Ethics and Morality

The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal is the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.

The worst form of injustice is pretended justice.

The ultimate solution to the race problem lies in the willingness of men to obey the unenforceable.

That old law about “an eye for an eye” leaves everybody blind.

It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

To do injustice is more disgraceful than to suffer it.

Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.

America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

Men hate those to whom they have to lie.

The true idealist pursues what his heart says is right in a way that his head says will work.

There is a sufficiency in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed.

It is not the business of science to inherit the earth, but to inherit the moral imagination; because without that, man and beliefs and science will perish together.

Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.

Serving God is doing good to man. But praying is thought an easier service and is therefore more generally chosen.

Quarrels would not last long if the fault were on one side only.

People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.

The thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never any good to oneself.

There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides.

Give every man thy ear but few thy voice.

In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

Say what you have to say, not what you ought.