Thomas Paine Quotes

If you do not know the laws of right conduct, you cannot form your character.

Virtue is not hereditary.

Higher education is not necessarily a guarantee of higher virtue.

In search of a complete education with the ideals of trust, faith, understanding and compassion, many families are turning to the structure, discipline and academic standards of Catholic schools.

We owe it to our ancestors to preserve entire those rights which they have delivered to our care. We owe it to our posterity not to suffer their dearest inheritance to be destroyed.

It is the high privilege and sacred duty of those now living to educate their successors and fit them, by intelligence and virtue, for the inheritance which awaits them.

I beseech you to live not only for this age, but for the next also.

Why we should put ourselves out of our way to do anything for posterity, for what has posterity ever done for us?

It is not enough merely possess virtue, as if it were an art; it should be practiced.

If there is any better way to teach virtue than by practicing it, I do not know it.

Liberty is equally desirable to the good and to the bad, to the brave and to the dastardly.

Above all things endeavor to breed them up the love of virtue, and that holy plain way of it which we have lived in, that the world in no part of it get into my family. I had rather they we're homely than finely bred as to outward behavior; yet I love sweetness mixed with gravity, and cheerfulness tempered with sobriety.

An honest man here lies at rest, the friend of man the friend of truth the friend of age and guide of youth. Few hearts like his with virtue warmed, few heads with knowledge so informed. If there's another world, he lives in bliss. If there is none, he made the best of this.

To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them.

It is a duty we owe to posterity to see that our children shall know the virtues, and rise worthy of their sires.

But rules cannot substitute for character.

The whole of virtue consists in its practice.

All great virtues become great men.

If you wish to leave much wealth to your children, leave them in God's care. Do not leave them riches, but virtue and skill. For if they learn to expect riches, they will not mind anything besides, and their abundant riches shall give them the means of screening the wickedness of their ways.

It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.

The primary goal in the education of children is to teach, and to give the example of, a virtuous life.

Integrity is the first step to true greatness.

It is our choice of good or evil that determines our character, not our opinion about good or evil.

To say America can have strong leadership without strong character is to say we can get water without the wet.

Indeed the general natural Tendency of Reading good History, must be, to fix in the Minds of Youth deep Impressions of the Beauty and Usefulness of Virtue of all Kinds, Publick Spirit, Fortitude.