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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
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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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| 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 |
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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
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| 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 |
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| 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.
-Margaret Chase Smith |
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| 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 |
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| 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 |
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| 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 |
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| What does it profit
you if you gain
the whole world
and lose your own soul? -Jesus of Nazareth |
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| The
principles we live by, in business and in social life,
are the most important part of happiness.
-Harry Harrison |
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| 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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| 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 |
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| 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 |
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| It says something about our times
that we rarely use the word sinful,
except to describe a
really good dessert. -Willard D. Ferrell |
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| 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 |
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| When you know what your values are,
making decisions becomes easier. -Glenn van Eckeren |
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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 |
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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
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I
cannot and will not cut
my conscience to fit
this year's fashion.
-Lillian Hellman |
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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 |
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Let us, then, be what we are;
speak what we think;
and in all things keep ourselves
loyal to truth. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
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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 |
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To know what is right and not do it
is the worst cowardice. -Confucius |
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Let
then our first act every morning be to make
the following
resolve for the day:
I shall not fear anyone on earth. I shall fear only God. I shall not bear ill will toward anyone.
I shall not submit to injustice from anyone. I shall conquer untruth by truth.
And in resisting untruth I shall put up with all
suffering. -Mohandas
Gandhi |
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The
principles you live by create the world you live in;
if you change the principles you live by,
you will change your world. -Blaine
Lee |
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My creed is
this:
Justice is the only worship;
Love is the only priest;
Ignorance is the only slavery;
Happiness is the only good;
The time to be happy is now,
The place to be happy is here,
The way to be happy is
to make others so.
Robert Ingersoll |
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Give the best you have
received from the past to the best that you may come
to
know in the future. Accept life daily not as a cup to be drained
but as a chalice to be filled
with whatsoever things are honest, pure, lovely, and of good report.
Making a
living is best undertaken as a part of the more important
business of making a life. Every now and again take a good look at
something not made of hands--a mountain, a star, the turn
of a stream. There will come to you wisdom
and
patience and solace and, above all, the assurance that
you are not alone in the world. -Sidney
Lovett |
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It is often easier to fight for one's
principles
than to live up to them. -Adlai Stevenson |
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Humans
are condemned to be free; because once thrown
into the
world, they are responsible for everything they do.
-Jean
Paul
Sartre |
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Science has taught us
how to put the atom to work.
But to make it work
for good instead of for evil lies
in the domain dealing
with the principles of human duty. -Bernard
M. Baruch |
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I believe that every right implies a
responsibility;
every opportunity an obligation;
every
possession a duty. -John D. Rockefeller, Jr. |
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There is only one real failure in
life that is possible,
and that is, not to be true to the
best one knows. -Frederick W. Farrar |
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It is not
alone what we do, but also what
we do not do, for which
we are accountable. -Moliere |
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Integrity is
not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change
with the weather. It is your inner
image of yourself, and if you
look
in there and see a person who
won't cheat, then you know
you
never will. -John D.
MacDonald |
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We
get so much in the habit of wearing a disguise before others
that we eventually appear disguised before ourselves.
-Jim
Bishop |
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No
person, for any considerable time, can wear one face
to him or herself
and another to the multitude
without finally getting bewildered as to
which may be the true. -Nathaniel
Hawthorne |
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Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the
ages.
Just because the rains descend, and the winds blow,
we cannot afford to build on shifting sands.
-Henry Ward Beecher |
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If
you learn only methods, you'll be ties to your methods,
but if you learn principles you can devise your own methods.
-Ralph
Waldo Emerson |
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| I suppose that one of
the biggest surprises I've encountered as an adult is
just how difficult it is to live by one's principles.
The perfect example of this can be seen on the road--years
ago I decided that I really had no right to break the
laws of the road, especially since I spent four years in
the army, supposedly to uphold the freedoms and
responsibilities of this country. It sounds easy,
doesn't it? Hmm. . . just try it--obey the traffic laws.
It's not easy at all. I go
the speed limit--not ten miles under--and I can't tell
you just how often I get tailgated, just how often people
put my life and the lives of others in my car in danger
by passing on double yellows or passing on the right (even
in residential areas where there's only one lane--people
have passed in the parking lane!), or how often I've been
flipped off by people who are in such a hurry that they
can't even respect my right to obey the law--no, my obligation
to obey the law. It's not a choice, or at least it
shouldn't be.
But the main point is that when
I want to follow my principles of obeying the laws of the
country I live in, I get harassed by people who don't
respect those laws. When I speak up for what is
right, others who disagree try to counter by putting me
down rather than responding to my arguments or points. When a friend does something wrong and
I say
something, I risk losing a friend. If a boss does
something unethical and I say something, I risk losing a
job.
Following our principles has been a
main tenet of virtually all great religious and spiritual
teachers, yet very few people are willing to focus a
great deal of effort on doing so. This should be,
in my mind, one of our highest priorities, for the
benefits to us and to those around us are great. People
who know me trust me, and that's one of the parts of my
life that I'm most proud of. When I pass a police
officer with a radar gun, I smile and wave--they have
enough stress in their lives with the people who speed
and then lie about it, and I know I'm not adding to that
stress. My employers trust me to do what I know is
right, but they also know that I'm more than willing to
examine my actions to see if I might not have been
mistaken in some way.
People who consistently put their
principles aside can't even trust themselves, when all is
said and done, and I can't think of anything sadder than
that.
tom walsh
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