George Washington Quotes

You wouldn't run for the United States Senate or for governor or for anything else without answering people's questions about what you believe. And I think the Supreme Court is no different.

Elected officials have always been held to a higher standard, as we should be.

Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it.

A politician who enters public life may as well face the fact that the best way of not being found out is not to do anything which, if found out, will cause his ruin.

To invent out of knowledge means to produce inventions that are true. Every man should have a built-in automatic crap detector operating inside him. It also should have a manual drill and a crank handle in case the machine breaks down. If you're going to write, you have to find out what's bad for you. Part of that you learn fast, and then you learn what's good for you.

A nation has honor precisely as it has fleas - on this or that body. The statesman who talks of honor - unless he means something else, quite different - is a rogue.

All men of goodwill have this in common - that our works put us to shame.

What you are is a man who means to be good, and undo the bad he's done, and that's as good as any man ever gets.

If the village worker is not a decent man or woman, conducting a decent home, he or she had better not aspire after the high privilege and honour of becoming a village worker.

Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be. . . .

The world will never be in any manner of order or tranquility until men are firmly convinced that conscience, honor and credit are all in one interest

Integrity is never painless.

I do believe that leaders have to be held to a higher standard, especially Christian leaders. I put myself in that camp.

A responsibility to be a role model as a father yes, as a man, as a public figure, yes. That responsibility just leads me to do what I feel is right and to conduct myself with the moral standards, principles, and integrity that were instilled in me by my family.

So I have tried to make it clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.

When you present something that you have worked on to somebody else, for some reason that is the moment when you can see everything that you have done wrong. They may or may not agree, but it is more of a personal thing for me. It is that I am looking at it because you are self conscious and suddenly there is someone in the room that is seeing it for the first time.

I seek no values by means of evil, nor do I surrender my values to evil.

Doing what is right in the face of adversity is not always easy or popular. Critics may assail you, but the critics don't always realize what they don't know or don't understand, because they don't have access to all the information.

A mind that is conscious of its integrity scorns to say more than it means to perform.

The question is, why are politicians so eager to be president? What is it about the job that makes it worth revealing, on national television, that you have the ethical standards of a slime-coated piece of industrial waste?

He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by the action itself contracted.

The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.

Courage is the ability to do the right thing, all the time, no matter how painful or uncomfortable it might be.

Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one's identity, in the many ways in which such violation is possible.

He that writes may be considered as a kind of general challenger, whom every one has a right to attack; since he quits the common rank of life, steps forward beyond the lists, and offers his merit to the public judgement. To commence author is to claim praise, and no man can justly aspire to honour, but at the hazard of disgrace.