Those who commit injustice bear the greatest burden.

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.

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

There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

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

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

You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.

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

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.

What I believe unites the people of this nation, regardless of race or region or party, young or old, rich or poor, is the simple, profound belief in opportunity for all – the notion that if you work hard and take responsibility, you can get ahead.

When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.

Some people say that the climate crisis is something that we will have created, but that is not true, because if everyone is guilty then no one is to blame. And someone is to blame.

We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.

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

A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.

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

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

If a man had more than one life, I think a little hanging would not hurt this one; but after he is once dead, we cannot bring him back, no matter how sorry we may be; so the boy shall be pardoned.

And oftentimes excusing of a fault doth make the fault the worse by the excuse.

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.

All the commandments: You shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and so on, are summed up in this single command: You must love your neighbor as yourself.

There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

I want to marry Arline because I love her – which means I want to take care of her. That is all there is to it. I want to take care of her. I am anxious for the responsibilities and uncertainties of taking care of the girl I love.

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

Sin, also for those who don’t have faith, exists when one goes against one’s conscience. To listen to and obey it means, in fact, to decide in face of what is perceived as good or evil. And on this decision pivots the goodness or malice of our action.

If co-operation is a duty, I hold that non-co-operation also under certain conditions is equally a duty.

God made and governs the world invisibly, and has commanded us to love and worship him and no other God; to honor our parents and masters, and love our neighbours as ourselves; and to be temperate, just, and peaceable, and to be merciful even to brute beasts.

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

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes… and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal.

No obligation to do the impossible is binding.

These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.

There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.

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.

Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.

Even after Independence, we have had to face the poison of casteism and communalism. How long these evils will continue? Whom does it benefit?

Many people listen to what I have to say and I appear a lot in media, so therefore I influence a lot of people and therefore I have a bigger responsibility because I have a bigger platform.

The absent are never without fault, nor the present without excuse.

When the players go home, I can’t tell them what to do, so you need to create an atmosphere of trust. I don’t want to think, ‚What are they doing now? Do I need to call them?‘

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

The presidency has made every man who occupied it, no matter how small, bigger than he was; and no matter how big, not big enough for its demands.

Our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity’s belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul, and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.

In the literal sense, there has been no relevant evolution since the trek from Africa. But there has been substantial progress towards higher standards of rights, justice and freedom – along with all too many illustrations of how remote is the goal of a decent society.

It’s hard not to have a big year at the Supreme Court.

When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying.

After 2014, we will support a unified Afghanistan as it takes responsibility for its own future.

If you’re in favour of any policy – reform, revolution, stability, regression, whatever – if you’re at least minimally moral, it’s because you think it’s somehow good for people. And good for people means conforming to their fundamental nature.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

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

As a country, we can’t teach kids how to read and write when we got 18 years to do it. And that’s – that’s a disgrace.

Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason.

I said that America’s role would be limited; that we would not put ground troops into Libya; that we would focus our unique capabilities on the front end of the operation, and that we would transfer responsibility to our allies and partners.

With the development of industrial capitalism, a new and unanticipated system of injustice, it is libertarian socialism that has preserved and extended the radical humanist message of the Enlightenment and the classical liberal ideals that were perverted into an ideology to sustain the emerging social order.