Samuel Butler Quotes

A little hypocrisy is better than losing.

Theoretical principals must sometimes give way for the sake of practical advantages.

One learns to itch where one can scratch.

You can’t set aside … values in the name of political expediency.

One clings to principles for only as long as they are not put to the test. When that happens one throws them away as the peasant does his slippers.

You can compromise without violating your principles, but it is nearly impossible to compromise when you turn principles into ideology.

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

Let no one charge me with ever having abused or encouraged weakness or surrendered on matters of principle. But I have said, as I say again, that every trifle must not be dignified into a principle.

Never stand so high upon a principle that you cannot lower it to suit the circumstances.

One learns to itch where one can scratch.

You must not try to be too pure, you must fly closer to the sea.

if I can't get what I want - well, I'll want what I can get.

Stupidly it should not be. It should be also nice. One must get along with that. Is however not necessary.

While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.

I think we ought to take the world as it is and not as we would like to have it.

In an ideal world, you'd never have to do things that are below your position, but this isn't an ideal world, and it's never going to be.

I shall argue that strong men, conversely, know when to compromise and that all principles can be compromised to serve a greater principle.

I am a mixture of idealist and realist.

Coming from a big family, I learned a lot. Things don't have to be perfect. You can do okay with 'almost.'

It is best to live however one can be.

It is safest to be moderately base - to be flexible in shame, and to be always ready for what is generous, good, and just, when anything is to be gained by virtue.

Principles ... become modified in practice, by facts.

If you cannot have what you believe in, you must believe in what you have.

That is what all of us must learn to do in the United States; to limit objectives, to get ourselves away from the absolute, to find out what is within our powers.

Principle is ever my motto, not expediency.