying offensive things.

If a person is successful, we imagine they are probably also ethical, conscientious and deserving of their good fortune. This obscures the fact that many people who get ahead have done so by doing less than moral actions, which they cleverly disguise from view.

When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

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.

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

The first rule of business is: Do other men for they would do you.

First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy? Second, how do we make technology work for us, and not against us – especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change? Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman?

The diversity of India, of our civilization, is actually a thing of beauty, which is something we are extremely proud of.

This desk of mine is one at which a man may die, but from which he cannot resign.

Live one day at a time emphasizing ethics rather than rules.

The fault lines are shifting from the boundaries of nations into the web of our societies and the streets of our cities. And, terrorism and extremism are a global force that are larger than their changing names, groups, territories and targets.

In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.

Democratic societies are unfit for the publication of such thunderous revelations as I am in the habit of making.

Lawless are they that make their wills their law.

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.

To terrify children with the image of hell… to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?

No one can say, ‚I have dropped out – I am no longer in the system.‘ When you’re in prison, you’re even closer to the system: you feel it more, and you might be in there for whatever reason. You don’t transform the system as an absolute thing.

It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person. So violence isn’t merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper.

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

It means, people who are in high and responsible positions, if they go against righteousness, righteousness itself will get transformed into a destroyer.

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress ‚suspects.‘

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

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

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.

That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

We all have the duty to do good.

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

What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature are shot down wholesale.

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

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not.

We’re all sinners. Everybody you meet all over the world is a sinner.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.