Private Conduct Quotes

I object to Parliament trying to regulate private morality in matters which only affects the person who commits the offence.

The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching.

What people do in their private lives, these are not big issues that our country's dealing with.

The line between the public life and the private life has been erased, due to the rapid decline of manners and courtesy. There is a certain crudeness and crassness that has suddenly become accepted behavior, even desirable.

Integrity is what you do behind closed doors or when you think nobody is watching. Integrity is the true essence of who you are, your beliefs and your values. Reputation is the public perception of who you are. It is how others view your integrity or strong moral principles.

Moral habits, induced by public practices, are far quicker in making their way into men's private lives, than the failings and faults of individuals are in infecting the city at large.

It is not wise, or even possible, to divorce private behavior from public leadership.... By its very nature, true leadership carries with it the burden of being an example.

If a senator gets drunk at home it's nobody's business. If he is drunk on the floor of the Senate, it's the public's business.

To create a public scandal is what's wicked; to sin in private is not a sin.

The [U.S.] Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals ... it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government ... it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government.

One sees in Latin America, and also elsewhere, among many Catholics a certain schizophrenia between individual and public morality.

In a case involving his private conduct, a President should be treated like any private citizen. The rule of law requires no more - and no less.

The key to living a moral life is this: Do nothing in private that you would be ashamed to discuss openly with your mother.

Government should allow persons to engage in whatever conduct they want to, no matter how deviant or abnormal it may be, so long as (a) they know what they are doing, (b) they consent to it, and (c) no one - at least no one other than the participants - is harmed by it.

She only is chaste, who is chaste where there is no danger of detection: she who does not, because she may not, does.

It is true that the politician, in his professional character, does not always, or even very often, conform to the most approved pattern of private conduct.

My worth to God publicly is measured by what I really am in my private life.

What we suffer, what we endure, what we muff, what we kill, what we miss, what we are guilty of, is done by us, as individuals, in private.

The strongest of all arguments against the interference of the public with purely personal conduct, is that when it does interfere, the odds are that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong place.