Barack Obama Quotes

Ethics is not a job that anyone turns to naturally, but every public agency has to have it.

I think of Martin Luther King phrase a lot when I'm deciding public issues. He said: "Here I stand: I can do no other." It is basically an affirmation of my ultimate responsibility to obey my conscience in my acts as a public official.

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

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

I did what my conscience told me to do, and you can't fail if you do that.

I have never taken a job or done a job where I felt I needed to leave my conscience at the door. One of the great things about not being in politics as a career is that I can do this job without thinking about my career. I can think about what we're trying to do, what we're trying to accomplish and what we're trying to leave.

Since politics fundamentally should be a moral enterprise, the church in this sense has something to say about politics.

Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do.

I've always felt like we're all human beings and we're all basically given the tools to make whatever choices we want to make. How we treat other people. How we treat ourselves. Just the whole philosophy of that and the philosophical logic of that is that we're all capable of great acts of evil, and we're all capable of great acts of good.

Moral liberty is the power of following, in all circumstances, our sense of right and wrong, or of acting in conformity to our reflecting and moral principles, without being controlled by any contrary principles.

Every generation will be challenged morally once in their life about its government, and they will have to say where they stand.

A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong - acting the part of a good man or of a bad.

A brave man hazards life, but not his conscience.

This is the part of a great man, after he has maturely weighed all circumstances, to punish the guilty, to spare the many, and in every state of fortune not to depart from an upright, virtuous conduct.

We need moral leadership and courage in our world.

Do right and risk the consequences.

It's essential that we do what's right - not necessarily what appears to be immediately popular.

Dr. Martin Luther King was never a man to say 'I've got this' as the leader of the movement. He wasn't always sure that his decisions were correct, because he knew every decision he made was putting lives at risk, including his and his family's lives.

I think a public official ought to follow his conscience as to what is in the public interest, not what will protect his job.

Sometimes being a leader isn’t about winning. Sometimes it’s about doing what’s right, instead of what’s powerful.

When there's a right and wrong thing to do, choose right regardless of what your friends do.

Leaders should be able to Stand Alone, Take the Heat, Bear the Pain, Tell the Truth, and Do What's Right

In a profession, members are only partly guided by service to the public.

I think, as a president, you have to want respect. You can't look for love from the American people. You have to just do what you think is right. Some people will hate you, but others, in the long run, will respect you for what you've done.

As president, I could run the Trump organization, great, great company, and I could run the company - the country. I'd do a very good job, but I don't want to do that.