Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

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

Always stand on principle even if you stand alone.

It takes courage to have a conscience when you seem to see others getting something tangible out of not bothering to struggle with the morality of a situation. It gets frustrating and demoralizing. This is precisely where character comes in. All throughout history special people have felt compelled to do what they objectively saw as right and good - even in the face of humiliation or rejection or expulsion or torture or death. That is because they believed that certain ideas were more important than individual well-being.

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

We manifest character when self-sacrifice for the sake of our principles becomes more important than compromise for the sake of popularity.

Stand for right, even if you stand alone.

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

I believe I'm a better authority than anybody else in America on my own wife. I have never known a person with a stronger sense of right and wrong in my life ever.

I never in my life and felt more certain that I was doing right than I do in signing this paper

Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.

For myself I say deliberately, it is better to have a millstone tied round the neck and be thrown into the sea than to share the enterprises of those to whom the world has turned, and will turn, because they minister to its weaknesses and cover up the awful realities which it shudders to look at.

The traits I respect are erudition and the courage to stand up when half-men are afraid for their reputation. Any idiot can be intelligent.

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.

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.

Men have died in torture chambers, on the stake, in concentration camps, in front of firing squads, rather than renounce their convictions. The appeaser renounces his under the pressure of a frown on a vacant face.

From long familiarity, we know what honor is. It is what enables the individual to do right in the face of complacency and cowardice. It is what enables the soldier to die alone, the political prisoner to resist, the singer to sing her song, hardly appreciated, on a side street.

Virtue has many preachers, but few martyrs.

I will not yield to any man contrary to what is right, for fear of death, even if I should die at once for not yielding.

I shall not be deprived ... of a comfort in the worst event, if I retain a consciousness of having acted to the best of my judgment.

Right is right though all condemn, and wrong is wrong though all approve.

To have a firm persuasion in our work - to feel that what we do is right for ourselves and good for the world at exactly the same time - is one of the great triumphs of human existence.

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.

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.

Sir, what does it matter whom I serve, so long as I am right?

Conscience is the root of all true courage.