Daniel Patrick Moynihan Quotes

True education is concerned not only with practical goals but also with values. Our aims assure us of our material life, our values make possible our spiritual life.

If you do not know the laws of right conduct, you cannot form your character.

In everything I do, whether in business, philanthropy or my personal life, I am guided by my inner truth, my values.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

I've always believed in people's capacity for goodness. I still believe that people are good. What I'm not so trusting about anymore is their relationship to their own goodness.

I don't think I'm naturally a good person. I think some people have an innate goodness to them, and I am sort of proud of the fact that I kind of keep myself in check, probably because I have awesome parents.

We have to rediscover the eternal values and then live them out.

Jesus always pointed people towards a better version of themselves - particularly when they'd failed.

Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.

Prayer provides an opportunity to remind oneself of how one should be living, our responsibilities to others, our own failings, and our relative good fortune, should we have it. This is, I think, a pretty worthwhile practice and it is not something you can only do if you believe you are talking to an unseen creator.

The formation of one's character ought to be everyone's chief aim.

Honestly, what keeps me grounded is my faith and my value system.

You can be true to the character all you want but you've got to go home with yourself.

Character isn't something you were born with and can't change, like your fingerprints. It's something you weren't born with and must take responsibility for forming.

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.

Above the cloud with its shadow is the star with its light. Above all things reverence thyself.

You shall always find what you created in your mind, for instance, a benevolent God or an evil Devil. Between them are countless facets. Therefore, concentrate on the depth of your consciousness and on what you consider to be positive and good.

I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.

The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.

The only currency I value is the coin of the spirit. That's very important in my life.

Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience.

You have principles. You test them as accurately as you can. Eventually, they might break down.

My relationship with God is what gives me a moral compass on what decisions to make and that stuff. I'm thankful that I have the people around me that I do, and they remind me each day of who I am and what I stand for.

I think I can be spiritual, and I can feel that I want to live well, I want to do things that I'm proud of, and I think that's important. Now, do I need a church to tell me that? Actually, no, I don't.

Monsters will always exist. There's one inside each of us. But an angel lives there, too. There is no more important agenda than figuring out how to slay one and nurture the other.