Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction.
Category: morals
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.
Anything called a ‘program’ is unconstitutional
- Confessions of a reactionary utopian
The people must be moral
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge … would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.
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.