Those who have virtue always in their mouths, and neglect it in practice, are like a harp, which emits a sound pleasing to others, while itself is insensible of the music.

Never let your zeal outrun your charity. The former is but human, the latter is divine.

People must have righteous principals in the first, and then they will not fail to perform virtuous actions.

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

Yes, there is a terrible moral in ‚Dorian Gray‘ – a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book.

It takes two to make a murder. There are born victims, born to have their throats cut, as the cut-throats are born to be hanged.

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

I think you have a moral responsibility when you’ve been given far more than you need, to do wise things with it and give intelligently.

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

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

The person we believe ourselves to be will always act in a manner consistent with our self-image.

Why lie? I’m not going to be a hypocrite and say the opposite of what I think, like some others do.

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

Morality is a private and costly luxury.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

I have only one yardstick by which I test every major problem – and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?

Ritual is another word for fear, manifested in a different way.

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

You’re morally tainted if you don’t treat both the accuser and the accused with fairness and with respect, and with due process.

Dogs never bite me – just humans.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

I follow three rules: Do the right thing, do the best you can, and always show people you care.

That old law about ‚an eye for an eye‘ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.

It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.

Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.

The firm, the enduring, the simple, and the modest are near to virtue.

A good name is rather to be chosen than riches.

Don’t create more enemies than you take out by some immoral act.

It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

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

For a war to be just three conditions are necessary – public authority, just cause, right motive.

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.

Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.

You start to become successful, and everybody starts to drive your money train to the bank, and they’re not thinking anymore about what you want as an artist or if any of that even matters to you. It genuinely upsets people in my life that I don’t care about money, and that’s not my problem.

Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.

Everyone looks at your watch and it represents who you are, your values and your personal style.

People who think too much before they act don’t act too much.

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.

Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue.

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

When you stand for something, you’ve got to stand for it all the way, not half way.

And whether you’re an honest man, or whether you’re a thief, depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.

Some people feel affronted when something they thought to be true doesn’t happen. If that’s the case, then your sense of risk is much higher, and that leads to risk aversion. You need to be able to be comfortable in uncertainty.

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

What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.

Doctors will have more lives to answer for in the next world than even we generals.

Train up a child in the way that he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

I just know what is right and I want to do what is right.

It is the failing of youth not to be able to restrain its own violence.

Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.

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.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

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.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

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.

Our judgments when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile.

In any decision for action, when you have to make up your mind what to do, there is always a ‚should‘ involved, and this cannot be worked out from, ‚If I do this, what will happen?‘ alone.

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

We learned about honesty and integrity – that the truth matters… that you don’t take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules… and success doesn’t count unless you earn it fair and square.