Herb Block Quotes

Principle is ever my motto, not expediency.

This is not going to be easy. I'm good at being bad, but I'm bad at being good. I don't know the first thing about good deeds.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

A good End cannot sanctify evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it.

Don't worry so much about your self-esteem. Worry more about your character. Integrity is its own reward.

Truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels.

The measure of your quality as a public person, as a citizen, is the gap between what you do and what you say.

Life comes down to honesty and doing what's right. That's what's most important.

The higher the moral tone, the more suspect the speaker.

Act well your part, there all the honour lies.

If I have taught my sons anything in life, it is to have integrity - to always tell the truth, and I believe they have.

It's the most righteous, which of course is not the same thing as the most profitable.

A few honest men are better than numbers.

[Richard Nixon was:] The greatest moral leader of the last third of this century.

While intellectually you are giants, morally you are pygmies.

He was as great as a man can be without morality

Occasionally the conflict between 'what we stand for' and 'what we do' has been forthrightly addressed.

I wanted to write a book about people who have the best intentions and think - really, truly think - that they're doing the right thing. And then they realize that when those ideals come knocking at their windowsill, a lot of times they will suddenly disavow those ideals.

I try to act as a man of character if no one is watching or if the world is watching.

Hypocrisy is an homage that vice renders to virtue.

Bourgeois morality is largely a system of making cheap virtues a cloak for expensive vices.

Well, I'm still looking for Maurice Ashley. My essential qualities. I think that more than anything, I try to do the right thing, I think about doing the right thing.

Moral courage is higher and a rarer virtue than physical courage.

Silver and gold are not the only coin; virtue too passes current all over the world.

Hypocrisy is not a way of getting back to the moral high ground. Pretending you're moral, saying your moral is not the same as acting morally.