Quotes About Principles

The four cornerstones of character on which the structure of this nation was built are: Initiative, Imagination, Individuality and Independence.

But, like Baldwin, King struggled with America's commitment to the belief that white people mattered more and to the lie that made it palatable: I must honestly confess that I go through moments of disappointment when I have to recognize that there aren't enough white persons in our country who are willing to cherish democratic principles over privilege. But I am grateful to God that some are left.

Our manners, our civilization, and all the good things connected with manners and civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles: I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion.

Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement.

It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs.

Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality.

It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do.

Only ideals are dangerous.

Science] presupposes as data principles that are themselves thoroughly lacking in actual rationality. In so far as the intuitive environing world, purely subjective as it is, is forgotten in the scientific thematic, the working subject is also forgotten, and the scientist is not studied.

One can imagine a sane, healthy, cheerful human society based on no more than the principals of common sense, as validated each day by work, play, and living experience. But this remains the most utopian and fantastic of ideals.

If the end does not justify the means - what can?

I shall never sacrifice a friend to an ideal. I shall never desert a friend to save an institution. I shall never betray a friend for the sake of the law. Great nations may fall in ruin before I shall sell a friend to preserve them. I pray to the God within me to give me the power to live by this design.

Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident -- the luckiest, indeed, that can befall a society.

Freedom may come quickly in robes of peace, or after ages of conflict and war; but come it will, and abide it will, so long as the principles by which it was acquired are held sacred.

I don't eat people,I won't eat people,I don't eat people,Eating people is wrong!

I prefer to think of them as the Ten Suggestions.

A conscience void of offense toward God, and toward men.

Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars.

A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.

To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your principles.

Ius est ars boni et aequi [Legal justice is the art of the good and the fair].

Milton S. Terry, for example, author of one of the most conservative textbooks on hermeneutics (1890), begins: "Hermeneutics is the science of interpretation."4 Yet even Terry concedes that hermeneutics "is both a science and an art. As a science it enunciates principles . . . and classifies the facts and results. As an art, it teaches what application these principles should have . . . showing their practical value in the elucidation of more difficult scriptures.

The vice minister sets down The Principles of Mechanics and pushes it away, then glances at his palms as though it has made them dirty. He says, "The only place your brother is going, little girl, is into the mines. As soon as he turns fifteen. Same as every other boy in this house.

Logic. The principles of validity. Every lock has its key.