630 Values Quotes

Human happiness and human satisfaction must ultimately come from within oneself. It is wrong to expect some final satisfaction to come from money or from a computer.

Follow the three Rs: Respect for self, Respect for others and Responsibility for all your actions.

What has changed is that my life then was less difficult and my future seemingly less gloomy, but as far as my inner self, my way of looking at things and of thinking is concerned, that has not changed. But if there has indeed been a change, then it is that I think, believe and love more seriously now what I thought, believed and loved even then.

Education is learning to grow, learning what to grow toward, learning what is good and bad, learning what is desirable and undesirable, learning what to choose and what not to choose.

There's not a single thing on offer in this all-too-temporary world for which you should ever sell your soul.

If I would follow your advice and Jesus could perceive it, he, as a Jewish teacher, surely would not approve of such behavior.

Day by day we should weigh what we have granted to the spirit of the world against what we have denied to the spirit of Jesus, in thought and especially in deed.

Every man worships the dollar, and is down before his shrine from morning to night... Other men, the world over, worship regularly at the shrine with matins and vespers, nones and complines, and whatever other daily services may be known to the religious houses; but the New Yorker is always on his knees.

It would be easier for me to reject all established values, if I knew what they were.

If I get married, I want to be very married.

I have no idols. I admire work, dedication and competence.

I'll promise to go easier on drinking and to get to bed earlier, but not for you, fifty thousand dollars, or two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars will I give up women. They're too much fun.

I've come to the realization that a lot of our problems are because of a dearth of spiritual values.

If I could make only one wish for a child, I'd wish him the quality of lovingness.

Why be a man when you can be a success?

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.

Honors to me now are not what they once were.

Perhaps the values of socialists can only be realized by socialists in a nonsocialist society.

I must honor those who fight of their own free will, he said to himself. And I must try to imitate their courage by following my path as a pacifist, wherever it takes me.

You cannot have a proud and chivalrous spirit if your conduct is mean and paltry; for whatever a man's actions are, such must be his spirit.

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.

It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important.

Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.

If we were to do the Second Coming of Christ in color for a full hour, there would be a considerable number of stations which would decline to carry it on the grounds that a Western or a quiz show would be more profitable.

All I can hope to teach my son is to tell the truth and fear no man.

Values are not trendy items that are casually traded in.

To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.

Every era has a currency that buys souls. In some the currency is pride, in others it is hope, in still others it is a holy cause. There are of course times when hard cash will buy souls, and the remarkable thing is that such times are marked by civility, tolerance, and the smooth working of everyday life.

Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one's identity.

Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.

In morals, truth is but little prized when it is a mere sentiment, and only attains its full value when realized in the world as fact.

I actually feel as though I make choices with my kids in mind. It helps me to be clear about what I will and won't make. I want to have my kids say, 'My pa did only the things that he felt he should do.' I don't want them to be embarrassed. I think maybe they can be proud of some of the work I do. Maybe they will be proud that I decided to go against the grain a little bit and fight the good fight. When you're older, drooling, and your children are changing your diapers, they will know that there was integrity.

Maybe I was just too dumb to sell out. (2004)

I've never had an allergy to the idea of commercial success. When you put a movie out and it's successful, that's great. I just wanted to get there in the right way, in a way that's not too compromising or demeaning or ugly. (2004)

Vanessa and I have considered ourselves husband and wife since the day we moved in together. It's not a big issue for us because we know what we feel for each other and that kind of connection is what's going to keep us together for a very long time. Marriage would just be a formality. (2004)

Awards are not as important to me as when I meet a 10-year-old kid who says, 'I love Captain Jack Sparrow.'

I can live without money, but I cannot live without love.

Don't open your diamonds in a vegetable market. Tie them in bundle and keep them in your heart, and go your own way.

Given a nation that not enough citizens can be attracted to defend voluntarily, you probably also have a nation that, by definition, isn't really worth defending.

As for me, prizes are nothing. My prize is my work.

I don't think I could see myself with someone who's famous. I don't like the lifestyle and everything it stands for. Too superficial. That attention is too much. For me to go home and be surrounded by that sounds like a fucking nightmare. But a musician or someone who's into music is different.

'All the same,' said the Scarecrow, 'I shall ask for brains instead of a heart; for a fool would not know what to do with a heart if he had one.' 'I shall take the heart,' returned the Tin Woodman; 'for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.'

I don't want, no I really don't want To be John Lennon or Leonard Cohen I just want to be my Dad.

The most important thing in my life, its leitmotif, has been the constant and close contacts with working people, with workers and peasants.

In our position, we could have a big house with maids and chauffeurs - but what's the point of having kids if you have all that?

Our kids haven't any airs about them. I don't like posh kids who don't like dirty dolls or expect a chauffeur every time they go out.

We both came from families in which parents got married, had children and the whole thing. So we were not the kind of people to live together permanently.

Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience.

This [pointing to his head] and this [pointing to his heart] is my nobility.

Aim at being loved without being admired. (p. 38e)

To a young actor How tall are you without your horse? Six foot, seven inches! Never mind the six feet. Let's talk about the seven inches!

