Norman Lear Quotes

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

Leaders should be the chief repenters.

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

There is no man more dangerous, in a position of power, than he who refuses to accept as a working truth the idea that all a man does should make for rightness and soundness, that even the fixing of a tariff rate must be moral.

We need to be clear when we venerate entrepreneurs what we are venerating. They are not moral leaders. If they were moral leaders, they wouldn't be great businessmen.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

Every leader has the responsibility to hone his or her integrity. Many times, there are integrity traps that have a tendency to catch well-meaning leaders off guard.

Politicians may do as they please, so long as they violate no rule of right, no principle of justice, no law of God; but in no world, in no order, or condition, have men the right to do wrong.

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.

Humans are the only ones who are the custodians of other people's morals.

Do what's right and you'll please some of the people and astound the rest.

...the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword." "...a ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.

It is not easy to do something good, but it is extremely difficult to do something bad.

I will never do a record without some sense of responsibility.

There is no truth without responsibility following in its wake.

Someone once asked, 'What is the difference between me and Saddam Hussein?' The answer is, 'I have a conscience and he doesn't.'

In politics, the people I most despise are those who have no values.

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.

Ethics are not necessarily to do with being law-abiding. I am very interested in the moral path, doing the right thing.

Men are more accountable for their motives, than for anything else; and primarily, morality consists in the motives, that is in the affections.

Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.

I try not to do anything that's immoral.

When moral principles, rather than persons, are candidates for power, to vote is to perform a moral duty, and not to vote is to neglect a duty

The President was a responsibility beyond that of managing the government. He has a responsibility as a moral leader.

We must have a clean role model at the top. Clearly this has not been the case.