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Character Quotes
	John Adams	I answered that the die was now cast; I had passed the Rubicon. Swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish with my country was my unalterable determination.
	John Adams	Society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.
	John Adams	Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have... a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean the characters and conduct of their rulers.
	John Quincy Adams	Always stand on principle, even if you stand alone.
	Aeschylus	It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.
	Mohammed Ali	The man who views the world at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.
	Corri Alius	Do whatever you can to capture, or recapture, your life spark - unless it harms others, in which case suffer with as much happiness as you can muster.  Your nobility of spirit will spark itself.
	James Allen	Circumstances do not make a man, they reveal him.
	Henri-Frédéric Amiel	The test of every religious, political, or educational system is the man that it forms.
	Henri Frederic Amiel	The test of every religious, political, or educational system, is the man which it forms. If a system injures the intelligence it is bad. If it injures the character it is vicious. If it injures the conscience it is criminal.
	Thomas Aquinas	If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship he would keep it in port forever.
	Hannah Arendt	No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.
	Hannah Arendt	What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.
	Aristophanes	You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.
	Ben H. Bagdikian	In the US, voters cast ballots for individual candidates who are not bound to any party program except rhetorically, and not always then. Some Republicans are more liberal than some Democrats, some libertarians are more radical than some socialists, and many local candidates run without any party identification. No American citizen can vote intelligently without knowledge of the ideas, political background, and commitments of each individual candidate.
	Alan Barth	Character assassination is at once easier and surer than physical assault; and it involves far less risk for the assassin. It leaves him free to commit the same deed over and over again, and may, indeed, win him the honors of a hero in the country of his victims.
	Rev. Henry Ward Beecher	Make men large and strong and tyranny will bankrupt itself in making shackles for them.
	Saul Bellow	Open discussion of many major public questions has for some time now been taboo. We can’t open our mouths without being denounced as racists, misogynists, supremacists, imperialists or fascists. As for the media, they stand ready to trash anyone so designated.
	Henri-Louis Bergson	Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
	George Berkeley	He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave.
	Bruno Bettelheim	This is exactly the message that fairy tales get across to the child in manifold form: that a struggle against severe difficulties in life is unavoidable, is an intrinsic part of human existence -- but that if one does not shy away, but steadfastly meets unexpected and often unjust hardships, one masters all obstacles and at the end emerges victorious.
	Ambrose Bierce	In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.
	William Boetcker	You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.\\ You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.\\ You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.\\ You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer.\\ You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.\\ You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.\\ You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.\\ You cannot establish security on borrowed money.\\ You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence.\\ You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
	Elias Boudinot	Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow.
	Robert Browning	Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp. Or what’s a heaven for?
	Buddha	All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
	Edmund Burke	The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded.
	Edmund Burke	Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young peoples, and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation.
	Thomas Carlyle	Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world.
	Thomas Carlyle	Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.
	Otis Chandler	Once we start to worry too often and too deeply about what certain individuals and what certain groups think about us, then we might start selling our souls for the sake of expediency.
	William Ellery Channing	Undoubtedly a man is to labor to better his condition, but first to better himself.
	Mary Ellen Chase	Manual labor to my father was not only good and decent for it's own sake but, as he was given to saying, it straightened out one's thoughts.
	Winston Churchill	An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
	Arthur C. Clarke	Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
	Henry Clay	Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character.
	Steve Dasbach	Government schools can't teach reading, writing, and arithmetic -- why should we trust them to teach morality, respect, and character? If public education does for ethics what it's done for learning, we'll end up with a generation of immoral, disrespectful, and characterless students.
	Étienne de la Boétie	Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed.
	Charles-Louis De Secondat	We ought to be very cautious in the prosecution of magic and heresy. The attempt to put down these two crimes may be extremely perilous to liberty, and may be the origin of a number of petty acts of tyranny if the legislator be not on his guard; for as such an accusation does not bear directly on the overt acts of a citizen, but refers to the idea we entertain of his character.
	Alexis de Tocqueville	If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their character by agglomeration; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength. And for these reasons I can never willingly invest any number of my fellow creatures with that unlimited authority which I should refuse to any one of them.
	Alexis de Tocqueville	In the end, the state of the Union comes down to the character of the people. ... I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors, her ample rivers, and it was not there. I sought for it in the fertile fields, and boundless prairies, and it was not there. I sought it in her rich mines, and vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.
