Principles

Plato said that virtue has no master [Republic 617e]. If a person does not honor this principle and rejoice in it, but is purchasable for money, he creates many masters for himself.

— Principles

Principle is ever my motto, no expediency.

— Principles

Precedents are not mere dusty phrases, which do not substantially affect the question before us. A precedent embalms a principle. The principle may be right or may be wrong—that is a question for discussion; but at the first glance it is right to conclude that it is a principle that has been acted upon and recognised by those who preceded us.

— Principles

Unless you perfectly understand the principle from which anyone acts, how should you know if he acts ill?

— Principles

If the ruling class thinks that by hanging us, hanging a few anarchists, they can crush out anarchy, they will be badly mistaken, because the anarchist loves his principles more than his life.

— Principles

The man of action is always unprincipled; none but the contemplative has a conscience.

— Principles

Treat the negro as a citizen and a voter, as he is and must remain, and soon parties will be divided, not on the color line, but on principle.

— Principles

Principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them.

— Principles

I don't believe in princerple,But, oh, I du in interest.

— Principles

Ez to my princerples, I gloryIn hevin' nothin' o' the sort.

— Principles

I wish to establish some sort of system not guided by chance but by some sort of definite and exact principle.

— Principles

[Many historians of morality,] Mostly Englishmen, … affirm some consensus of the nations, at least of the tame nations, concerning certain principles of morals, and then they infer from this that these principles must be unconditionally binding also for you and me; or, conversely, they see the truth that among different nations moral valuations are necessarily different and then infer from this that no morality is at all binding. Both procedures are equally childish.

— Principles