PRINCIPLE QUOTES
quotations about principles
Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides States and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
"Resistance to Civil Government"
It is, methinks, worthy the curiosity of a nice observer of human nature, to watch the course of a principle in the mind, and mark its various effects; now cherishing a virtue, now a vice; now establishing order, and now inclining to irregularity: to trace it like a stream from a source, through all its windings; each of which, those who see but a part, distinguish by a different name, and suppose to be fed by a different spring.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
A principle that can't bear being laughed at, frowned on, and cold-shouldered, isn't worthy of the name.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
An Old-Fashioned Girl
Let us cling to our principles, as the mariner clings to his last plank when night and tempest close around him.
ADAM WOOLEVER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own.
AESOP
Fables
A person could resist popular belief and stand up for personal principles, and though there may be consequences, not everything would necessarily be lost. In fact, something important might be gained, if only within oneself.
JEAN M. AUEL
The Mammoth Hunters
The few men who think in common with us are much more necessary to us than the whole of the rest of mankind; they give strength and tone to our principles.
GEORGE FORSTER
attributed, Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors
But a war, a strike for a principle is never a mistake, never odious, never unwise on the part of those who contend for the principle, for the right, for the truth.
ANONYMOUS
The Station Agent, January 1894
Obey the principles without being bound by them.
BRUCE LEE
Bruce Lee: Artist of Life
But a principle is only true if it be universal. If I believe in my own judgment, I am bound to believe in the judgments of every one else. If I hold my own spirit to have in it the criteria of truth, I must allow that the same criteria exist in every other spirit of the present times, of the past and of the future. Either conscience is the expression of truth or it is not. If not, we can no more trust to reason or primary beliefs, we cannot affirm anything or know anything. But if it is, then it is so for every one, and I have no more right to contradict its expression in other men than I have to contradict it in myself.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Christianity
The problem was not that they failed to find these principles written upon their hearts, but that they could not bring themselves to attend closely to the inscription.
J. BUDZISZEWSKI
What We Can't Not Know: A Guide
Principles don't change, people do.
CARLOS WALLACE
Life Is Not Complicated -- You Are
We all live in the protection of certain cowardices which we call our principles.
MARK TWAIN
More Maxims of Mark
A precedent embalms a principle.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
speech on the Expenditures of the Country, February 22, 1848
There are ultimately only two possible adjustments to life; one is to suit our lives to principles; the other is to suit principles to our lives. If we do not live as we think, we soon begin to think as we live.
FULTON J. SHEEN
"Memoirs of Venerable Fulton John Sheen", Universal One Church, February 5, 2016
Let a ruler base his government upon virtuous principles, and he will be like the pole-star, which remains steadfast in its place, while all the host of stars turn towards it.
CONFUCIUS
The Wisdom of Confucius
A man with honest principles and a good conscience, is invulnerable against the attacks of treachery and deception.
JAMES ELLIS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Principles have no real force except when one is well fed.
MARK TWAIN
Adam's Diary
Even an evil man can have principles--he can be true to his own evil, which is not always so easy.
NORMAN MAILER
The Paris Review, winter-spring 1964