Quotes About Principles

I do not approve the maxim which desires a man to know a little of everything. Superficial knowledge, knowledge without principles, is almost always useless and sometimes harmful knowledge.

We are all honorable men here, we don 't have to give each other assurances as if we were lawyers.

Rather a man with 50 per cent ability and 100 per cent character than a man with 100 per cent ability and 50 per cent character.

Nothing that isn't a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency.

As a rule, there is no surer way to the dislike of men than to behave well where they have behaved badly.

I love to see honest and honorable men at the helm, men who will not bend their politics to their purses, nor pursue measures by which they may profit, and then profit by their measures.

I do not like assassins, or men of low character.

If a thing is right it can be done, and if it is wrong it can be done without; and a good man will find a way.

If you try all different styles that are in vogue, I think you con yourself. Me, I just stick by my guns; I don't want to play out of another man's bag.

A superior man may be made to go to the well, but he cannot be made to go down into it. He may be imposed upon, but he cannot be fooled.

We may avoid the laws of man, but there are greater laws that can't be broken.

The maxims of men reveal their characters.

The conscience is the sacred haven of the liberty of man.

Every man prefers virtue, when there is not some strong incitement to transgress its precepts.

Conscience is a man's compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities in directing one's course by it, still one must try to follow its direction.

A man of integrity will never listen to any reason against conscience.

Men do not make laws. They do but discover them.

Every act of every man is a moral act, to be tested by moral, and not by economic criteria.

He who learns the rules of wisdom, without conforming to them in his life, is like a man who labored in his fields, but did not sow

Principles must conquer in the long run, for that is the manhood of man.

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

The just man having a firm grasp of his intentions, neither the heated passions of his fellow men ordaining something awful, nor a tyrant staring him in the face, will shake in his convictions.

The gentleman sees what is right while the small man sees what is profitable.

It affords a violent prejudice against almost every science, that no prudent man, however sure of his principles, dares prophesy concerning any event, or foretell the remote consequences of things.