Quotes About Values

Spirit is a more accurate measure of success than the ruler.

The definition of success to me is not necessarily a price tag, not fame, but having a good life, and being able to say I did the right thing at the end of the day.

What my family seeks in this marriage is prestige; what I seek is happiness.

do you marry her. You marry a money-bag label, it is true; well, but what does that matter? It is better to have a blazon less and a figure more on it.

Danaro e santita, Meta della meta.

I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken a stronger hold on the affections of men.

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?

What one must fear, moreover, is not so much the sight of the immorality of the great as that of immorality leading to greatness.

To mimic virtue is of every age; but the hypocrisy of luxury belongs more particularly to the ages of democracy.

There have never been free societies without mores, and as I said in the first part of this work,*1 it is woman who makes mores.

In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country.

The safeguard of morality is religion, and morality is the best security of law and the surest pledge of freedom.

Thus whilst the law permits the Americans to do what they please, religion prevents them from conceiving, and forbids them to commit, what is rash or unjust.

Religion is much more necessary in the republic which they set forth in glowing colors than in the monarchy which they attack; and it is more needed in democratic republics than in any others.

Exceptional physical conditions, private interest, religion, in that it puts a brake on the inordinate taste for material wealth—these are, from the first weeks of the American journey, the three elements that profoundly marked Tocqueville's arguments.

Some who support [more] coercive strategies assume that children will run wild if they are not controlled. However, the children for whom this is true typically turn out to be those accustomed to being controlled— those who are not trusted, given explanations, encouraged to think for themselves, helped to develop and internalize good values, and so on. Control breeds the need for more control, which is used to justify the use of control.

Few parents have the courage and independence to care more for their children's happiness than for their success.

I realized that this is what many people in our society seem to want most from children: not that they are caring or creative or curious, but simply that they are well behaved.

Similarly, parents who want to teach the importance of honesty make it a practice never to lie to their children, even when it would be easier just to claim that there are no cookies left rather than to explain why they can't have another one.

It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

It isn't necessary to have something to believe in. It's only necessary to believe that somewhere there's something worthy of belief.

When God measures a person, He puts the tape around the heart, not around the head. AUTHOR UNKNOWN