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

Well look, I mean, I think that prayer and holy water, and things like that are all fine. They don’t do any good, but they don’t necessarily do any harm. It’s touching to be thought of in that way. It makes up for those who tell me that I’ve got my just desserts.

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

The greatest legacy one can pass on to one’s children and grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated in one’s life, but rather a legacy of character and faith.

Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help in diminishing the pain of others. We must all carry our share of the misery which lies upon the world.

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

Do something for somebody everyday for which you do not get paid.

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

I feel like I write so that people can think of it as theirs. If my song is exactly about your life right now, then it is – I don’t even want to say that it’s mine, because it’s yours.

States are not moral agents.

The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art.

A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.

I’m not happy all the time, and I wouldn’t want to be because that would make me a shallow person. But I do try to find the good in everybody.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

If you want what you’re saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it. You might save somebody’s life. Your own, first.

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.

You are 27 or 28 right? It is very tough to live at that age. When nothing is sure. I have sympathy with you.

In order to have friends, you must first be one.

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

There are folks who now know black families – like the Johnsons on ‚Black-ish‘ or the folks on ‚Modern Family.‘ They become part of who you are. You share their pains. You understand their fears. They make you laugh, and they change how you see the world.

My father wasn’t around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, ‚Why me? Why don’t I have a father? Why isn’t he around? Why did he leave my mother?‘ But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, ‚I don’t know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?‘

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water’s edge.

In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.

In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.

When we are well, we all have good advice for those who are ill.

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

A good thing to remember is somebody’s got it a lot worse than we do.

Strength and compassion are not mutually exclusive.

Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.

Richard Nixon was an evil man – evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency.

I believe that God breathed life into every person and that every person is made in the image of God and you have accept them as they are, on their journey. I’m not here to preach hate or push people down.

First, I want to pay tribute to Diana myself. She was an exceptional and gifted human being. In good times and bad, she never lost her capacity to smile and laugh, nor to inspire others with her warmth and kindness. I admired and respected her – for her energy and commitment to others, and especially for her devotion to her two boys.

We need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This isn’t a matter of political correctness. It’s a matter of understanding what makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith.

The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors.

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

Is science of any value? I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.

You know, T can stand for anything. T stand for working hard. T stand for loving thy neighbor. T stand for feeding the hungry. T stand for just working, working, working, being happy on the set, you know, lifting everybody’s spirits. T stands for just a nice guy.

Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

We need to have business leaders who live by deep, strong principles.

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.

The ‚morality of compromise‘ sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don’t compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

Only a man’s character is the real criterion of worth.

Effective action is always unjust.

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.

Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, it’s at the end of your arm, as you get older, remember you have another hand: The first is to help yourself, the second is to help others.

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.

My company survives because I’ve learned to respect the ideas of people younger than me and recognize when my wisdom is obsolete.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.

Such is the feebleness of humanity, such is its perversity, that doubtless it is better for it to be subject to all possible superstitions, as long as they are not murderous, than to live without religion.

A moral monopoly is the antithesis of a marketplace of ideas.

Experience praises the most happy the one who made the most people happy.

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