Thomas Jefferson Quotes About Ethics
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I never did, or countenanced, in public life, a single act inconsistent with the strictest good faith; having never believed there was one code of morality for a public, and another for a private man.
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The only thing a man can take beyond this lifetime is his ethics.
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I have but one system of ethics for men and for nations - to be grateful, to be faithful to all engagements under all circumstances, to be open and generous, promoting in the long run even the interests of both
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Man was destined for society. His morality therefore was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong merely relative to this. This sense is as much a part of his nature as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling; it is the true foundation of morality... The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body.
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Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.
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The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.
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State a moral case to a plowman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.
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Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.
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Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
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We confide in our strength, without boasting of it, we respect that of others, without fearing it.
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what are the objects of an useful American education? classical knowlege, modern languages & chiefly French, Spanish, & Italian; Mathematics; Natural philosophy; Natural History; Civil History; Ethics.
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In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
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Now I will avow, that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system.
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Honesty is the first chapter in the Book of wisdom. Let it be our endeavor to merit the character of a just nation.
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I consider ethics, as well as religion, as supplements to law in the government of man.
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I am sure that in estimating every man's value either in private or public life, a pure integrity is the quality we take first into calculation, and that learning and talents are only the second.
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There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world.
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A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity that ever were written.
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