John Winthrop Quotes

I can't stand what people do to each other. I think we're brilliant as a species. I think we are amazing. I think that God is incredible, that He just gave us everything. Everything in our face. Everything for us to use. And sometimes we're such shitheads. And it makes me crazy.

God holds his people responsible for righteousness, not for results.

For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.

Anyone can see that intending and not acting when we can is not really intending, and loving and not doing good when we can is not really loving.

Every Catholic parliamentarian must vote according their well-formed conscience. I would say just this. I believe it is sufficient because - I say well-formed because it is not the conscience of 'what seems to me.'

Unless we lay our course in accordance with this principle, the great power for good in the world with which we have been intrusted by a Divine Providence will be turned to a power for evil.

And once again I think about how people use the devil as an alias for the things they fear. The cause and effect is backward. The devil doesn't make anyone do anything. People just do things and blame the devil after.

Man is responsible not only for every deed, but also for every idle word and thought.

The essence of God's action in wrath is to give people what they choose, in all its implications.

The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying.

The best government in the world, the best religion, the best traditions of any people, depend upon the good or evil of the men and women who administer them.

The good God would not inspire unattainable desires.

I'm not like a politician that goes around talking about family values. And I can't get fired from being a funny person because I did something that most people are disapproving of. I think people are just obsessed with this morality that people perceive as being the right and wrong way of doing stuff.

Freedom is for honest people. No man who is not himself honest can be free – he is his own trap.

I'm not a proponent of people watching a movie, and then going out and doing something bad. People have been doing bad things, well before movies.

What a massive responsibility, being a moral creature

Broken people misuse their power while people who have values don't use their powers in a way that harms.

I don't seem to get solemn about it, and some people might not understand. That's why I never talk about it. I think it's all here -- in the mountains and the desert. I don't think God is a softie, either. In the end, it's better if people are forced back into -- well -- into being right, before they're too far gone. I think your temple is your everyday living.

Be sure to live up to your reputation for honesty and goodness, because many souls who believe you to be honest and good have placed themselves in your hands.

[Moral responsibilities] has nothing particular to do with academia, except insofar as those within it tend to be unusually privileged in the respects just mentioned.

We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade?

God judges men according to the use they make of the light which He gives them.

Make tawba not just for sins you've committed, but also for obligations you haven't fulfilled.

People of poor character tend to blame their choices on circumstances. Ethical people make good choices regardless of circumstances. If they make enough good choices, they begin to create better conditions for themselves.

All men of goodwill have this in common - that our works put us to shame.