Quotes About Principles

In his eyes Hobbes, who had savaged the Church in Leviathan (1651), was unambiguously wicked, and excluding him was a pleasure. He told his friend Thomas Tyers that he had 'scorned' to quote Hobbes 'because I did not like his principles'.6 Among the texts he did cite, however, was John Bramhall's 1658 Castigations of Mr Hobbes, a book now known, if at all, for having been praised by T. S. Eliot. For

The great tragedies of history occur not when right confronts wrong but when two rights confront each other.

We must learn to distinguish morality from moralizing.

But unlike Machiavelli, Confucius was concerned more with the cultivation of social harmony than with the machinations of power. His themes were the principles of compassionate rule, the performance of correct rituals, and the inculcation of filial piety.

Yet after withdrawing from three wars in two generations—each begun with idealistic aspirations and widespread public support but ending in national trauma—America struggles to define the relationship between its power (still vast) and its principles.

É que a visão americana assentava não na adoção do sistema europeu de equilíbrio de poder, mas na expansão dos princípios democráticos, de que resultaria o triunfo da paz.

If you don't have integrity, you have nothing. You can't buy it. You can have all the money in the world, but if you are not a moral and ethical person, you really have nothing.

Action, and not knowledge, is man's destiny and duty in this life; and his highest principles, both in philosophy and in religion, have reference to this end.

There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character

We kill because we are afraid of our own shadow, afraid that if we used a little common sense we'd have to admit that our glorious principles were wrong.

Since man is a moral being, his culture cannot be a-moral. Because man is a religious being, his culture, too, must be religiously oriented.

whereas the philosopher seeks unity of principle, and consistency of method at the risk of paradox, the unphilosophic man is apt to hold different principles at once, and to apply different methods in more or less confused combination.

Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning - an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.

Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages.

Expedients are for an hour, but principles are for the ages.Just because the rains descend, and the winds blow, we cannot afford to build on the shifting sands.

A thoughtful mind, when it sees a nation's flag, sees not the flag only, but the nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag the government, the principles, the truths, the history which belongs to the nation that sets it forth.

Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality.

I realized that even if all the people in the world from the day of creation found this to be necessary according to whatever theory, I knew that it was not necessary and that it was wrong. Therefore, my judgements must be based on what is right and necessary and not on what people say and do; I must judge not according to progress but according to my own heart.

Vronsky's life was particularly happy in that he had a code of principles, which defined with unfailing certitude what he ought and what he ought not to do. This code of principles covered only a very small circle of contingencies, but then the principles were never doubtful, and Vronsky, as he never went outside that circle, had never had a moment's hesitation about doing what he ought to do.

Don't steal rolls.

If everybody fought for nothing but his own convictions, there wouldn't be any wars,

I am certain, too, that such a soul, such a heart and principles, as are hers are not to be found elsewhere in the world of the present day." (I do not know whence he had derived the habit of saying that few good things were discoverable in the world of the present day, but at all events he loved to repeat the expression, and it somehow suited him.)

Ma come si può vivere solo per se stessi?" domandò Pierre accalorandosi. "E tuo figlio, tua sorella, tuo padre?" "Ma loro sono pur sempre me stesso, loro non sono gli altri," rispose il principe Andrej. "Gli altri, invece, le prochain, come lo chiami tu, come lo chiama la principessina Mar'ja, sono la fonte principale dell'errore e del male.

feeling consolation in the sense that he had found to which division of regulating principles this new circumstance could be properly referred.