Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

The foundation of leadership is your own moral compass. I think the best quality leaders really know where their moral compass is. They get it out when they are making decisions. It's their guide. But not only do you have to have a moral compass and take it out of your pocket, it has to have a true north.

A president must make decisions based upon principle and stand by the principles by which he makes decisions in order to achieve peace.

In a president, character is everything. A president doesn't have to be brilliant... He doesn't have to be clever; you can hire clever... You can hire pragmatic, and you can buy and bring in policy wonks. But you cant buy courage and decency, you cant rent a strong moral sense. A president must bring those things with him. He needs to have, in that much maligned word, but a good one nonetheless, a vision of the future he wishes to create.. But a vision is worth little if a president doesn't have the character - the courage and heart - to see it through.

Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.

Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique.

I think the greater responsibility, in terms of morality, is where leadership begins.

At the end of the day, when it comes time to make that decision, as president, all you have to guide you are your values, and your vision, and the life experiences that make you who you are.

The point never to lose sight of is to be guided by the correct thing, as you see it. It's the only way to approach such profound matters and retain your integrity.

I believe you have to nurture your conscience.

If you want young people to take right and wrong seriously, you must put them in the presence of people who take right and wrong seriously.

Leadership is not manifested by coercion, even against the resented. Greatness is not manifested by unlimited pragmatism, which places such a high premium on the end justifying any means and any methods.

It is not true that people of high principle are ill-suited for politics.

You have to follow your moral compass: it's a good guide of telling you what is right and wrong.

I have only ever followed my conscience.

I have a pretty keen ethical compass.

Conscience is a man's compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities in directing one's course by it, still one must try to follow its direction.

It isn't polls or public opinion at the moment that counts. It is right and wrong and leadership--men with fortitude, honesty, and a belief in the right that makes epochs in the history of the world.

People will not follow a leader with moral incongruities for long. Every time you compromise character you compromise leadership. The foundation of firm leadership is character.

Be strong. Don't be a follower, and always do the right thing. If you have a choice between the right thing and the wrong thing, the right way is always the less stressful.

Leadership is not about popularity, it is about doing what is right.

In war, character and opinion make more than half of the reality.

Integrity, the choice between what's convenient and what's right.

Better to fail at doing the right thing than to succeed at doing the wrong thing.

There's more than one way to get to the goal that you want to get to, but once you compromise your own principles, then you're lost. You're really lost.

If people use common sense and their own guiding moral compass, I think they'll generally stay out of trouble.