values quotes

Teach us that wealth is not elegance, that profusion is not magnificence, that splendor is not beauty.

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

I don’t care about money.

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

I would like to be remembered as a guy who had a set of priorities, and was willing to live by those priorities. In terms of accomplishments, my biggest accomplishment is that I kept the country safe amidst a real danger.

I am the son of a freedom fighter, and a son of a freedom fighter automatically imbibes the value of democracy.

Traditions are a common part of our lives. They can be good, and not all traditions are wrong, but sometimes they can take the joy out of life.

You definitely want your kids to understand their heritage, but I don’t want my kids to just focus on being black. They are people. I don’t want them to judge other people or to be judged. I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

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

Regardless of what society says, we can’t go on much longer in the sea of immorality without judgment coming.

Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.

I think your values are always influenced by your family and your community.

This way of life is worth defending.

My parents were the same in the pulpit as they were at home. I think that’s where a lot of preachers‘ kids get off base sometimes. Because they don’t see the same things at both places.

Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking.

For everything I do, I think about a 6-year-old girl and her mom that I saw at my concert last night. I think about what those two individuals would think if I were at a club last night. I never want to be arrested, and I never want to get a DUI, those are my moral values.

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

The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

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

Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious dear than life.

I will never say something I don’t agree with or believe in… even if the reward is massive!

I think that when you’re making your way up in the music industry, you have all these heroes and the reasons why they are your heroes. As soon as you get into the industry, your guidelines change a little bit. For me, my heroes now are great people first and great artists second.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

Those who know me know I’m passionate about lists, and top of my list of priorities is my family. My wife Joan and I do not consider our legacy to our children to be wealth or fame but the opportunity to pursue happiness by following their own path.

True wealth is not of the pocket, but of the heart and of the mind.

I believe that Catholics involved in politics carry the values of their religion within them, but have the mature awareness and expertise to implement them. The Church will never go beyond its task of expressing and disseminating its values, at least as long as I’m here.

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

We know what works. Freedom Works. We know what’s right. Freedom is right.

We have to rediscover the eternal values and then live them out.

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.

In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion-, and even nation-centred cultures.

I’ll promise to go easier on drinking and to get to bed earlier, but not for you, fifty thousand dollars, or two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars will I give up women. They’re too much fun.

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

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values, like you work hard for what you want in life. That your word is your bond; that you do what you say you’re going to do. That you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them and even if you don’t agree with them.

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

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.

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.

On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, ‚Is it safe?‘ Expediency asks the question, ‚Is it politic?‘ And Vanity comes along and asks the question, ‚Is it popular?‘ But Conscience asks the question, ‚Is it right?‘

As president, you can get all kinds of advice from all kinds of people. But at the end of the day, when it comes time to make that decision, as president, all you have to guide you are your values and your vision and the life experiences that make you who you are.

Sometimes we be playing the politics too much and forget who we are just to win.

While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.

Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.

We learned about dignity and decency – that how hard you work matters more than how much you make… that helping others means more than just getting ahead yourself.

Our diplomacy and development budget is not just about reducing spending and finding efficiencies. We need a frank conversation about what we stand for as that ‚shining city on a hill.‘ And that conversation begins by acknowledging that we can’t do it on the cheap.

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.

At the end of the day, when it comes time to make that decision, as president, all you have to guide you are your values, and your vision, and the life experiences that make you who you are.

It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.

Honor is simply the morality of superior men.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

Free speech is not just another value. It’s the foundation of Western civilization.

Let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is.

For I can raise no money by vile means.

To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.

Men are only as great as they are kind.

Scouting is nothing less than applied Christianity.

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

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.