Confucius Quotes

ATHENA: You wish to be called righteous rather than act right. [...] I say, wrong must not win by technicalities.

Justice shines in very smoky homes, and honors the righteous; but the gold-spangled mansions where the hands are unclean she leaves with eyes averted.

Amongst the sons of men how few are known Who dare be just to merit not their own.

Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honour, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means.

The best and only safe road to honor, glory, and true dignity is justice.

There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as justice.

Worthy of honor is he who does no injustice, and more than twofold honor, if he not only does no injustice himself, but hinders others from doing any.

A determination never to do what is wrong, prudence, and good-humor, will go far toward securing to you the estimation of the world.

If I have one wish which is greater than another, it is, if I had the power, to make men do right; to make them stop their swearing, their lying, their deceiving, to stop trying to injure the innocent, and begin to be honest and upright in all their dealings with one another and honor the name of the Deity.

In his dealings with the world, the gentleman is not invariably for or against anything. He is on the side of what is moral.

Nor let us part with justice, like a cheap and common thing, for a small and trifling price.

Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just.

My future is righteousness.

People must have righteous principals in the first, and then they will not fail to perform virtuous actions.

The just man walks in his integrity

Let justice be done, though the heavens fall. Fiat justitia et ruant coeli.

Virtue is nothing but an act of loving that which is to be beloved, and that act is prudence, from whence not to be removed by constraint is fortitude; not to be allured by enticements is temperance; not to be diverted by pride is justice.

Keep alive the light of justice, And much that men say in blame will pass you by.

There is no wrong time to do the right thing.

The proper man understands equity, the small man profits.

The generous person is always just, and the just who is always generous may, unannounced, approach the throne of heaven.

I wish I could be honest and true, but truth as I see it is not something abstract, a pious generality---It is justice at work, righteous, demanding, disciplined, sincere and unswerving; otherwise, it is not, it cannot be truth at all.

An honest man here lies at rest, the friend of man the friend of truth the friend of age and guide of youth. Few hearts like his with virtue warmed, few heads with knowledge so informed. If there's another world, he lives in bliss. If there is none, he made the best of this.

Always do what's right. That will gratify some and surprise the rest.