Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.

No cause justifies the deaths of innocent people.

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

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

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

I’ve always been a little homemaker.

Scouting is nothing less than applied Christianity.

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

I can’t very well be teaching one way and living my life another way. What I do in life must be consistent with the things I say. And the same goes for you.

Speed, it seems to me, provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.

Morality is of the highest importance – but for us, not for God.

Our national determination to keep free of foreign wars and foreign entanglements cannot prevent us from feeling deep concern when ideals and principles that we have cherished are challenged.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

It’s honestly true that money means nothing to me.

It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one’s heart rather than out of pity. A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize.

If there is no God, everything is permitted.

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

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

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.

I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of ‚escape of energy,‘ that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.

I became a beach bum.

You cannot be in a position of power and destroy the life of another person.

Honor is simply the morality of superior men.

It is perfectly possible to live a very moral life without a belief in God, and I think it’s perfectly possible to live a life peppered with ill-doing and believe in God.

Where there is righteousness in the heart, there is harmony in the house; when there is harmony in the house, there is order in the nation; when there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world.

Our strategic dialogue with China can both protect American interests and uphold our principles, provided we are honest about our differences on human rights and other issues and provided we use a mix of targeted incentives and sanctions to narrow these differences.

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.

The role of the intellectual cannot be to excuse the violence of one side and condemn that of the other.

There’s strong data that, within companies, the No. 1 reason for ethical violations is the pressure to meet expectations, sometimes unrealistic expectations.

I don’t like drinking, basically.

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.

One of the great strengths of the United States is… we have a very large Christian population – we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.

Concupiscence and force are the source of all our actions; concupiscence causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones.

I think Bible principles are principles for life.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

I didn’t have any children of my own.

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

The influence of a mother upon the lives of her children cannot be measured. They know and absorb her example and attitudes when it comes to questions of honesty, temperance, kindness, and industry.

We moralize among ruins.

Effective action is always unjust.

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

Men are only as great as they are kind.

I hate to mention age, but I come from an era when we weren’t consumed by technology and television.

Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

There’s no political point worth my son’s life.

In my view of the present aspect of affairs, there is no need of bloodshed and war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course, and I may say in advance, there will be no blood shed unless it be forced upon the government. The government will not use force unless force is used against it.

I’m filthy rich!

I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.

When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that’s my religion.

Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force.

The humanists‘ replacement for religion: work really hard and somehow you’ll either save yourself or you’ll be immortal. Of course, that’s a total joke, and our progress is nothing. There may be progress in technology but there’s no ethical progress whatsoever.

I disagree with any policy that would turn America’s back on people who are fleeing harm. I frankly believe that it is contrary to everything that we have symbolically and actually said we stand for.

I’m not really a Hollywood person. Not that I don’t like L.A., but I’m just a Northern California guy.

In my normal life I’m a very unadventurous person.

Of two evils, choose neither.

You can not divorce religious belief and public service. I’ve never detected any conflict between God’s will and my political duty. If you violate one, you violate the other.

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