Quotes About Values

Pop says cops and courts no longer protect citizens, so citizens must protect themselves." "I'm afraid he's right." "My husband, I can't evaluate my opinions of right and wrong because I learned them from my parents and haven't lived long enough to have formed opinions in disagreement with theirs." "Deety, your parents did okay.

The quickest way I know to break a person is to give him or her two sets of contradicting values—which is exactly what we do, in modern culture, with our Sunday and Monday moralities. We are taught by Christianity to follow a set of values that are almost entirely disregarded in everyday business life. How is a person to cope?

To advance from opposition (always a quarrel) to paradox (always holy) is to make a leap of consciousness. That leap takes us through the chaos of middle age and gives a vista that enlightens the remaining years of life. It is a valuable exercise to list the oppositions that we face, then try to restore them to the realm of paradox. We can start with these two sets of values: the everyday practical attitudes that nearly everyone agrees to and the religious instruction that we are given.

In every state of the Union, Fundamentalists still fight to ban all the science they dislike and prosecute all who teach it. To them, 'traditional family values' denotes their right to keep their children as ignorant as their grandparents (and to hate the same folks grand-dad hated.)

E.M. Forster, who said that if he had to choose between betraying his country and betraying his friend, he hoped he'd have the courage to betray his country.

See, being a person is kind of random and arbitrary business. You may have noticed that. And you need to believe in something to keep it from being too random and arbitrary to handle. Some people take religion, or success, or patriotism, or family, but for a lot of guys those things don't work. A guy like me. I don't have religion or family that sort of thing. So you accept some system of order, and you stick to it.

A pig is a pig," she said. "Whether he's public or private, he works for the same people." "Next time you're in trouble," I said, "call a hippie.

Am I the kind of person I want my eternal companion to be?

Statesmen can strive for the universal values of justice, fairness, and tolerance, but only so far as they do not interfere with the quest for power, which to him is synonymous with survival.

The United States, like any nation—but especially because it is a great power—simply has interests that do not always cohere with its values. That is tragic, but it is a tragedy that has to be embraced and accepted.

The search for power is not made for the achievement of moral values; moral values are used to facilitate the attainment of power.

Democracy and morality are simply not synonymous

You will see, philosophical values will fade away in your country, too. To advance themselves, politicians will increasingly claim beliefs that they don't actually possess. Values are a reflection of the soul. And as souls fade, people no longer need values. Souls fade gradually because of the substitution of the inner imagination by technology: smartphones, intelligent toys, the array of electronics at malls, all make soulful intelligence less necessary.

The answer is that the destiny of poor kids in America has broad implications for our economy, our democracy, and our values.

Parents with less than a high school education endorse obedience over self-reliance, 65 percent to 18 percent, whereas parents with a graduate education make exactly the opposite choice, 70 percent to 19 percent.

The more I see of what you call civilization, the more highly I think of what you call savagery!

People need symbols, something greater than their own lives.

What we live by we die by.

If I must choose which I would elevate— The people or the already lofty mountains, I'd elevate the already lofty mountains.

There is nothing in your budget for joy. No books, no flowers, no music, not even a cold beer. And there is nothing in your budget to give away to someone else. We don't help people who don't have better values than you do.

Pardon me, but my father says that it is a lie that Americans have everything. You have no sheep, no goats, no trees, no oil, no vines, no wine, not even chickens. He asks, 'What kind of life is that?' He says, 'No wonder you don't sing or dance or recite poetry very often.

Our natural tendency is to project onto other people our own belief and value systems, in ways in which we are not even aware.

Do not swallow the easy moralism of the day, which urges honesty at the expense of desirability.

As he did not go into Society himself, he had got an idea that these things belonged to the things that didn't really matter. (We know of course that he was wrong, and took too narrow a view; because they do matter very much, though it would take too long to explain why.)