William Cowper Quotes

Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.

In the long run, the public interest depends on private virtue.

The ages of greatest public spirit are not always eminent for private virtue.

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Morals are private. Decency is public.

Where the roots of private virtue are diseased, the fruit of public probity cannot but be corrupt.

Virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.

Virtue is necessary to a republic.

Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks-no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea, if there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.

Liberty is equally desirable to the good and to the bad, to the brave and to the dastardly.

Though a hundred crooked paths may conduct to a temporary success, the one plain and straight path of public and private virtue can alone lead to a pure and lasting fame and the blessings of posterity.

Integrity is the evidence of all civil virtues.

[M]en will be free no longer then while they remain virtuous.

Void of freedom, what would virtue be?

Virtue will catch as well as vice by contact; and the public stock of honest manly principle will daily accumulate. We are not too nicely to scrutinize motives as long as action is irreproachable. It is enough (and for a worthy man perhaps too much) to deal out its infamy to convicted guilt and declared apostasy.

A man should be upright, not be kept upright.

Liberty without virtue would be no blessing to us.

When you rely on incentives, you undermine virtues. Then when you discover that you actually need people who want to do the right thing, those people don't exist because you've crushed anyone's desire to do the right thing with all these incentives.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

To do nothing evil is good; to wish nothing evil is better.

If vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established.

Everyone tries to define this thing called Character. It's not hard. Character is doing what's right when nobody's looking.