Quotes About Values

The principles of morality are a product not of feeling, but of cognition.

Evil, for Objectivism, means the willful ignorance or defiance of reality. This has to mean: that which cannot deal with reality, that which is whim-ridden, context-dropping, self-contradictory. Evil is consistent in only one regard: its essence is consistently at war with all the values and virtues human life requires.

The apostles had no gold, but lots of glory. We have lots of gold, but no glory.

Where,oh,where are the eternity-conscious believers? Where are the souls white-hot for God because they fear His holy name and presence and so live with eternity's values in view?

Survival breeds its own brand of morality," Silvio said.

By exempting your child from all chores, as many affluent American families now do, you are sending the message, "Your time is too valuable to be spent on menial tasks," which easily morphs into the unintended message "You are too important to do menial tasks." And that unintended message puffs up the bloated self-esteem that now characterizes many American kids.

It is just as easy to use a good principle for bad ends as it is to use a bad principle for good ends.

It is never right for any individual or government to do any vast evil as a means to some hypothetical good.

Military people never seem to apologize for killing each other yet novelists feel ashamed for writing some nice inert paper book that is not certain to be read by anybody. Values are very strange, they change so quickly I can't keep track of them.

Whenever the women would talk about their daughters or other girls, about their future or their material prospects, the only thing they'd think of was marriage, the same way people talk about a man's job or office.

Relationships are most likely to fail when we don't address problems or hold our partner accountable for unfair or irresponsible behavior ... the ability to clarify our values, beliefs, and life goals--and then to keep our behavior congruent with them--is at the heart of a solid marriage.

While women once acquired relationship skills to "hook," "snare," or "catch" a husband who would provide access to economic security and social status, the position of contemporary women has not changed that radically. Much of our success still depends on our attunement to "male culture," our ability to please men, and our readiness to conform to the masculine values of our institutions.

Book of Life says, "Where your heart is, there your treasure is also."3

Live so that when your children think of fairness and integrity, they think of you. H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Moral compasses" are often invoked, as though religion always points north. It doesn't seem to have occurred to the graybeards that religion and morality are not synonymous

suits of Anderson and Sheppard, the shirts of Harman, the shoes of Lobb, and self-refrigerating conscience can achieve.

From Christ's perspective, success isn't measured by how much we do, how much we earn, or how much we have, but by how well we love and what kind of person we're becoming in the midst of life's activities.

If I do not know the purpose for which human life was designed, I have no basis for saying that any kind of human life-style is good or bad.

Maoism in its final shape is a radical peasant Utopia in which Marxist phraseology is much in evidence but whose dominant values seem completely alien to Marxism.

It wasn't a place of worship, they explained, with a note of whinnying condescension, but a community devoted to the most absolute possible expression, or incarnation--or perhaps realization was an even better word--of the incomprehensibly complex but infinitely pure sylvan values of centaurhood, which Quentin's fallen human brain could never hope to grasp. There was something distinctly German about the centaurs.

You just had to get some idea of what matters and what doesn't, and how much, and try not to be scared of the stuff that doesn't. Put it in perspective. Something like that.

To praise oneself is considered improper, immodest; to praise one's own sect, one's own philosophy, is considered the highest duty.

As a Christian, I think it's really important to find a man of God to trust and be supportive of me.

Like many philosophers, I reject the idea that free acts must be uncaused; freedom is not only consistent with but demands determinism. Were actions not caused by antecedent factors, including preferences, an agent himself would not know what he was about to do and could be surprised by his freedom. Free choice might go against the agent's own stable values, a nightmare caricature of autonomy.