principle 2

When you know what your values are,
making decisions becomes easier.

Glenn van Eckeren

Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, 
but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

   

It's important that people should know what you stand for.  It's equally
important that they know what you won't stand for.

Mary H. Waldrip

   

But warm, eager, living life--to be rooted in life--to learn, to desire to know,
to feel, to think, to act. That is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for.

Katherine Mansfield

  
  

Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given,
and make it your own way. My aim in life has always been
to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against:  with.

Robert Frost

  

Faithfully faithful to every trust,
Honestly honest in every deed,
Righteously righteous and justly just:
This is the whole of the good man's creed.

Anon

  
  
I cannot and will not cut my conscience
to fit this year's fashion.

Lillian Hellman

  

If people walk in the woods for the love of them half of each day, they are in danger
of being regarded as loafers; but if they spend their whole day as speculators,
shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time,
they are esteemed industrious and enterprising citizens.
As if a town had no interest in forests but to cut them down!

Henry David Thoreau

  

Any business or industry that pays equal rewards to its goof-offs
and its eager-beavers sooner or later will find itself
with more goof-offs than eager-beavers.

Mike Delaney

  
Learn from your earliest days to insure your principles against the perils of ridicule.
If you think it right to differ from the times, and to make a stand for any valuable point
of morals, do it, however rustic, however antiquated, however pedantic it may appear;
do it, not for insolence, but seriously, and grandly, as people who wear souls of their own
in their bosoms, and do not wait till it shall be breathed into them by the breath of fashion.

Sydney Smith

  

  

Let us, then, be what we are; speak what we think;
and in all things keep ourselves loyal to truth.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  

Margaret Chase Smith

My creed is that public service must
be more than doing a job efficiently
and honestly. It must be a complete
dedication to the people and to the
nation with full recognition that every
human being is entitled to courtesy
and consideration, that constructive
criticism is not only to be expected
but sought, that smears are not only
to be expected but fought, that
honor is to be earned, not bought.

   

I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of humans; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy.

Thomas 
Paine

  

It says something about our times that we rarely use the word sinful, 
except to describe a really good dessert.

Willard D. Ferrell

  
Socrates:  If, acting under the advice of men who have no understanding, we destroy that which is improvable by health and deteriorated by disease--when that has been destroyed, I say, would life be worth having? And that is--the body?
Crito:  Yes
Socrates:  Could we live, having an evil and corrupted body?
Crito:  Certainly not.
Socrates:  And will life be worth having, if that higher part of man be depraved, which is improvable by justice and deteriorated by injustice? Do we suppose that principle, whatever it may be in man, which has to do with justice and injustice, to be inferior to the body?
Crito:  Certainly not.
Socrates:  More honored, then?
Crito:  Far more honored.
Socrates:  Then, my friend, we must not regard what the many say of us: but what he, the one man who has understanding of just and unjust, will say, and what the truth will say.  And therefore you begin in error when you suggest that we should regard the opinion of the many about just and unjust, honorable and dishonorable.

From the Crito

  

The place to take the test of a man is not the forum or field, not the marketplace
or the amen corner, but at his own fireside.  There he lays aside his mask
and you may judge whether he is imp or angel, king or cur, hero or humbug.
I care not what the world says of him, whether it crown him with bays
or pelt him with eggs; I care never a copper what his reputation or religion may be;
if his babes dread his homecoming and his better half has to swallow her heart
every time she asks him for a five dollar bill, he's a fraud of the first water,
even though he prays night and morn until he is black in the face,
and howls hallelujah until he shakes the eternal hills.  But if his children rush
to the front gate meet him, and love's own sunshine illumines the face
of his wife when she hears his footsteps, you may take it for granted
that he is true gold, for his home's a heaven and the humbug
never got that close to the great white throne of God.

William Cowper Brann

 

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The principles we live by, in business and in social life,
are the most important part of happiness.

Harry Harrison
   
  

We distinguish the excellent person from the common person
by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands
on him or herself, and the latter the one who makes no demands
on him or herself.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

 

What does it profit you if you gain the whole world
and lose your own soul?

Jesus of Nazareth

  
Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles.

Confucius

  

No one knows what they are doing
so long as they are acting rightly; 
but of what is wrong one is always conscious.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

One thing is always wrong--always:  to cause suffering in others for the purpose of gratifying one's own pleasures; that is everlastingly wrong.

Lafcadio Hearn

  
 
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

   
  

Don't believe that winning
is really everything.  It's
more important to stand
for something.  If you don't
stand for something,
what do you win?

Lane Kirkland

 
  
    

   

  

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