What is permissible is not always honorable.

States are not moral agents.

My father used to have an expression. He’d say, ‚Joey, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity. It’s about respect. It’s about your place in your community.‘

Among the many values in life, I appreciate freedom most.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.

I think that we all know what evil is. We have a sense of what’s evil, and certainly killing innocent people is evil. We’re less sure about what is good. There’s sort of good, good enough, could be better – but absolute good is a little harder to define.

States should have the right to enact laws… particularly to end the inhumane practice of ending a life that otherwise could live.

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.

Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offense.

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.

It’s like a muscle – if you stop going to the gym or stop running, you get weak. The military teaches you these great values, but we don’t keep up the discipline on our own, and we lose it. So wherever you go, keep that discipline up.

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.

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

I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.

There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.

I think big business is a terrible thing for the spirit of the country, as our spirit is the best thing about us.

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

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.

I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it’s not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that’s not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.

It is better to die than to preserve this life by incurring disgrace. The loss of life causes but a moment’s grief, but disgrace brings grief every day of one’s life.

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.

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.

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

Honor is simply the morality of superior men.

The influence of a mother upon the lives of her children cannot be measured. They know and absorb her example and attitudes when it comes to questions of honesty, temperance, kindness, and industry.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods.

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

In football, it’s the job of the player to play, the coach to coach, the official to officiate. Each guy is charged with upholding his end, nothing more. In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life – or at least the way life should be.

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

Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.

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?‘

I truly believe the things Notre Dame stands for.

Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.

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

When men do not have healthy notions of the Divinity, false ideas supplant them, just as in bad times one uses counterfeit money when there is no good money.

Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.

Conscience is a man’s compass.

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

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

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.

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

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

Are creeds such simple things like the clothes which a man can change at will and put on at will? Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.

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

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.

The way I try to represent my family and coaches, I think all are characteristics the league aspires to portray. That’s just who I am.

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

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.

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.

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.