Be careful in dealing with a man who cares nothing for comfort or promotion, but is simply determined to do what he believes to be right. He is a dangerous uncomfortable enemy, because his body, which you can always conquer, gives you little purchase upon his soul.
Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.
All of us knows, not what is expedient, not what is going to make us popular, not what the policy is, or the company policy - but in truth each of us knows what is the right thing to do. And that's how I am guided.
Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud.
I don't read polls to decide what I'm going to do.
It's very nice to be a rebel saying, 'I stand on my principles,' but if in fact that's not going to have any impact on the policy, it may be principled, but it doesn't deliver the better outcome that the country needs.
In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad.
A Warrior knows that the ends do not justify the means. Because there are no ends, there are only means.
The golden rule is to act fearlessly upon what one believes to be right.
When there's a right and wrong thing to do, choose right regardless of what your friends do.
I'm never going to take the view that I should say whatever I need to say in order to achieve something. Because that implies a level of dishonesty.
Our thoughts and actions must in no way be determined by the approval or disapproval of our time, but by the binding obligation to a truth which we have recognized.
Black leadership has to recognize that principles more than speech, character more than a claim, is greater in advancing the cause of our liberation than what has transpired thus far.
If something's just, I'll let myself be hacked to bits for it.
Nonviolence is one of those immutable principles that we cannot and must not deviate from.
To be a fully functioning moral agent, one cannot passively accept moral principles handed down by fiat. Moral principles require moral reasoning.
A democratic organization has to dare to do the right at all costs.
In the 17 years since I graduated from this great College of Law, I have seen that, for many of us, it becomes increasingly easy to rationalize our actions in the name of expediency when facing difficult decisions-to choose a path where the ends justify the means. I want to ask you to challenge Machiavelli's philosophy. I want to humbly suggest that you be the guardians of a more complicated truth: that the means are as important-and sometimes even more important-than the ends.
You do what you believe in.
A satyagrahi may not ride two horses, truth and untruth, at the same time, nor, to change the metaphor, trim his sail to catch every breeze as you do in the name of communism.
If you're for the right thing, you do it without thinking.
I hope I'm building a record of being a good team player and not just standing for my principles but being willing to work for them. I think when you do that and you work really hard, people take notice.
I know what we do is right but right doesn't always mean easy.
When I have to do what I think is right for Montana, I do it.
There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right and not to fear to do or say what you believe to be right. That is the only way to deserve and to win the confidence of our great people in these days of trouble.
