Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Fundamentally, the force that rules the world is conduct, whether it be moral or immoral. If it is moral, at least there may be hope for the world. If immoral, there is not only no hope, but no prospect of anything but destruction of all that has been accomplished during the last 5,000 years.

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

As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.

We don't claim to have perfect morals, but at least we have a huge area of things that, while legal, are beneath us. We won't do them. Currently, there's a culture in Americathat says that anything that won't send you to prison is OK.

It can never be necessary to do what is not honourable.

There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules

If throughout your life you abstain from murder, theft, fornication, perjury, blasphemy, and disrespect toward your parents, church, and your king, you are conventionally held to deserve moral admiration even if you have never done a single kind, generous or useful action. This very inadequate notion of virtue is an outcome of taboo morality, and has done untold harm.

A corrupt practice may be abolished, but a soiled imagination is not easily cleansed.

Without integrity and conscience we lose our freedom.

Our behavior is governed by principles. Living in harmony with them brings positive consequences; violating them brings negative consequences.

...virtue is not merely a state in conformity with the right principle, but one that implies the right principle; and the right principle in moral conduct is prudence.

The very essence of our civilization is that we give a paramount place to morality in all our affairs, public or private.

Integrity is never painless.

Integrity, honesty, and honor may not give immediate rewards or gratification, and they can be life-threatening (for example, being a whistle-blower or turning state's evidence). The absence of integrity, honesty, and honor do not always bring punishment or scorn, and can be life-aggrandizing (connivers and cheats often gain power and wealth). Therefore, morality must be its own reward.

In day-to-day life, you have stimulus to behave unethically, but in the long term, it always pays off to be ethical.

To make your people understand what righteousness is, this must be the basis of all your teaching.

There's a great deal of difference between thinking reflectively about moral issues and achieving higher standards of ethical behavior.

Compromise on ethical conduct is not an option.

I should not deal with things that aren't founded on ethical principles, because that's not who I am as a human being.

I have a pretty keen ethical compass.

It's better to die doing good than to live doing evil.

Is it important to be right or is it important to do what's right? That's one of the hardest lessons to learn.

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

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.

Virtue is nothing but an act of loving that which is to be beloved, and that act is prudence, from whence not to be removed by constraint is fortitude; not to be allured by enticements is temperance; not to be diverted by pride is justice.