Patriotic Quotes

No matter how worthy the cause, it is robbery, theft, and injustice to confiscate the property of one person and give it to another to whom it does not belong. — Walter Williams

True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding out the true path for ourselves and fearlessly following it. — Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pleasures and pains of his species must become his own. — Percy Bysshe Shelly

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking. — H. L. Mencken

When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law. — Frederick Bastiat

A man does what he must — in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers — and this is the basis of all human morality. — John F. Kennedy

“Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.” — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration – courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth. — H. L. Mencken

The meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil. — Robert Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

Character is much easier kept than recovered. — Thomas Paine

Once one accepts the principle of self-ownership, what’s moral and immoral becomes self-evident. Murder is immoral because it violates private property. Rape and theft are also immoral — they also violate private property. Here’s an important question: Would rape become morally acceptable if Congress passed a law legalizing it? You say: “What’s wrong with you, Williams? Rape is immoral plain and simple, no matter what Congress says or does!” If you take that position, isn’t it just as immoral when Congress legalizes the taking of one person’s earnings to give to another? Surely if a private person took money from one person and gave it to another, we’d deem it theft and, as such, immoral. Does the same act become moral when Congress takes people’s money to give to farmers, airline companies or an impoverished family? No, it’s still theft, but with an important difference: It’s legal, and participants aren’t jailed. — Walter Williams

Man—every man—is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life. — Ayn Rand, Introducing Objectivism

In nothing do humans approach so nearly to the gods as doing good to others. — Cicero

Without doubt the greatest injury of all was done by basing morals on myth. For, sooner or later, myth is recognized for what it is, and disappears. Then morality loses the foundation on which it has been built. — Lord Herbert Louis Samuel

There is … only one categorical imperative. Is is: Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that is should become a universal law. — Immanuel Kant

I have often thought that morality may perhaps consist solely in the courage of making a choice. — Leon Blum

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind – that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking. — H. L. Mencken

Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience. — Adam Smith

The moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing. — Thomas Jefferson

Do not overestimate the decency of the human race. — H. L. Mencken

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right. — Thomas Paine

Give me chastity and self-restraint, but do not give it yet. — Saint Augustine

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. — Henry David Thoreau

There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character. — H. L. Mencken

There is only one justification for having sinned, and that is to be glad of it. — H. L. Mencken

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. — H. L. Mencken

In matters of principle, stand like a rock. — Thomas Jefferson

A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice. — Thomas Paine

It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions. — Aristotle

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. — Thomas Paine

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it. — Albert Einstein

Everyone must act according to the dictates of his own reason. — Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Samuel Miller, 1808

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