Rabindranath Tagore Quotes

I never did, or countenanced, in public life, a single act inconsistent with the strictest good faith; having never believed there was one code of morality for a public, and another for a private man.

Honesty is largely a matter of information, of knowing that dishonesty is a mistake. Principle is not as powerful in keeping people straight as a policeman.

No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.

Would that the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy, might be laid to heart; that a sense of the true aim of life might elevate the tone of politics and trade till public and private honor become identical.

There is no man more dangerous, in a position of power, than he who refuses to accept as a working truth the idea that all a man does should make for rightness and soundness, that even the fixing of a tariff rate must be moral.

There is no truth without responsibility following in its wake.

Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.

My feeling is that the hero has now been defined by phrases like the odious one that we were all raised with - crimes does not pay. Of course it pays, you schmuck. That's not why we don't do it. We don't do it because it is wrong.

Unless we provide consequences for activities and actions that are wrong, we are not going to get any truth.

I never hurt anybody in this business, ever.

What I'm doing is writing stories about women who care about justice. They are women who think about the difference between right and wrong, what's legal and illegal, ethical and unethical, moral and immoral.

Since the state is a community of human beings it is as truly subject to the moral law as any private society.

Law is not self-executing. Unfortunately, at times its execution rests in the hands of those who are faithless to it. And even when its enforcement is committed to those who revere it, law merely deters some human beings from offending, and punishes other human beings for offending. This does not make men good. This task can be performed only by ethics or religion or morality.

I do not believe in a political strategy that does not have a moral foundation.

We’re not here to bring politics to our morality, but to bring morality to our politics.

We need to look at truth. We need to look at justice, and we need to look at righteousness. And let that be our guide going forward.

Democracy or politics done without values and ideals is dangerous for the country.

My mother's bottom line was truth to her values. It meant bringing your heart and your humanity to work.

The umbrella that I live under is that you must be truthful with everyone except when to do so would injure them or others.

A man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice.

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it the second time.

The life of an honest man must be a perpetual infidelity.

Integrity is hard work. I do think the Internet makes it harder because of the temptations of performance. You can perform and have integrity, but it's easier just to perform.

Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.

Morality is truth in full bloom.