And whether you’re an honest man, or whether you’re a thief, depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.

No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.

At ev’ry word a reputation dies.

Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.

I’ve been writing poems since I was in the Navy – to Rosalynn. I found I could say things in poems that I never could in prose. Deeper, more personal things. I could write a poem about my mother that I could never tell my mother. Or feelings about being on a submarine that I would have been too embarrassed to share with fellow submariners.

There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.

Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.

I always wrote poetry and stuff like that, so putting songs together wasn’t that spectacular.

Morality is of the highest importance – but for us, not for God.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.

Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what’s right.

Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying.

Honor is the reward of virtue.

If a person is successful, we imagine they are probably also ethical, conscientious and deserving of their good fortune. This obscures the fact that many people who get ahead have done so by doing less than moral actions, which they cleverly disguise from view.

The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit.

Politics have no relation to morals.

When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

To be is to do.

No legacy is so rich as honesty.

The truth is, I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let men sometimes fool themselves.

If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure – the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

Is science of any value? I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.

The best way to keep one’s word is not to give it.

Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

As long as the people don’t fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn’t stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful… but so frightening.

If co-operation is a duty, I hold that non-co-operation also under certain conditions is equally a duty.

We just seem to have lost all our morals and principles and values these days.

So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having.

As the poet said, ‚Only God can make a tree,‘ probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

I read poetry to save time.

Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow.

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.

Where every something, being blent together turns to a wild of nothing.

The man of life upright has a guiltless heart, free from all dishonest deeds or thought of vanity.

I don’t have any secrets I need kept any more.

Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.

As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words.

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

Desire of having is the sin of covetousness.

One thing you gotta know about me is I have absolutely no filter. I have no problem saying what the hell I think of someone.

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

Law, without force, is impotent.

If you ever injected truth into politics you have no politics.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

I’ve been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that’s kind of a religious belief. I mean, it’s at least a moral belief.

There is no person in this room whose basic rights are not involved in any successful defiance to the carrying out of court orders.

No lying knight or lying priest ever prospered in any age, but especially not in the dark ones. Men prospered then only in following an openly declared purpose, and preaching candidly beloved and trusted creeds.

Truly, I would not hang a dog by my will, much more a man who hath any honesty in him.

It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

In assisting his ‚neighbour‘ every day to the best of his ability, and keeping truth, honesty, and kindness perpetually before him, the Boy Scout, with as little formality as possible, is pleasing God.

Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.

For a war to be just three conditions are necessary – public authority, just cause, right motive.