	Democratic Party Platform of 1996	Today's Democratic Party knows our children's education is not complete unless they learn good values. We applaud the efforts of the Clinton-Gore Administration to promote character education in our schools. Teaching good values, strong character, and the responsibilities of citizenship must be an essential part of American education.
	Benjamin Disraeli	Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.
	W. Vaughn Ellsworth	Pity the poor, wretched, timid soul, too faint hearted to resist his oppressors. He sings the songs of the damned, 'I cannot resist, I have too much to lose, they might take my property or confiscate my earnings, what would my family do, how would they survive?' He hides behind pretended family responsibility, failing to see that the most glorious legacy that we can bequeath to our posterity is liberty!
	Ralph Waldo Emerson	The less government we have the better - the fewer laws and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal government is the influence of private character, the growth of the individual.
	Ralph Waldo Emerson	Character is higher than intellect... A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.
	Thomas I. Emerson	The right to freedom of expression is justified first of all as the right of an individual purely in his capacity as an individual. It derives from the widely accepted premise of Western thought that the proper end of man is the realization of his character and potentialities as a human being.
	Frederick W. Faber	There is a great deal of self-will in the world, but very little genuine independence of character.
	William Faulkner	Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
	Benjamin Franklin	History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy… These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections, by which the whole state is weakened.
	Benjamin Franklin	History will also give Occasion to expatiate on the Advantage of Civil Orders and Constitutions, how Men and their Properties are protected by joining in Societies and establishing Government; their Industry encouraged and rewarded, Arts invented, and Life made more comfortable: The Advantages of Liberty, Mischiefs of Licentiousness, Benefits arising from good Laws and a due Execution of Justice, &c. Thus may the first Principles of sound Politicks be fix'd in the Minds of Youth.
	Arthur Freed	Don't try to be different. Just be good. To be good is different enough.
	James Anthony Froude	English character and English freedom depend comparatively little on the form which the Constitution assumes at Westminster. A centralised democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch; and if the vigour of the nation is to continue unimpaired, each individual, each family, each district, must preserve as far as possible its independence, its self-completeness, its powers and its privilege to manage its own affairs and think its own thoughts.
	Thomas Fuller	'Tis better to suffer wrong than do it.
	Rick Gaber	Those who complain the most about the quality of the people in power are the ones who put all that power there in the first place. Well, what kind of people did they expect it all to attract, anyway? Sheesh!
	Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi	The seven blunders that human society commits and cause all the violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principles.
	Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi	The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice.
	James A. Garfield	I love agitation and investigation and glory in defending unpopular truth against popular error.
	William Jay Gaynor	My dear sir, let me tell you that every citizen has full legal right to arrest anyone whom he sees committing any criminal offense, big or little. The law of England and of this country has been very careful to confer no more right in that respect upon policemen and constables than it confers on every citizen. You have the same right to make an arrest for an offense committed in your presence that any policeman has. But we cannot all be bothering with making arrests, so we employ a certain number of our fellow citizens for that purpose and put blue clothes and brass buttons on them. But their clothes and their buttons add nothing whatever to their right to make arrests without warrant. They still have only the same right which the law gives to all of us. Be so good as to look at section 183 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and be convinced of your powers, and then sail right in as hard and as fast as you want to, being careful, however, only to arrest guilty persons, for otherwise your victims will turn around and sue you for damages for false arrest. Policemen have to face the same risk.
	John C. Gifford	One man can completely change the character of a country, and the industry of its people, by dropping a single seed in fertile soil.
	William Branch Giles	[It is not the purpose nor right of Congress] to attend to what generosity and humanity require, but to what the Constitution and their duty require.
	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe	Talent develops in tranquillity, character in the full current of human life.
	Emma Goldman	The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet how can anyone speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed?... With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?
	Alexander Hamilton	To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude, that the fiery and destructive passions of war, reign in the human breast, with much more powerful sway, than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace; and, that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.
	Alexander Hamilton	In the recommendation to admit indiscriminately foreign emigrants of every description to the privileges of American citizens on their first entrance into our country, there is an attempt to break down every pale which has been erected for the preservation of a national spirit and a national character; and to let in the most powerful means of perverting and corrupting both the one and the other.
	Thomas Hardy	Persons with weight of character carry, like planets, their atmospheres along with them in their orbits.
	Elizabeth Harrison	Those who are lifting the world upward and onward are those who encourage more than criticize.