Quotes About Values

December 16 Meet the Man Who Turns Down Cookies What man in his right mind turns down warm-from-the-oven chocolate-chip cookies? Ebenezer does.

I don't believe in working in any location, in any environment, for any people with a lack of integrity.

Thomas Jefferson took one look at permissive Parisian women and, comparing them to pious American maidens, declared: "A comparison of amazons to angels!" (Too bad he didn't live long enough to meet Britney Spears.)

Admittedly, my focus is on the most redeeming qualities of these creatures, but the exercise here is not to glorify or ennoble them; rather, it is, as Descartes implied, to contrast cultural values in the hopes that we might see our own in a new light.

We live in a world of disposable memory, nothing's built to last, not even shame.

Civilization seems to be something we choose when it fits our purpose.

You do not want to be a noble person? She held her thumb and index finger close together. A little bit? He shook his head. I've gt nothing against noble people, I've just noticed they rarely live past forty. Neither do gangsters. True, he said, but we eat in better restaurants. (Live By Night - Dennis Lehane)

I just notice people sometimes mistake their life choices for their moral ones.

Goal 5: That each child is able to form and grow a successful Christian family

It is almost impossible to do good without wisdom. All the good intentions in the world are likely to be worthless without wisdom. Many of the horrors of the twentieth century were supported by people with good intentions who lacked wisdom.

Compromise, while at times morally necessary or at least justifiable, is more often only the first permission for a person (or society) to begin a long downhill descent.

Many liberals believe in God; many conservatives do. What matters is not whether people believe in God but what text, if any, they believe to be divine. Those who believe that He has spoken through a given text will generally think differently from those who believe that no text is divine. Such people will usually get their values from other texts, or more likely from their conscience and heart.

Without God, right and wrong are just personal beliefs. Personal opinions. I think shoplifting is okay, you don't.

A society can survive bad donkey drivers. But it cannot survive contempt for truth—whether inside or outside a courtroom.

The Left would like to believe that racism—not the breakdown of marriage and family, the absence of religious norms, a degraded popular culture, and other issues that all concern values—is the primary impediment to black progress in America. Therefore the Left declares racism the greatest impediment to black progress.

Morally judging cultures (except Christian, Israeli and American cultures) is forbidden by the left. Indeed not judging non-Western cultures is the very definition of 'multiculturalism'.

The world's thinking is morally confused because it is informed by the morally confused.

One way to test whether you have chosen your friends wisely is to ask yourself why they are your friends. If your only answer is that you like them and they are fun to be with (certainly important components of friendship), you probably haven't given consideration to their values. Or try this: what case could you make to people who have never met your friends to prove that your friends are good people?

Raise children who are grateful in general, and grateful to be an American in particular, or grateful to be the citizen of any decent country, who don't complain much, who learn to handle losing, and who are guided by values, not feelings. In other words, teach them how to be happy adults.

The Ten Commandments are preoccupied with goodness. Each commandment is a moral tour de force. Together they present the most compelling plan ever devised for a better life and good world. Yet, they were written—and in the eyes of hundreds of millions, revealed by the Creator—three thousand years ago. The Ten Commandments are what began humanity's long, arduous journey toward moral progress.

If your parents bring you no shame, be very grateful. If you're proud of them, celebrate.

With all our sophistication, the remarkable fact is that the Ten Commandments are more or less all we need.

forcefully changing society to conform to societal images was the greatest cause of evil in the twentieth century.

The Torah's view is we are supposed to be preoccupied with making this world as heavenly as possible. Those who live by its moral laws and values are best able to achieve that goal.