Character Quotes / Quotations 

Famous Quotes and Quotations about Character

Character Quotes 1-50 out of 169
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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.
more John Adams quotes
Society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.
more John Adams quotes
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.
more John Adams quotes
Always stand on principle, even if you stand alone.
more John Quincy Adams quotes
It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.
more Aeschylus quotes
The man who views the world at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.
more Mohammed Ali quotes
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.
more Corri Alius quotes
Circumstances do not make a man, they reveal him.
more James Allen quotes
The test of every religious, political, or educational system is the man that it forms.
more Henri-Frédéric Amiel quotes
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.
more Henri Frederic Amiel quotes
If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship he would keep it in port forever.
more Thomas Aquinas quotes
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.
more Hannah Arendt quotes
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.
more Hannah Arendt quotes
You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.
more Aristophanes quotes
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.
more Ben H. Bagdikian quotes
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.
more Alan Barth quotes
Make men large and strong and tyranny will bankrupt itself in making shackles for them.
more Rev. Henry Ward Beecher quotes
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.
more Saul Bellow quotes
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
more Henri-Louis Bergson quotes
He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave.
more George Berkeley quotes
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.
more Bruno Bettelheim quotes
In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.
more Ambrose Bierce quotes
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.

more William Boetcker quotes
Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow.
more Elias Boudinot quotes
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp. Or what’s a heaven for?
more Robert Browning quotes
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.
more Buddha quotes
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.
more Edmund Burke quotes
The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded.
more Edmund Burke quotes
Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world.
more Thomas Carlyle quotes
Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.
more Thomas Carlyle quotes
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.
more Otis Chandler quotes
Undoubtedly a man is to labor to better his condition, but first to better himself.
more William Ellery Channing quotes
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.
more Mary Ellen Chase quotes
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
more Winston Churchill quotes
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
more Arthur C. Clarke quotes
Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character.
more Henry Clay quotes
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.
more Steve Dasbach quotes
Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed.
more Étienne de la Boétie quotes
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.
more Charles-Louis De Secondat quotes
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.
more Alexis de Tocqueville quotes
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.
more Alexis de Tocqueville quotes
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.
more Democratic Party Platform of 1996 quotes
Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.
more Benjamin Disraeli quotes
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!
more W. Vaughn Ellsworth quotes
Character is higher than intellect... A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.
more Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes
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.
more Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes
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.
more Thomas I. Emerson quotes
There is a great deal of self-will in the world, but very little genuine independence of character.
more Frederick W. Faber quotes
Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
more William Faulkner quotes
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.
more Benjamin Franklin quotes
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