Confucius Quotes

If the people be led by laws, and uniformity sought to be given them by punishments, they will try to avoid the punishment, but have no sense of shame.

Guide the people by law, subdue them by punishment; they may shun crime, but will be void of shame. Guide them by example, subdue them by courtesy; they will learn shame, and come to be good.

To make your people understand what righteousness is, this must be the basis of all your teaching.

The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.

There are bad examples which are worse than crimes; and more states have perished from the violation of morality than from the violation of law.

If virtue precede us every step will be safe.

There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not always call itself by that name.

There'd be a lot less scandal if people didn't idealize sin and pose as sinners.

Leadership, in short, is power governed by principle, directed toward raising people to their highest levels of personal motive and social morality.

Knowledge, learning, talents are not necessarily connected with sound moral and political principles.... And eminent abilities, accompanied with depravity of heart, render the possessor tenfold more dangerous in a community.

People are either good or they're not. Religion doesn't make anybody good, I don't think.

You cannot make men good by law.

Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

Ethics is the activity of man directed to secure the inner perfection of his own personality.

We have found that morals are not, like bacon, to be cured by hanging; nor, like wine, to be improved by sea voyages; nor, like honey, to be preserved in cells.

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

Morality, like language, is an invented structure for conserving and communicating order. And morality is learned, like language, by mimicking and remembering.

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.

One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.

For they, the philosophers, were considered teachers of right living, which is far more excellent, since to speak well belongs only to a few, but to live well belongs to all.

Moral values, and a culture and a religion, maintaining these values are far better than laws and regulations.

Seeking the good is not primarily about rules and commandments.

It is becoming clear that the old platitudes can no longer be maintained, and that if we wish to improve our morals we must first improve our knowledge.

For children to take morality seriously they must be in the presence of adults who take morality seriously. And with their own eyes they must see adults take morality seriously.

Education is the art of making man ethical.