Will Rogers Quotes

You think the end justifies the means, however vile. I tell you: the end is the means by which you achieve it. Today's step is tomorrow's life. Great ends cannot be attained by base means. You've proved that in all your social upheavals. The meanness and inhumanity of the means make you mean and inhuman and make the end unattainable.

A legal broom's a moral chimney-sweeper, And that's the reason he himself's so dirty

No public man can be just a little crooked. There is no such thing as a no-man's land between honesty and dishonesty.

Those who are most moral are farthest from the problem.

So far as regards their moral character, the Finns have as little cause for reproach as any other people.

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.

I don't want to have to compromise my morals in order to make a living.

A license to practice law is not a license to violate it.

A good lawyer is a bad Christian.

My conscience won't allow me to do films I thought were bad but were going to make money.

The superior man... does not set his mind either for or against anything, he will pursue whatever is right. The superior man thinks of virtue, the common man of comfort.

It is difficult for me to regard anyone who obeys no moral principle in his conduct to be a religious man.

Integrity in the Moment of Choice: Quality of life depends on what happens in the space between stimulus and response.

The whole history of man is continuous proof of the maxim that to divest one's methods of ethical concepts means to sink into the depths of utter demoralization.

Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.

I've lost a lot. I've lost money, and my reputation has taken a hit for taking the high road to protect my dignity, to protect children, and for other good causes. But I don't think there's ever too steep a price for doing the right thing.

For he who is honest is noble, Whatever his fortunes or birth.

Our probity is not less at the mercy of fortune than our property.

What is right is not always the same as what is legal

Integrity means that if our private life were suddenly exposed, we'd have no reason to be ashamed or embarrassed. Integrity means that our outward life is consistent with our inner convictions.

Who is respectable when thinking himself alone and free from observation will be so before the eye of all the world.

There is no honest man! not one, that can resist the attraction of gold!

... men of highest genius have been too frequently of extremely shaky morals.

Age whitens hairs, but not sin.

When one has no character, one HAS to apply a method. Here it did wonders incontrovertibly, and I am living on the site of one of the greatest crimes in human history.