Quotes About Integrity

One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called "weasel words." When a weasel sucks eggs the meat is sucked out of the egg. If you use a "weasel word" after another there is nothing left of the other.

The men with the muckrakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown above them…. If they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck their power of usefulness is gone.

Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country, is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.

Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting but never hit soft

I am delighted to have you play football. I believe in rough, manly sports. But I do not believe in them if they degenerate into the sole end of any one's existence. I don't want you to sacrifice standing well in your studies to any over-athleticism and I need not tell you that character counts for a great deal more than either intellect or body in winning success in life. Athletic proficiency is a mighty good servant, and like so many other good servants, a mighty bad master.

Liar' is just as ugly a word as 'thief,' because it implies the presence of just as ugly a sin in one case as in the other. If a man lies under oath or procures the lie of another under oath, if he perjures himself or suborns perjury, he is guilty under the statute law.

No man who is corrupt, no man who condones corruption in others, can possibly do his duty by the community.

To educate a man in mind, and not morals is to educate a menace to society.

Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft!

We despise and abhor the bully, the brawler, the oppressor, whether in private or public life, but we despise no less the coward and the voluptuary. No man is worth calling a man who will not fight rather than submit to infamy or see those that are dear to him suffer wrong.

If given the choice between Righteousness and Peace, I choose Righteousness.

Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.

No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today.

No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned.

Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.

No man is above the law, and no man is below it.

I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!

The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided, but NEVER hit softly.

Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.

Our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics.

I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds.