Category: morals
Honesty in office is paramount
We cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we expect our republic permanently to endure. Honesty is not so much a credit as an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public life; it matters not how brilliant his capacity.
Tenth Commandment
The Tenth Commandment sends a message to socialists, to egalitarians, to people obsessed with fairness, to American presidential candidates in the year 2000 — to everyone who believes that wealth should be redistributed. And that message is clear and concise: Go to Hell.
Laws and morals
[A] society deadened by a smothering network of laws while finding release in moral chaos is not likely to be either happy or stable.
Making people ripe for destruction
Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction.
Honesty and deceit
It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.
The moral police
And it is not difficult to show, by abundant instances, that to extend the bounds of what may be called moral police, until it encroaches on the most unquestionably legitimate liberty of the individual, is one of the most universal of all human propensities.
People must be incorruptible
Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.
Importance of morality
He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country. There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country, who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections.
Ability and honor
Ability without honor is useless.