A hard man is good to find.

It's hard to find a good man, but it's good to find a hard one.

Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.

Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.

Contra los valores afectivos no valen razones, porque las razones no son nada mas que razones, es decir, ni siquiera verdad.

Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel, for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.

I...chose a wife, as she did her wedding gown, not for a fine glossy surface, but such qualities as would wear well.

Handsome is that handsome does.

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

I'm about caring, I'm about people, and I'm about entertaining people. I'm a family man. A husband. A father. I've been a lot of other things over the years, which we don't really want to talk about. I'm always working on trying to better myself, you know? I think that that is an ongoing thing with me. I think I'll do that for the rest of my life. I'm always thinking of what I can do today to better my life.

Love has had a lot of press-agenting from the oldest times; but there are higher, nobler things than love.

We will not adopt the fantastic hypocrisy of modern conservatism which preaches the values of families and communities, while conducting a direct assault on them through reduced wages and conditions and job security.

If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them.

Never separate the life you live from the words you speak.

[Philip K.] Dick's fiction calls up our basic cultural assumptions, requires us to reexamine them, and points out the destructive destinations to which they are carrying us. The American Dream may have succeeded as a means of survival in the wilderness of early America; it allowed us to subdue that wilderness and build our holy cities of materialism. But now, the images in Dick's fiction declare, we live in a new kind of wilderness, a wasteland wilderness, because those cities and the culture that built them are in decay. We need a new American dream to overcome this wasteland.

I'm not trying to turn you into a bourgeois, Naomi. If the bed is too luxurious, we can do it on the floor.

Family is the most important thing in the world.

We clicked in an intangible way' probably because of our upbringing.

Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.

'This is what the National Alliance stands for: To respect all people, regardless of ethnicity, gender and religion, to uphold godly principles and moral values and to respect the rule of law.'

Nor is it any part of my thesis to maintain that it [the detective story] is a vital and significant form of art. There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that.

There's nothing nonsensical about saying that what would evolve if Darwinian selection has its head is something that you don't want to happen. And I could easily imagine trying to go against Darwinism.

One of the primary tests of the mood of a society at any given time is whether its comfortable people tend to identify, psychologically, with the power and achievements of the very successful or with the needs and sufferings of the underprivileged.

The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms - he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point. Like religious millennialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date for the apocalypse.

We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does.

If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.

Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That's how rich I want to be.

Celibacy is the essence of vulgarity.

I had rather be a beggar and spend my last dollar like a king, than be a king and spend my money like a beggar! If it has got to go, let it go!

I am in the habit of looking not so much to the nature of a gift as to the spirit in which it is offered.

Some years back, all the best people came to bipartisan agreement that the most shameful thing a person could do with power was not to use it. Since then everybody who wants to get ahead in Washington has made a great show of being a fierce fellow when left alone in the room with a little power. There seems to be a fear that if there is somebody around so low that it is all right to dump the garbage on him, and you hesitate, everybody will call you a sissy, and you will never be invited to lunch with Professor Kissinger. Strange values result. Great killers are esteemed for good citizenship. 'Not afraid to use power,' people say of them.

'Basic moral values must therefore first be internalised in the hearts and minds of its people before we can hope to enforce legislation reflecting these values. We cannot begin to observe man-made laws if we do not have any moral values to start off with in the first place.' (18 May 2000)

It is important that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world.

The spirit of our age is one in which the prejudices of the past are put behind us, where our diversity is our strength. It is this which is under attack. Moderates are not moderate through weakness but through strength. Now is the time to show it in defence of our common values.

Sometimes it is better to lose and do the right thing than to win and do the wrong thing.

Some may belittle politics but we who are engaged in it know that it is where people stand tall. Although I know that it has many harsh contentions, it is still the arena that sets the heart beating a little faster. If it is, on occasions, the place of low skulduggery, it is more often the place for the pursuit of noble causes. I wish everyone, friend or foe, well. That is that. The end.

I never met a Socialist, or a Socialist cause, that I didn't like.

The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. We learned not to believe in anything, to ignore one another, to care only about ourselves. Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility or forgiveness lost their depth and dimension, and for many of us they represented only psychological peculiarities, or they resembled gone-astray greetings from ancient times, a little ridiculous in the era of computers and spaceships.

Our country, if that is what we want, can now permanently radiate love, understanding, the power of the spirit and of ideas. It is precisely this glow that we can offer as our specific contribution to international politics.

Periods of history when values undergo a fundamental shift are certainly not unprecedented. This happened in the Hellenistic period, when from the ruins of the classical world the Middle Ages were gradually born. It happened during the Renaissance, which opened the way to the modern era. The distinguishing features of such transitional periods are a mixing and blending of cultures and a plurality or parallelism of intellectual and spiritual worlds. These are periods when all consistent value systems collapse, when cultures distant in time and space are discovered or rediscovered. They are periods when there is a tendency to quote, to imitate, and to amplify, rather than to state with authority or integrate. New meaning is gradually born from the encounter, or the intersection, of many different elements.