Principles quotes
2.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"You are incarnations of God, all of you. You are incarnations of the Almighty, Omnipresent, Divine Principle. You may laugh at me now, but the time will come when you will understand. You must. Nobody will be left behind."
"First principle: never to let one's self be beaten down by persons or by events."
"Too often character assassination has replaced debate in principle here in Washington. Destroy someone's reputation, and you don't have to talk about what he stands for."
"In a crystal we have clear evidence of the existence of a formative life principle, and though we cannot understand the life of a crystal, it is nonetheless a living being"
"When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil."
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"Always stand on principle even if you stand alone."
"Change based on principle is progress. Constant change without principle becomes chaos."
"Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can't control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible."
"The first principle of true teaching is that nothing can be taught."
"It is not necessary for a preacher to express all his thoughts in one sermon. A preacher should have three principles: first, to make a good beginning, and not spend time with many words before coming to the point; secondly, to say that which belongs to the subject in chief, and avoid strange and foreign thoughts; thirdly, to stop at the proper time."
"A free, virtuous, and enlightened people must know full well the great principles and causes upon which their happiness depends."
"The principle for which we contend is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form."
"While men inhabiting different parts of this vast continent cannot be expected to hold the same opinions, they can unite in a common objective and sustain common principles."
"Failure comes only when we forget our ideals and objectives and principles."
"Capitalism drives the employers to do their worst to the employed, and the employed to do the least for them. And it boasts all the time of the incentive it provides to both to do their best! . . . The reason the Capitalist system has worked so far without jamming for more than a few months at a time, and then only in places, is that it has not yet succeeded in making a conquest of human nature so complete that everybody acts on strictly business principles."
"Our whole system of banks is a violation of every honest principle of banks. There is no honest bank but a bank of deposit. A bank that issues paper at interest is a pickpocket or a robber. But the delusion will have its course. ... An aristocracy is growing out of them that will be as fatal as the feudal barons if unchecked in time."
"The really important thing is not to live, but to live well. And to live well meant, along with more enjoyable things in life, to live according to your principles."
"Enable every woman who can work to take her place on the labour front, under the principle of equal pay for equal work."
"Place principle above all else."
"I have only two rules which I regard as principles of conduct. The first is: Have no rules. The second is: Be independent of the opinion of others."
"Americanism is a question of principle, of idealism, of character. It is not a matter of birthplace, or creed, or line of descent."
"In the theory of psycho-analysis we have no hesitation in assuming that the course taken by mental events is automatically regulated by the pleasure principle. We believe, that is to say, that the course of those events is invariably set in motion by an unpleasurable tension, and that it takes a direction such that its final outcome coincides with a lowering of that tension that is, with an avoidance of unpleasure or a production of pleasure."
"Obey the principles without being bound by them."
"If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it."
"Demagoguery enters at the moment when, for want of a common denominator, the principle of equality degenerates into the principle of identity."
