I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.  ~Abraham Lincoln
I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.  ~Joseph Baretti, quoted by James Boswell, 1766, commonly misattributed to Samuel Johnson

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.  ~William Shakespeare


Transcend political correctness and strive for human righteousness.  ~Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book


Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.  ~David Star Jordan, The Philosophy of Despair


Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking.  There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught.  ~J.C. Watts


If you have integrity, nothing else matters.  If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters.  ~Alan Simpson


Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.  ~Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism


Character is much easier kept than recovered.  ~Thomas Paine


Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.  Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.  Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.  Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.  Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.  But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.  ~Buddha


One does evil enough when one does nothing good.  ~German Proverb


There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience.  ~French Proverb


Don't try to be different.  Just be good.  To be good is different enough.  ~Arthur Freed


Your life may be the only Bible some people read.  ~Author Unknown


Do not repeat anything you will not sign your name to.  ~Author Unknown


Are right and wrong convertible terms, dependant upon popular opinion?  ~William Lloyd Garrison


The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out.  ~Thomas Babington Macaulay


The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.  ~William Safire


Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.  ~Albert Einstein


The only exercise some people get is jumping to conclusions, running down their friends, side-stepping responsibility, and pushing their luck!  ~Author Unknown


But that's always the way; it don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway.  If I had a yaller dog that didn't know no more than a person's conscience does I would pison him.  It takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet ain't no good, nohow.  ~Mark Twain, Huck Finn


Character is higher than intellect.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


When I do good, I feel good.  When I do bad, I feel bad.  That's my religion.  ~Abraham Lincoln


Every job is a self-portrait of the person who does it.  Autograph your work with excellence.  ~Author Unknown


Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.  ~Henry Ford


Laws control the lesser man.  Right conduct controls the greater one.  ~Chinese Proverb


A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.  ~Mark Twain, "What Is Man?", 1906


If we are ever in doubt about what to do, it is a good rule to ask ourselves what we shall wish on the morrow that we had done.  ~John Lubbock


You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.  ~James D. Miles


I thank Thee first because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse they did not take my life; third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth because it was I who was robbed, and not I who robbed.  ~Matthew Henry


My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.  ~Thomas Paine


Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right.  ~Isaac Asimov


To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.  ~William Shakespeare, Hamlet


A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company.  ~Charles Evans Hughes


Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.  ~Aristotle


You do not wake up one morning a bad person.  It happens by a thousand tiny surrenders of self-respect to self-interest.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


You can out-distance that which is running after you, but not what is running inside you.  ~Rwandan Proverb


A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.  ~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter


We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stouter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.  ~Logan Pearsall Smith


Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.  ~George Bernard Shaw


Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.  ~Samuel Butler, Erewhon

Every time I've done something that doesn't feel right, it's ended up not being right.  ~Mario Cuomo


My goal in life is to be as good of a person my dog already thinks I am.  ~Author Unknown


To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.  ~Confucius


We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.  ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kavanagh, 1849


You don't carry in your countenance a letter of recommendation.  ~Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge


I am,
indeed,
a king,
because I know how
to rule myself.
~Pietro Aretino, 10 May 1537


Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.  ~Michel de Montaigne


Be always sure you're right, then go ahead.  ~Davy Crockett


The only correct actions are those that demand no explanation and no apology.  ~Red Auerbach


Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily.  All other "sins" are invented nonsense.  (Hurting yourself is not a sin - just stupid.)  ~Robert A. Heinlein


Goodness is the only investment that never fails.  ~Henry David Thoreau


If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us at least live so as to deserve it.  ~Immanuel Hermass von Fichte


I have had more trouble with myself than with any other man I have ever met.  ~Dwight Lyman Moody


Conscience is that still, small voice that is sometimes too loud for comfort.  ~Bert Murray


Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.  ~Will Rogers


My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people:  those who work and those who take the credit.  He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there.  ~Indira Gandhi


The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes


A man is usually more careful of his money than of his principles.  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., speech, Boston, 8 January 1897


There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball,
And that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all.
~Ogden Nash


In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the current.  ~Thomas Jefferson


It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong.  ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Everyone complains of his memory, but no one complains of his judgment.  ~Francois de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1665


God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right even though I think it is hopeless.  ~Chester W. Nimitz


I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.  ~Author Unknown


Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.  ~Henry Louis Mencken, "Sententiae," This and That: A Mencken Chrestomathy, 1948


The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour.  ~Japanese Proverb


For the human mind is seldom at stay:  If you do not grow better, you will most undoubtedly grow worse.  ~Samuel Richardson


There is an ongoing battle between conscience and self-interest in which, at some point,we have to take sides.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


I would rather be right than President.  ~Henry Clay, speech, 1850


If moral behavior were simply following rules, we could program a computer to be moral.  ~Samuel P. Ginder


I never did, or countenanced, in public life, a single act inconsistent with the strictest good faith; having never believed there was one code of morality for a public, and another for a private man.  ~Thomas Jefferson, 1809


It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.  ~Noël Coward, Blithe Spirit


Goodness is beauty in the best estate.  ~Christopher Marlowe


The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart.  ~Alexander Solzhenitsyn


If we were all to be judged by our thoughts, the hills would be swarming with outlaws.  ~Johann Sigurjonsson


Righteousness is easy in retrospect.  ~Arthur Schlesinger Jr.


Persons with weight of character carry, like planets, their atmospheres along with them in their orbits.  ~Thomas Hardy


Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.  ~Elbert Hubbard, A Thousand and One Epigrams, 1911


I will follow the right side even to the fire, but excluding the fire if I can.  ~Michel de Montaigne, translated


Our names are labels, plainly printed on the bottled essence of our past behavior.  ~Logan Pearsall Smith


I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom simply by looking at the men at the top.  ~Frank Moore Colby


It's impossible to be loyal to your family, your friends, your country, and your principles, all at the same time.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be well-nigh useless, since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience the injustice of our fellows.  ~Jean Baptiste Molière, Le Misanthrope


If honor be your clothing, the suit will last a lifetime; but if clothing be your honor, it will soon be worn threadbare.  ~William Arnot


Conscience warns us before it reproaches us.  ~Comtesse Diane (Marie Josephine de Suin de Beausacq), Maximes de la vie, 1908


If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil.  ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge


Every wrong seems possible today, and is accepted.  I don't accept it.  ~Pablo Casals


Are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honour and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul?  ~Socrates


Every human being has... an attendant spirit.... If it does not always tell us what to do, it always cautions us what not to do.  ~Lydia M. Child


To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves.  ~Will Durant


Every man over forty is responsible for his face.  ~Abraham Lincoln


Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors.  Try to be better than yourself.  ~William Faulkner


There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thought under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.  ~Michel de Montaigne, Essays, 1595


If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?  ~Mark Twain


God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won't.  ~Alfred Korzyybski


You must question a code of ethics that never impedes your progress.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


What is right is often forgotten by what is convenient.  ~Bodie Thoene, Warsaw Requiem


I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.  ~Mahatma Gandhi


[T]hough of all poses a moral pose is the most offensive, still to have a pose at all is something.  ~Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist, 1890


A man may be born a jackass; but it is his business if he makes himself a double one.  ~Martin H. Fischer