Alfred Milner Quotes

Our duty is to stand up for those who do the right thing.

A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality.

There are many persons ready to do what is right because in their hearts they know it is right. But they hesitate, waiting for the other fellow to make the make the first move - and he, in turn, waits for you.

Depart from discretion when it interferes with duty.

Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage.

What's right and good doesn't come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does.

There are things you stand up for because it's right.

It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support.

Fighting for what is right is not always popular but is always necessary.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right — for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be "damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

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.

Think first of the action that is right to take, think later about coping with one's fears.

There are two freedoms - the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought.

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.

There's no statute of limitations on doing what's right.

Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it.

We may draw good out of evil; we must not do evil, that good may come.

A conscientious man ought not to regard what may happen to him in this world.

What is done cannot be effaced. We have to act upon a moral field prepared for us ...

To live with integrity in an unjust society we must work for justice. To walk with integrity through a landscape strewn with beer cans, we must stop and pick them up.

Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.

In my life as a soldier and citizen, I have seen time and time again that inaction has dire consequences.

On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' And Vanity comes along and asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But Conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?'

Sacrifice is putting country before party and principles before politics. It is not defending the indefensible, protecting the powerful, or staying silent in the face of injustice just because you'd like to keep your job.