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

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

My dad was fiscally conservative, and I was influenced by that. He didn’t believe in spending more than you had because it gets you into trouble.

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.

You cannot be in a position of power and destroy the life of another person.

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

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

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

Give me five minutes with a person’s checkbook, and I will tell you where their heart is.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

If there is no God, everything is permitted.

Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage.

The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not.

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what’s right.

As we know, while our species remains alive, everybody has the sacred duty to be optimistic. Ethically, any other behaviour wouldn’t be admissible.

If you’re not going to be rewarded for your virtues, and instead you’re going to be punished for them, then what’s your motivation to continue?

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

Principles are guidelines for human conduct that are proven to have enduring, permanent value.

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

Invest three percent of your income in yourself (self-development) in order to guarantee your future.

Good jokes are gems. A good idea is hard to come by. I couldn’t give them to someone else, even for money. It just wouldn’t seem right.

Ethics and power are separate.

Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value.

I would never do a commercial if I thought it was offensive to anyone.

Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.

Justice means minding one’s own business and not meddling with other men’s concerns.

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

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

The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

You cannot mix sports with politics.

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

The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.

I know My God commands, whose power no power resists.

Money is a strange business. People who haven’t got it aim it strongly. People who have are full of troubles.

Understand, when you eat meat, that something did die. You have an obligation to value it – not just the sirloin but also all those wonderful tough little bits.

When I was president, I announced and I still maintain that I can live with Roe v. Wade. I did everything I possibly could as president under that ruling, which I don’t think ought to be changed, to minimize the need for abortions. I think every abortion is a result of a horrible series of errors on the part of people involved.

I know of only one duty, and that is to love.

We can’t get to the $4 trillion in savings that we need by just cutting the 12 percent of the budget that pays for things like medical research and education funding and food inspectors and the weather service. And we can’t just do it by making seniors pay more for Medicare.

The humanists‘ replacement for religion: work really hard and somehow you’ll either save yourself or you’ll be immortal. Of course, that’s a total joke, and our progress is nothing. There may be progress in technology but there’s no ethical progress whatsoever.

There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

He has committed the crime who profits by it.

On ‚Mystic River,‘ I had to cut my salary and everyone else’s to get it made.

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

Never spend your money before you have earned it.

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

The only question with wealth is, what do you do with it?

In ‚Unfair Advantage: The Power of Financial Education‘ and ‚Why A Students Work for C Students,‘ I reveal the secrets of the wealthy and what schools will never teach you about money.

I think that I know the value of a dollar.

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

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.

Note, besides, that it is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without.

The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

Of course, to have money is just great because you can do what you think is important to you.

He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power.

Remember that credit is money.

The safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.