Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

To know the laws is not to memorize their letter but to grasp their full force and meaning.

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.

The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.

We all have the duty to do good.

I have been a firm believer in the federal structure of our country as enshrined in the Constitution.

How can we help President Obama?

Laws should be interpreted in a liberal sense so that their intention may be preserved.

The mind of America is seized by a fatal dry rot – and it’s only a question of time before all that the mind controls will run amuck in a frenzy of stupid, impotent fear.

In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls… saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?

Corruption is just another form of tyranny.

Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is.

I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

We need to have business leaders who live by deep, strong principles.

Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men.

Democracy as a system has evolved into something that Thomas Jefferson didn’t anticipate.

Let’s pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

If you believe in science, like I do, you believe that there are certain laws that are always obeyed.

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‚Present‘ or ‚Not guilty.‘

One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.

Younger scientists are extremely sensitive to the moral implications of all they do.

Principles are guidelines for human conduct that are proven to have enduring, permanent value.

Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs.

He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

I don’t write policy for my government.

I think governments can’t do much.

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.

You see, rebellion, and the disobedience it causes, keeps us from having the power of God that’s available to us as Christians.

Artists have a responsibility to speak and to act when governments fail, and if we don’t do that, we really deserve the world we get.

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

I don’t use Twitter for bad.

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

One of the great attractions of patriotism – it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.

It’s not proper for the government to intrude too thoroughly into the domain of the family. It’s inappropriate.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

It’s very difficult for the American people to believe that our government, one of the richest on Earth, is also one of the stingiest on Earth.

A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

No public man can be just a little crooked.

The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.

If something can corrupt you, you’re corrupted already.

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world.

I do not believe that government should be in the business of telling women what they should do with their bodies.

The quality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.

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.

If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.