Quotes About Ethics

Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.

Now if you shoot someone, sir, you can get off Scott free. It's the latest thing Mr. Lincoln, can you believe?

I suppose, just as an honest man in politics shines more than he would elsewhere.

I'm not a leftist; I'm where the righteous ought to be.

Passive resistance seeks to rejoin politics and religion and to test all our actions in the light of ethical principles.

The doer and the thinker, no allowances for the other, as the failing light illuminates the mercenaries creed.

The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.

I am a politician which means I am a liar and a crook. When I am not kissing babies I am stealing their lollypops.

....for friendships that are acquired by a price and not by greatness and nobility of character are purchased but are not owned, and at the proper moment they cannot be spent.

I had rather be right than be President.

In politics, one can learn some things from cycling, such as how to have character and courage. Sometimes in politics there isn't enough of those things.

The politics of envy is the politics of this commandment: "Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote." It is the politics of two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

I reject the cynical view that politics is a dirty business.

As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can't drink their whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against 'em anyway, you don't belong in office.

Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.

When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.

Does anyone need yet another politician caught with his pants down and money sticking in his hole?

Because just as good morals, if they are to be maintained, have need of the laws, so the laws, if they are to be observed, have need of good morals.

Public money ought to be touched with the most scrupulous consciousness of honor.

Our politics suffers from a shortage of people who put character and country before career and personal gain.

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

The time has come to knock off this religion business in American politics. There's no end to the mischief that can occur. It is like putting nitroglycerine in a Waring blender.

The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I think it's a good rule for politics, too.

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.