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.

The value of a sentiment is the amount of sacrifice you are prepared to make for it.

There's a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars.

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.

It is time to return to those core values, time to get back to basics: to self-discipline and respect for the law, to consideration for others, to accepting responsibility for yourself and your family, and not shuffling it off on other people and the state.

Elites quite naturally define as the most important and admired qualities for a citizen those on which they themselves have concentrated.

Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night.

There used to be a thing or a commodity we put great store by. It was called the People. Find out where the People have gone. I don't mean the square-eyed toothpaste-and-hair-dye people or the new-car-or-bust people, or the success-and-coronary people. Maybe they never existed, but if there ever were the People, that's the commodity the Declaration was talking about, and Mr. Lincoln.

As a child I was not interested in science. I was merely interested in things human, the human side of nature, if you like, and I continue to be interested in that. That's what motivates me.

My dad never blew anything up, but he probably had friends who did. He and my mom have always preached that the pen is mightier than a Molotov cocktail.

But I know what's important to me, and what isn't. And I think I know what people can get used to, and what they can even learn to like. (It just takes some people longer than others. :-)

Personality is more important than beauty, but imagination is more important than both of them.

Our dangers, as it seems to me, are not from the outrageous but from the conforming; not from those who rarely and under the lurid glare of obloquy upset our moral complaisance, or shock us with unaccustomed conduct, but from those, the mass of us, who take their virtues and their tastes, like their shirts and their furniture, from the limited patterns which the market offers.

The vast material displacements the machine has made in our physical environment are perhaps in the long run less important than its spiritual contributions to our culture.

Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.

To measure the man, measure his heart.

Constitutions have to be written on hearts, not just paper.

I don't want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.

In Hollywood a girl's virtue is much less important than her hairdo. You're judged by how you look, not by what you are. Hollywood's a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for kiss, and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty.

What actions are the most excellent? Those, certainly, which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections: to those elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which are independent of time. These feelings are permanent and the same; that which interests them is permanent and the same also.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

If mankind were all intellect, they would be continually changing, so that one age would be entirely unlike another. The great conservative is the heart, which remains the same in all ages; so that commonplaces of a thousand years' standing are as effective as ever.

The Bush Administration do have moral values. Their moral values are very explicit: shine the boots of the rich and the powerful, kick everybody else in the face, and let your grandchildren pay for it. That simple principle predicts almost everything that's happening.

A few honest men are better than numbers.

Enhance and intensify one's vision of that synthesis of truth and beauty which is the highest and deepest reality.

In our leisure we reveal what kind of people we are.

We don't eat anything that has to be killed for us. We've been through a lot and we've reached a stage where we really value life.

I don't think there's anything exceptional or noble in being philanthropic. It's the other attitude that confuses me.

Let us beware of losing our enthusiasms. Let us ever glory in something, and strive to retain our admiration for all that would ennoble, and our interest in all that would enrich and beautify our life.

The climate of our culture is changing. Under these new rains, new suns, small things grow great, and what was great grows small; whole species disappear and are replaced.

I loved him for himself alone.

At fifteen one is first beginning to realize that everything isn't money and power in this world, and is casting about for joys that do not turn to dross in one's hands.

We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one's total orientation to life. Religion is whatever the individual takes to be his ultimate concern. One's religious attitude is to be found at that point where he has a conviction that there are values in human existence worth living and dying for.

Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about.

The Democrats were in the majority in the U.S. Senate when we voted for the Iraq war and passed the U.S. Patriot Act. It's not enough to be in the majority, you have to stand for something.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

All I ask is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy.

Everything must be sacrificed, if necessary, for that one sentiment: universality.

We live, after all, in a world where illusions are sacred and truth profane.

A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.

No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his well-being, to risk his body, to risk his life, in a great cause.

The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.

There are good men and bad men of all nationalities, creeds and colors; and if this world of ours is ever to become what we hope some day it may become, it must be by the general recognition that the man's heart and soul, the man's worth and actions, determine his standing.

One joins the movement in a valueless world, Choosing it, till both hurler and the hurled, One moves as well, always toward, toward.

If you're honest, you sooner or later have to confront your values. Then you're forced to separate what is right from what is merely legal. This puts you metaphysically on the run. America is full of metaphysical outlaws.

Any half-awake materialist well knows - that which you hold holds you.

Actually, if you could see close in my eyes, the American flag is waving in both of them and up my spine is growing this red, white and blue stripe.

Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.

Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards - the things we live by and teach our children - are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings.

The important thing is the family. If you can keep the family together - and that's the backbone of our whole business, catering to families - that's what we hope to do.

Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.

You beg for happiness in life, but security is more important to you, even if it costs you your spine or your life. Your life will be good and secure when aliveness will mean more to you than security; love more than money; your freedom more than party line or public opinion; when your thinking will be in harmony with your feelings; when the teachers of your children will be better paid than the politicians; when you will have more respect for the love between man and woman than for a marriage license.

When we look back, the only things we cherish are those which in some way met our original want; the desire which formed in us in early youth, undirected, and of its own accord.

The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example to work on others as it may.

He who meanly admires mean things is a Snob.

The association promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in any prior decisions.

I had been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who got drunk - and I would have liked to have the boozing scholars of the Universities wheeled into line and properly chastised for their squalid misuse of what I must ever regard as a gift of the gods.

When I was kidnapped, my parents snapped into action. They rented out my room.

Being happy with less is what makes a great human being, not a big house with marble floors, or everyone knowing who you are.