The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

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

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

Those who commit injustice bear the greatest burden.

It’s okay to eat fish because they don’t have any feelings.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

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

Ethics is the activity of man directed to secure the inner perfection of his own personality.

Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having.

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

The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience.

A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are screwed first.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

Relationships based on obligation lack dignity.

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.

In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.

For my own part, I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly.

A leader who doesn’t hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.

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

Desire of having is the sin of covetousness.

The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

I think that man has a fundamental obligation to extract from himself and from the earth all that it can give; and this obligation is all the more imperative that we are absolutely ignorant of what limits – they may still be very distant – God has imposed on our natural understanding and power.

Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office.

He who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

I think that the Bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin, but the Bible also teaches that pride is a sin, jealousy is a sin, and hate is a sin, evil thoughts are a sin. So I don’t think that homosexuality should be chosen as the overwhelming sin that we are doing today.

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.

States should have the right to enact laws… particularly to end the inhumane practice of ending a life that otherwise could live.

We might come closer to balancing the Budget if all of us lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule.

Repeal the Missouri Compromise – repeal all compromises – repeal the Declaration of Independence – repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It will be the abundance of man’s heart that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.

I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.

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

The strength of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

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

For I can raise no money by vile means.

Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping?

I think God gives every one of us our own will, and unfortunately, some people choose to do evil things with it.

Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies.

Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?

I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.

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?

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

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

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

You cannot make a sinner into a saint by killing him. He who does not live as a saint here will never live as a saint hereafter.

Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

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

I am a just man.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

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

I have to live for others and not for myself: that’s middle-class morality.

How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense, and love the offender, yet detest the offence?