Quotes About Values

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure.

John D Rockefeller read his Bible religiously, but kept his ledger in a different drawer.

The purpose behind all doctrine is to secure moral action.

The plain fact is that responsibility cannot be imposed. It can only grow from within, fed and directed by values absorbed at home and in the community. Responsibility that is not anchored in positive values can be antisocial and destructive. Gang members often show great loyalty and strong responsibility in relation to one another and to their gang. Terrorists take their duties in dead earnest; they carry out commands, even if they involve sacrificing their own lives. The

Once we learn that different economic theories say different things partly because they are based on different ethical and political values, we will have the confidence to discuss economics for what it really is - a political argument - and not a 'science' in which there is clear right and wrong.

Our judgments always have behind them a quality of righteousness.

Many years ago Rudyard Kipling gave an address at McGill University in Montreal. He said one striking thing which deserves to be remembered. Warning the students against an over-concern for money, or position, or glory, he said: "Some day you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are."

War, he said, quoting John Stuart Mill, was "an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things….A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature, who has no chance of being free.

Why do people who are good at families have to be smug and assume it is the only way to live. … Why can't they be blamed for being bad at promiscuity?

Nihilism is but the other side of conventionalism; its creed consists of negations of the current so-called positive values, to which it remains bound.

A life devoted to trifles, not only takes away the inclination, but the capacity for higher pursuits. The truths of Christianity have scarcely more influence on a frivolous than on a profligate character.

Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessities.

It should be held as an eternal truth, that what is morally wrong can never be politically right.

inculcated with a healthy national consciousness.

The Girl Scouts allow homosexuals and atheists to join their ranks, and they have become a pro-abortion feminist training corps. If the Girl Scouts of America can't get back to teaching real character, perhaps it will be time to look for our cookies elsewhere.

I try to stress to my children that buying something never leads to true happiness.

I'd never had money growing up, and it's never been that important to me, except maybe to take our kids on a nice vacation or something like that.

My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, "You're tearing up the grass." "We're not raising grass," Dad would reply. "We're raising boys."

Sir William Haley, one of my predecessors as editor of the Times, said, "There are things which are bad and false and ugly and no amount of specious casuistry will make them good or true or beautiful.

The discipline that makes an effective leader begins in the home.

1) He must be competent, (2) he must exercise good judgment, and (3) he must have character. By itself, competence is meaningless without character and good judgment. If

History is apt to judge harshly those who sacrifice tomorrow for today.

I found the offer of a knighthood something that I couldn't possibly accept. I found it to be somehow squalid, a knighthood. There's a relationship to government about knights.

I never work just to work. It's some combination of laziness and self-respect.