Bill Clinton Quotes

I think it's a really admirable thing to be very sure of your own moral code and not waver from that.

My beliefs will run through everything I do. My beliefs, my values are my anchor and when people try to drag me, as I know they will, it is to that sense of right and wrong, that sense of who I am and what I believe, to which I will always hold.

We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.

Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.

Morality may consist solely in the courage of making a choice.

To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time.

A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.

The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

Sound moral principle is the only sure evidence of strength, the only firm foundation of greatness and perpetuity. Where this is lacking, no man's character is strong; no nation's life can be lasting.

And what, incidentally, do you think integrity is? The ability not to pick a watch out of your neighbor's pocket? No, it's not as easy as that. If that were all, I'd say ninety-five percent of humanity were honest, upright men. Only, as you can see, they aren't. Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.

He might be a man without character, but she was a woman without courage. Of the two, which was worse?

I learned that moral courage is harder than physical courage.

Early in life I learned, just through observation, that right always wins out over wrong. If a person has good intentions in his heart and wants to do the right thing, then there are certain ways that any obstacle can be overcome.

Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.

The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

Character is that quality of mind which makes truth-telling instinctive rather than strange.

The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything.

I don't think lying has any ultimate justification. I don't think it ever leads to anything positive. The good fight to have is not to lie. That's one of the challenges in a way.

The imperative is to define what is right and do it.

Moral courage is higher and a rarer virtue than physical courage.

Convictions, in the end, they can be dangerous, but a world without them is just kind of an awful kind of gray, amorphous mass.

'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

People will judge you according to your own convictions.

Frankly, right is right and wrong is wrong, particularly when a parent is talking to a child. A bright line around moral responsibility is very important.