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

Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.

Violence is both unavoidable and unjustifiable.

Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principles which direct them.

There can be no doubt that the average man blames much more than he praises. His instinct is to blame. If he is satisfied he says nothing; if he is not, he most illogically kicks up a row.

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.

There is still much debate about whether torture has been effective in eliciting information – the assumption being, apparently, that if it is effective, then it may be justified.

The first and greatest punishment of the sinner is the conscience of sin.

How accurately can the law fix the crime? There has to be a mechanism for very fast action. The law is like this: catch them and punish them.

So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.

The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad; they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state.

I’m not one of these guys who sits around saying, ‚Gee, I mean, the person had a strange childhood and that’s why he’s doing this horrible thing. Poor Jeffrey Dahmer. He’s just had a bad childhood and that’s why he’s eating people.‘ Wait a second! This person should be removed from the planet.

Luckily for me, people don’t scream at me that much in my everyday life.

As we know, while our species remains alive, everybody has the sacred duty to be optimistic. Ethically, any other behaviour wouldn’t be admissible.

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.

We can’t afford to be killing one another.

There are plenty of recommendations on how to get out of trouble cheaply and fast. Most of them come down to this: Deny your responsibility.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

I’m a good teacher and am great at observation and picking out what’s wrong and fixing it.

No body can be healthful without exercise, neither natural body nor politic, and certainly, to a kingdom or estate, a just and honourable war is the true exercise.

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.

Never say no when a client asks for something, even if it is the moon. You can always try, and anyhow there is plenty of time afterwards to explain that it was not possible.

When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous. The individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you can imagine.

I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.

The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

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

To God everything is beautiful, good, and just; humans, however, think some things are unjust and others just.

Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.

You’ve got to work things out in the cloakroom, and when you’ve got them worked out, you can debate a little before you vote.

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.

Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage.

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

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.

If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

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.

The pursuit of truth does not permit violence on one’s opponent.

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

Doing what’s right isn’t the problem. It is knowing what’s right.

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.

A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls… saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?

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?

At home, we must reject the mistaken notion – a notion that has dominated too much of the public dialogue for too long – that ever bigger Government is the answer to every problem.

It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

The ‚morality of compromise‘ sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don’t compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.

I love being in a courtroom.

We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.