Victor Mikhailovich Chernov Quotes

He [William Gladstone] made his conscience not his guide but his accomplice.

Lenin is an absolutely honest man, but a man with a one-track mind. For that reason his moral sense has been dulled. Lenin's socialism is a blunt socialism; he uses a big ax where a scalpel is needed.

No public man can be just a little crooked. There is no such thing as a no-man's land between honesty and dishonesty.

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.

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

Every night I go over what I did in the day, in ethical or moral terms. Have I treated people properly? Did I tell the truth?

A clear conscience is a sure card.

Fidelity to conscience is inconsistent with retiring modesty. If it be so, let the modesty succumb. It can be only a false modesty which can be thus endangered.

When the sun comes up, I have morals again.

Conscience - the only incorruptible thing about us.

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

An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.

The chief prerequisite for a escort is to have a flexible conscience and an inflexible politeness.

I have a hard time with morals. All I know is what feels right, what's more important to me is being honest about who you are. Morals I get a little hung up on.

The greatest want of the world is the want of men - men who will not be bought or sold; men who in their inmost souls are true and honest; men who do not fear to call sin by its right name; men whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole; men who will stand for the right though the heavens fall.

Conscience? Great souls do not worry themselves with such little details

When statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.

When you're on the side of the angels, it's easier to stretch the truth.

I never place myself mentally in the position of compromising principle and conscience. But there are times when I might harmonize differences in order to make progress, or maintain unity.

If experience teaches us anything it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

Lenin was a Russian bourgeois who cursed the weakness and ineptitude of the Russian bourgeoisie

Saint-Just's lips were believed to be pure. There was faith in him because of his reputation for asceticism and Spartan frugality. He had been an example of all the civic virtues. The purity of morals which he passionately demanded was no more than that which he practiced himself

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.

This above all,--to thine own self be true; and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.