Quotes About Values

Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.

Settle on the type of person you want to be and stick to it, whether alone or in company.

For determining the rational and the irrational, we employ not only our estimates of the value of external things, but also the criterion of that which is in keeping with one's own character. (Book I.2, 17p)

These reasonings have no logical connection: "I am richer than you, therefore I am your superior." "I am more eloquent than you, therefore I am your superior." The true logical connection is rather this: "I am richer than you, therefore my possessions must exceed yours." "I am more eloquent than you, therefore my style must surpass yours." But you, after all, consist neither in property nor in style.

Be careful to leave your sons [and daughters] well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant. [in brackets: though I have only sons, I am--of course--someone's daughter]

No one has power over our principles, and what other people do control we don't care about.

Whenever externals are more important to you than your own integrity, then be prepared to serve them the remainder of your life.

What, then, is your own? The way you live your life.

which would you rather have—money to share with others, or loyal and honest friends?

If it should ever happen to you to be turned to externals in order to please some person, you must know that you have lost your purpose in life.

The upshot is that if you identify self-interest with piety, honesty, country, parents and friends, then they are all secure.

But I'll get money, and then share it." If you can acquire riches without losing your honor and self-respect, then do it. But if you lose what is dearest to you, no amount of money can make up for it.

But what master, I wonder, do you yourself serve? Money? Women? Boys? The emperor or one of his subordinates? It has to be one of them, or you wouldn't fret about such things.

He didn't care; it was not his skin he wanted to save, but the man of honour and integrity. These things are not open to compromise or negotiation.

Fools follow after vanity. The wise man keeps earnestness as his best jewel.

and following your ideals is the only thing worth dying for.

Life offers more than one option for doing the right thing.

Early in life, Lincoln decided that he did not want to live like his father, who in his son's eyes exemplified the values of the pre-market world where people remained content with a subsistence lifestyle. From age twenty-one, Lincoln lived in towns and cities and evinced no interest in returning to the farm or to manual labor. He held jobs—storekeeper, lawyer, and surveyor—essential to the market economy.

Those who would sacrifice a generation to realize an ideal are the enemies of mankind.

If a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must learn how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, values, and fantasies on everyday life.

Belief passes, but to have believed never passes.     18

One cannot escape the impression that the intellectual's most fundamental incompatibility is with the masses. He has managed to thrive in social orders dominated by kings, nobles, priests, and merchants, but not in societies suffused with the tastes and values of the masses.

Thus, though hatred is a convenient instrument for mobilizing a community for defense, it does not, in the long run, come cheap. We pay for it by losing all or many of the values we have set out to defend.

Invented tradition' is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.