Ambrose Bierce Quotes

I just think that if one is going to preach nonviolence and one is going to advocate for nonviolence, one's standard should be consistent.

...it's easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time.

You always really have to remain consistent in your beliefs and philosophy.

An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.

What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.

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

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.

Never compromise your principles, even if it leads to difficulties in the short term.

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

He [William Gladstone] made his conscience not his guide but his accomplice.

He has not a single grain of conviction in him except in the abstract.

I would despise myself if I thought that I was procuring your votes by concealing my opinions, and by avowing one set of principles in one part of the state and a different set in another.

The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.

Hypocrisy is not the failure to practice what you preach but the failure to believe it. Hypocrisy is propaganda.

Why should we not teach our children those principles, upon which we ourselves have thought and acted? Ought we to instill into their tender minds a theory, especially if unfounded, which is contradictory to our own practice, built on the most solid foundation? Why should we reduce them to the cruel dilemma of condemning, either those principles which they have been taught to believe, or those persons whom they have been taught to revere?

The hardest thing in life is to know when to hold fast to one’s principles and when it is acceptable to bend them.

It might be said that the pose of absolute honesty is the most dishonest one of all.

I will not sell anything ever again that I do not believe in. I'm not willing to do a job for pure financial gain. I've done that, and it wasn't worth it.

I am faithfully devoted to the Republic but will not serve it at the expense of my conscience and my honor.

Observe this, that tho a woman swear, forswear, lie, dissemble, back-bite, be proud, vain, malicious, anything, if she secures the main chance, she's still virtuous; that's a maxim.

Leadership is about having principles. A leader must have a vision and principles that will endure for all time and must always be true to these principles, applying them to changing circumstances

That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.

If I should go out of church whenever I hear a false statement I could never stay there five minutes. But why come out? The streetis as false as the church, and when I get to my house, or to my manners, or to my speech, I have not got away from the lie.

An entirely honest man, in the severe sense of the word, exists no more than an entirely dishonest knave: the best and the worst are only approximations of those qualities. Who are those that never contradict themselves? yet honesty never contradicts itself: Who are those that always contradict themselves? yet knavery is mere self-contradiction. Thus the knowledge of man determines not the things themselves, but their proportions, the quan∣tum of congruities and incongruities.

I do not like an injurious lie, except when it injures somebody else.