Quotes About Principles

My toast would be, may our country always be successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right.

closed system

the radical side of Protestantism, with its idea of the priesthood of all believers and the denial of an ecclesiastical authority interposed between God and the faithful. This view says that moral principles and precepts are accessible to normal reasonable persons generally-various

A well-ordered society as one de­signed to advance the good of its members and effectively regulated by a public conception of justice. Thus it is a society in which everyone ac­cepts and knows that the others accept the same principles of justice, and the basic social institutions satisfy and are known to satisfy these princi­ples.

Anything that just costs money is cheap.

Patrick Henry did not say, 'Give me absolutely safety or give me death.' America is supposed to be about freedom.

If our moral principles always existed in a vivid and healthy state, there might be little need for the slow retrogressive process of induction in ethics; but as these instincts are peculiarly liable to be enfeebled, curtailed, and perverted by individual neglect, as well as social constraint, the corrective and cathartic process by induction on a more extended basis becomes necessary for the worst men, and not without utility for the best.

A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

They are not insincere when they say that they believe these things. They do believe them, as people believe what they have always heard lauded and never discussed. But in the sense of that living belief which regulates conduct, they believe these doctrines just up to the point to which it is usual to act upon them.

A few individuals, by extraordinary genius, or by the accidental acquisition of a good set of intellectual habits, may work without principles in the same way, or nearly the same way, in which they would have worked if they had been in possession of principles. But the bulk of mankind require either to understand the theory of what they are doing, or to have rules laid down for them by those who have understood the theory.

Where there is a tacit convention that principles are not to be disputed; where the discussion of the greatest questions which can occupy humanity is considered to be closed, we cannot hope to find that generally high scale of mental activity which has made some periods of history so remarkable.

Whenever the nature of the subject permits the reasoning process to be without danger carried on mechanically, the language should be constructed on as mechanical principles as possible; while in the contrary case it should be so constructed, that there shall be the greatest possible obstacle to a mere mechanical use of it

Questions of ultimate ends do not admit of proof, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. To be incapable of proof by reasoning is common to all first principles; to the first premises of our knowledge, as well as to those of our conduct.

When you first start to study a field, it seems like you have to memorize a zillion things. You don't. What you need is to identify the core principles – generally three to twelve of them – that govern the field. The million things you thought you had to memorize are simply various combinations of the core principles.

If I cannot have a religion that will lead me to God, and place me en rapport with him, and unfold to my mind the principles of immortality and eternal life, I want nothing to do with it.

America's greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.

The American founders did not create their experiment in religious liberty out of nothing. The principles of religious liberty outlined in the First Amendment were a part and product of nearly two centuries of colonial experience, and nearly two millennia of European history and thought.

What you are as a person is far more important that what you are as a basketball player.

I'm not going to say I was opposed to the Vietnam War. I'm going to say I'm opposed to war. But I'm also opposed to protests that deny other people their rights.

These trials aren't about revenge. They're about justice. Don't you want justice , Rose Justice?

Love that can't trump intellectual integrity isn't worth the name.

True beauty is not related to what color your hair is or what color your eyes are. True beauty is about who you are as a human being, your principles, your moral compass.

The exercise of force is contrary to the principles of God's government; He desires only the service of love; and love cannot be commanded; it cannot be won by force or authority. Only by love is love awakened. To know God is to love Him;

Let [the youth] be directed to something better than display, ambition, or self-indulgence. Bring them in contact with truer beauty, with loftier principles, and with nobler lives. Lead them to behold the One "altogether lovely.