Herman Melville Quotes

With integrity you have nothing to fear, since you have nothing to hide. With integrity you will do the right thing, so you will have no guilt. With fear and guilt removed you are free to be and do your best.

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

The glory of the good is in their consciences, and not in the tongues of men.

Without integrity and conscience we lose our freedom.

A person who is fundamentally honest doesn't need a code of ethics. The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount are all the ethical code anybody needs.

Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.

It is far more important to me to preserve an unblemished conscience than to compass any object however great.

Conscience is the most sacred of all property.

If the Soviet Government orders me to act against my conscience, I do not obey …. Conscience is above the law. No law which is against the conscience can bind.

I have only ever followed my conscience.

I think my moral ground is very much intact.

I was taught growing up that you always do what you believe.

You don't luck into integrity. You work at it.

[T]here is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists . . . an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.

Self-restraint is the very keystone of the ethics of vow-taking.

What can be more honorable than to have courage enough to execute the commands of reason and conscience,--to maintain the dignity of our nature, and the station assigned us?

Be more careful of your conscience than of your estate. The latter can be bought and sold; the former never.

I prefer to do right and get no thanks than to do wrong and receive no punishment.

No client ever had money enough to bribe my conscience or to stop its utterance against wrong, and oppression.

What is morality, she asked. Judgement to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, and courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price.

You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.

Of course, my views developed in the course of time. But I have always believed in what I did and never acted against my conscience.

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.

That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong.

A good man with a good conscience doesn't walk so fast.