Joel Salatin Quotes

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

In day-to-day life, you have stimulus to behave unethically, but in the long term, it always pays off to be ethical.

Ethical is 'I'll wait and do what's right even in the hardest times and even if I have to give up gains to do it.'

I'm just doing what my conscience asks me to do.

There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience.

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

I believe in pursuing my own morality. That is all I have ever stuck by. It is my own morality that really matters.

Conscience? Great souls do not worry themselves with such little details

If the Soviet Government orders me to act against my conscience, I do not obey …. Conscience is above the law. No law which is against the conscience can bind.

I will live and die by this testimony: that I loved a good conscience; that I never invaded another man's liberty; and that I preserved my own.

[On disagreeing with her husband about his slave-holding:] I cannot give my conscience into the keeping of another human being or submit the actions dictated by my conscience to their will.

Those who really deserve praise are the people who, while human enough to enjoy power, nevertheless pay more attention to justice than they are compelled to do by their situation.

Your friend is intellectually honourable," Jimmy's mother would say. "He doesn't lie to himself.

Over and over again, people had to disobey lawful authority to follow the voice of their conscience. This obedience to God and disobedience to the State has, over and over again, happened throughout history. It is time again to cry out against our 'leaders,' to question (since it is not for us to say that they are evil) whether or not they are sane.

When there's a right and wrong thing to do, choose right regardless of what your friends do.

Stand for right, even if you stand alone.

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.

Virtue is more to man than either water or fire. I have seen men die from treading on water and fire, but I have never seen a man die from treading the course of virtue.

I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.

Most thoughtful people would agree that morality in the absence of policing is somehow more truly moral than the kind of false morality that vanishes as soon as the police go on strike or the spy camera is switched off, whether the spy camera is a real one monitored in the police station or an imaginary one in heaven.

How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives? To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption? Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself.

I don't want to have kids and so I am not going to have kids. People who want kids are going to have kids. I'm doing what I want to do and people who want kids are doing what they want to do. What about this scenario makes me selfish?

If we are to be really great people, we must strive in good faith to play a great part in the world. We cannot avoid meeting great issues. All that we can determine for ourselves is whether we shall meet them well or ill.

... if your heart and your honest body can be controlled by the state, or controlled by community taboo, are you not then, and in that case, no more than a slave ruled by outside force? What tyranny could exceed a tyranny that dictates to the human heart, and that attempts to dictate the public career of an honest human body?

The idea that people should be allowed to decide something about their own fate is just anathema to European elites.