values quotes

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

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.

Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.

Reverence for life is the highest court of appeal.

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards – the things we live by and teach our children – are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings.

Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.

My parents taught me service – not by saying, but by doing. That was my culture, the culture of my family.

When in doubt tell the truth.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

All that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football.

Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.

I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.

The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

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.

My mother would kill me if I posed nude! My mother raised me with certain standards.

Respect is one of life’s greatest treasures. I mean, what does it all add up to if you don’t have that?

More than anything else, I want the folks back at home to think right of me.

Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.

Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

Modesty is the color of virtue.

I would as soon leave my son a curse as the almighty dollar.

Morality is of the highest importance – but for us, not for God.

For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?

A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.

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.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

Where there is righteousness in the heart, there is harmony in the house; when there is harmony in the house, there is order in the nation; when there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world.

I care not much for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.

Integrity has no need of rules.

True patriotism is better than the wrong kind of piety.

Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.

Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.

Gold is good in its place; but loving, brave, patriotic men are better than gold.

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.

I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.