Principles Quotes - Page 52

The EU treaties clearly promote an alliance of national states that, as far as possible, maintain their own responsibilities. There is no mention of a centralized state of Europe in the treaties. The EU Commission's politicking, however, is proof of a certain allergy against this principle of national states and national responsibilities.

Magnanimity is above circumstance; and any virtue which depends on that is more of constitution than of principle.

You can design a mortgage system that is different without a Fannie and Freddie, but there are principles you have to have, to have a good system.

A general principle of good taxation is that similar jobs, and similar kinds of compensation, should be taxed the same way: otherwise, the government is effectively subsidizing some jobs over others.

Of all the objections which have been framed against the federal Constitution, this is perhaps the most extraordinary. Whilst the objection itself is levelled against a pretended oligarchy, the principle of it strikes at the very root of republican government.

In republican government the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this . . . is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them by different modes of election, and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions, and their common dependence on the society, will admit.

The American doctrinaire is the converse of the American demagogue, and, in this way, is scarcely less injurious to the public. The first deals in poetry, the last in cant. He is as much a visionary on one side, as the extreme theoretical democrat is a visionary on the other.

Honesty is the best policy, says the familiar axiom; but people who are honest on that principle defraud no one but themselves.

What is more malleable is always superior over that which is immovable. This is the principle of controlling things by going along with them, of mastery through adaptation.

Sovereignty is a question of principle. We must tell the Iraqis: you are a sovereign people. And you are in charge of your own future.

It is the basic principle of spiritual life that we learn the deepest things in unknown territory. Often it is when we feel most confused inwardly and are in the midst of our greatest difficulties that something new will open. We awaken most easily to the mystery of life through our weakest side. The areas of our greatest strength, where we are the most competent and clearest, tend to keep us away from the mystery.

Let it be a settled principle in our minds that the first and chief business of the Church of Christ is to preach the Gospel.

The gross debaucheries and atrocious cruelties are covered with a resplendent mental veil because of the systematic exposition of the philosophic principles in all fields of vice. Its justification by logical method as well as by precepts and examples only makes vice more horrible in effect, both for degenerate and normal beings

Justice was revenge wrapping itself in a cloak of high principle.

Ministers who threaten death and destruction employ weapons of weakness. Argument and kindness are alone effectual, flavored by the principles of Divine love.

With prior Republican nominees for president, I disagreed with them on politics, policies, principles, but I never questioned their fitness to serve. Donald Trump is different.

What gets me excited is the original principle.

A modern mathematical proof is not very different from a modern machine, or a modern test setup: the simple fundamental principles are hidden and almost invisible under a mass of technical details.

Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit.

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.

Man tends to treat all his opinions as principles.

Let us, then, be what we are; speak what we think; and in all things keep ourselves loyal to truth.

It's against my principles to buy a book I haven't read, it's like buying a dress you haven't tried on.

You don't have to explain yourself. Let your weakness be yours. Let your strength be everybody's. You understand the principle?

I hope always to earn my living by my art without having ever deviated by even a hair's breadth from my principles... to please anyone or to sell more easily.