Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [81-100] of 368 Virtue quotesVirtue QuotesVirtue Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.~ Marcus Tullius Cicero Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.~ Marcus Tullius Cicero America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to denigration without the usual interval of civilization.~ Georges Clemenceau Our own heart, and not other men's opinions form our true honor.~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge He that is good, will infallibly become better, and he that is bad, will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue and time are three things that never stand still.~ Charles Caleb Colton If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.~ Confucius As for the rage to believe that we have found the secret of liberty in general permissiveness from the cradle on, this seems to me a disastrous sentimentality, which, whatever liberties it sets loose, loosens also the cement that alone can bind society into a stable compound -- a code of obeyed taboos. I can only recall the saying of a wise Frenchman that `liberty is the luxury of self-discipline.' Historically, those peoples that did not discipline themselves had discipline thrust on them from the outside. That is why the normal cycle in the life and death of great nations has been first a powerful tyranny broken by revolt, the enjoyment of liberty, the abuse of liberty -- and back to tyranny again. As I see it, in this country -- a land of the most persistent idealism and the blandest cynicism -- the race is on between its decadence and its vitality.~ Alistair Cooke We must pity the poor wretched, timid soul who is too faint-hearted to resist his oppressors. He sings the song of the dammed: “I can’t fight back; I have too much to lose; I own too much property; I have worked too hard to get what I have; They will put me out of business if I resist; I might go to jail; I have my family to think about.” Such poor miserable creatures have misplaced values and are hiding their cowardice behind pretended family responsibility -- blindly refusing to see that the most glorious legacy that one can bequeath to posterity is liberty; and that the only true security is liberty.~ Marvin Cooley Reason and virtue alone can bestow liberty.~ Anthony Ashley Cooper It is a governing principle of nature, that the agency which can produce most good, when perverted from its proper aim, is most productive of evil. It behooves the well-intentioned, therefore, vigorously to watch the tendency of even their most highly-prized institutions, since that which was established in the interests of the right, may so easily become the agent of the wrong.~ James Fenimore Cooper Do your duty, and leave the rest to heaven.~ Pierre Corneille I cannot affirm God if I fail to affirm man. Therefore, I affirm both. Without a belief in human unity I am hungry and incomplete. Human unity is the fulfillment of diversity. It is the harmony of opposites. It is a many-stranded texture, with color and depth.~ Norman Cousins The holier-than-thou activists who blame the population for not spending more money on their personal crusades are worse than aggravating. They encourage the repudiation of personal responsibility by spreading the lie that support of a government program fulfills individual moral duty.~ Patrick Cox As our president bears no resemblance to a king so we shall see the Senate has no similitude to nobles. First, not being hereditary, their collective knowledge, wisdom, and virtue are not precarious. For by these qualities alone are they to obtain their offices, and they will have none of the peculiar qualities and vices of those men who possess power merely because their father held it before them.~ Tench Coxe Morality, and the ideal of freedom which is the political expression of morality, are not the property of a given party or group, but a value that is fundamentally and universally human... No people will be truly free till all are free.~ Benedetto Croce There is no such crime as a crime of thought; there are only crimes of action.~ Clarence S. Darrow Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coattails.~ Clarence S. Darrow Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them.~ François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.~ François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Hypocrisy is an homage that vice pays to virtue.~ François Duc de La Rochefoucauld Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print