Quotes About Principles

the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.

It is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends.

Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the wellbeing of a person or animal is at stake.

Constructive ends can never give absolute moral justification to destructive means, because in the final analysis the end is preexistent in the means.

In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.

One of the first principles of nonviolence is a willingness to be the recipient of violence, while never inflicting violence on another.

it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.

we live in a utilitarian age. Honour is a mediaeval conception.

The cause of the party's defectiveness must be found. All our principles were right, but our results were wrong. This is a diseased century. We diagnosed the disease… but wherever we applied the healing knife a new sore appeared. Our will was hard and pure, we should have been loved by the people. But they hate us. Why are we so odious and detested?

Conscience renders one as unfit for the revolution as a double chin. Conscience eats through the brain like a cancer, until the whole of the grey matter is devoured.

Since his idea of professional integrity requires him to live by his principles, in order to remain a person of integrity, he has changed his principles, and now believes in us almost more than we believe in ourselves.

Although moral truths are eternal, their actual application is subject to temporal modification.

Ronald Dworkin

Were she to be allowed to take her rightful place as the elected leader of the Burmese people, I have little doubt that the principles so eloquently expressed in these pages would illuminate her governance.

I hate cheating. I won't put up with it. I don't do it myself.

Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.

And what, incidentally, do you think integrity is? The ability not to pick a watch out of your neighbor's pocket? No, it's not as easy as that. If that were all, I'd say ninety-five percent of humanity were honest, upright men. Only, as you can see, they aren't. Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.

A rational man never distorts or corrupts his own standards and judgment in order to appeal to the irrationality, stupidity, or dishonesty of others.

There can be no compromise on moral principles.

If the rest of them can survive only by destroying us, then why should we wish them to survive? . . . Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can't be punished for being good. One can't be penalized for ability.

There are no contradictions. If you find one, check your premises.

A house can have integrity, just like a person,' said Roark, 'and just as seldom.

Remember that rights are moral principles which define and protect a man's freedom of action, but impose no obligations on other men.