Confucius Quotes

Laws control the lesser man... Right conduct controls the greater one.

Respect for self is the beginning of cultivating virtue in men and women.

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

You must do right before you feel good.

We must understand that the highest form of freedom carries with it the greatest measure of discipline.

To mind your own business incorporates the whole duty of man.

Tis weak and vicious people who cast the blame on Fate. The right use of Fate is to bring up our conduct to the loftiness of nature.

It was time to pull my moral socks up and behave myself.

Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals.

Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our deeds.

But there is a corollary to freedom and that's personal responsibility, and the real challenge is how you generate that personal responsibility without imposing it.

No one can harm the man who does himself no wrong.

What a man does defiles him, not what is done by others.

A man's character is his guardian divinity.

When government tries to serve as a parent or teacher or a moral guide, individuals may be tempted to discard their own sense of responsibility, to argue that only government must help people in need. If we've learned anything in the past quarter century, it is that we cannot federalize virtue.

Reform must come from within and not from without. You cannot legislate for virtue.

Anything which tends to bring a greater sense of responsibility to individuals should be encouraged.

Assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat; Of habits devil, is angel yet in this.

It is a momentous fact that a man may be good, or he may be bad; his life may be true, or it may be false; it may be either a shame or a glory to him. The good man builds himself up; the bad man destroys himself.

Prayer is often a temptation to bank on a miracle of God instead of on a moral issue, i.e., it is much easier to ask God to do my work than it is to do it myself. Until we are disciplined properly, we will always be inclined to bank on God's miracles and refuse to do the moral thing ourselves. It is our job, and it will never be done unless we do it.

We should make virtue our master, not our servant.

Never stop working on your statue until the divine glory of virtue shines out on you, until you see self-mastery enthroned upon its holy seat.

A big part of honesty is self-discipline, personal resolve, and taking pride in who you are as a person and what each action means to your character.

Virtue does not consist in the absence of the passions, but in the control of them.

As individuals, we have to act independently of the politics at hand. I don't feel an added responsibility to do anything more beyond being who I've always been and acting decently. I've always felt people are looking down on us and expecting us to fail. That's enough of a burden, and we automatically try to act with dignity.