The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.

The safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.

People have so many hang-ups about how other people live their lives. People always want to keep you in a little box, or they need to label you and fix you in time and location.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.

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

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

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

You aren’t normal if you sing to people. You aren’t a normal person. It’s nerve-racking.

Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.

I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird.

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

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

No public man can be just a little crooked.

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

You cannot mix sports with politics.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying.

I think big business is a terrible thing for the spirit of the country, as our spirit is the best thing about us.

As the father of eight children, I’m quite convinced that each individual arrives here with their own unique personality. We are intended here from an invisible held of infinite potentiality. That which has no form, has no boundaries – it’s the I that’s in the ever-changing body.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

Abortion is clearly wrong.

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.

I’ve never been one to sit back and go, ‚I’d better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don’t want to lose them.‘

Honestly, I could care less about other people’s opinions about me.

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

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.

A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It’s an individual-feel thing, you know?

To be safe at the expense of the liberty of other people is a difficult equation.

Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

While children are struggling to be unique, the world around them is trying all means to make them look like everybody else.

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

The people you choose to have around you make all the difference. My family and close friends keep me grounded. You have to have a mind of your own and a strong head on your shoulders. Cricket is the most important thing to me, so the rest of it pales in comparison.

I don’t compare myself to anyone else; I don’t make comments about anyone else because they do what feels right for them, and that’s okay by me.

For I can raise no money by vile means.

All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.

In my research, I’ve interviewed a lot of people who never fit in, who are what you might call ‚different‘: scientists, artists, thinkers. And if you drop down deep into their work and who they are, there is a tremendous amount of self-acceptance.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

I’ve always been very liberal when it comes to people thinking for themselves.

I believe it is universally understood and acknowledged that all men will ever act correctly, unless they have a motive to do otherwise.

SEALs are human beings. We may all have the same haircuts, but we aren’t robots. Some SEALs are great people. Some are not great people. Some have done unspeakably terrible things. You’re dealing with different people, different dreams, different desires.

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

You don’t have to be somebody different to be important. You’re important in your own right.

An individual’s refusal to carry out the criminal acts of his government sets the stage, in the most effective way possible, for the attempt to demonstrate the criminal nature of these acts.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives; who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?

Truly, I would not hang a dog by my will, much more a man who hath any honesty in him.

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

I think that we all know what evil is. We have a sense of what’s evil, and certainly killing innocent people is evil. We’re less sure about what is good. There’s sort of good, good enough, could be better – but absolute good is a little harder to define.

There is a real danger that computers will develop intelligence and take over. We urgently need to develop direct connections to the brain so that computers can add to human intelligence rather than be in opposition.

Conscience is a man’s compass.

Of what use is a philosopher who doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings?

You learn that there’s no right way to do it, no wrong way to do it. It’s just what you feel comfortable with, to trust that, and don’t let anybody box you in to a certain style of parenting or make you feel a certain way about what your kids do.

I don’t believe in killing whatever the reason!

Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life it is bad to damage and destroy life.

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.