Quotes About Values

Ultimately to say that people all share the same hopes and fears, are all born and love and suffer and die alike, is to say very little. For it is after commonalities are accounted for that politics becomes necessary. It is only when values, ideologies, cultures and interests clash that politics even begins.

individuals, he believed, should choose and pursue what matters to them.

The love of family and the admiration of friends is much more important than wealth and privilege.

Guilt is the uncomfortable or painful feeling that results from doing something that violates or breaks a personal standard or value, or from hurting another person, or even from breaking an agreement or a law. Guilt thus concerns our behavior, feeling bad about what we have done, or about what we didn't do that we were supposed to have done.

I realized that If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.

The person who does not work for the love of work but only for money is not likely to make money nor to find much fun in life.

The curious part was this: most students said that they knew that social life would be more important to their happiness than architecture, yet they still put greater weight on physical features. This is the standard mis-weighing of extrinsic and intrinsic values: we may tell each other that experiences are more important than things, but we constantly make choices as though we didn't believe

Helliwell and his team have run several iterations of the World Values Survey and the Gallup World Poll through their statistical grinders and have found that when it comes to life satisfaction, relationships with other people beat income, hands down. For example, these polls asked people if they had a friend or relative to count on when needed. Just going from being friendless to having one friend or family member to confide in had the same effect on life satisfaction as a tripling of income.

1950s nuclear family,

How we feel, think, speak and/or act is what matters in life.--

If I'm wrong, and you find yourself in an organization where sucking up is in fact a good way to get ahead, look for a new job. It's not a quality organization after all, no matter how glittering its public reputation may be. Life is too short to work there.

Four American traits were central to the evolution of that culture: industriousness, egalitarianism, religiosity, and an amalgam of philanthropy and volunteerism that was uniquely American.

Traditions decay when the reality facing the new generation changes. The habit of thrift decays if there is no penalty for not saving. The work ethic decays if there is no penalty for not working. Neighborliness

Lord, may Your grace and Your action toward me solidify in me a new set of values which expresses itself in new choices and actions. Amen.

A family is a place where principles are hammered and honed on the anvil of everyday living.

The swift wind of compromise is a lot more devastating than the sudden jolt of misfortune.

Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.

Genuine goodness is threatening to those at the opposite end of the moral spectrum.

Any civilization where the main symbol of religious veneration is a tool of execution is a bad place to have children.

I was raised thinking that moral and ethical standards are universals that apply equally to everyone. And these values aren't easily compatible with the kind of religion that posits a Creator. To my way of thinking, an omnipotent being who sets up a universe in which thinking beings proliferate, grow old, and die (usually in agony, alone, and in fear) is a cosmic sadist.

Real integrity stays in place whether the test in adversity or prosperity.

Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets—and can be lost in a heartbeat.

To know who I am is a species of knowing where I stand. My identity is defined by the commitments and identifications which provide the frame or horizon within which I can try to determine from case to case what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done, or what I endorse or oppose. In other words, it is the horizon within which I am capable of taking a stand.

liberalism can't and shouldn't claim complete cultural neutrality. Liberalism is also a fighting creed.