Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.
Independence .... is loyalty to one's best self and principles, and this is often disloyalty to the general idols and fetishes.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
Upon common theaters … the applause of the audience is of more importance to the actors than their own approbation. But upon the stage of life, while conscience claps, let the world hiss! …. If conscience disapproves, the loudest applause of the world are of little value.
I want to live out principles that became a part of my life in my 40s, 50s, and 60s. One principle is the universality of freedom.
Principles are like a seed in the ground; they must continually be visited with heavenly influences or else your life will be a barren field.
Integrity means you do what you do because it is right and not just fashionable or politically correct.
If I can help create an environment where the principles that I believe in can be implemented - to me, that's fulfilling.
We must not let the actions or words of others determine our responses. Magnanimous people make the choice to respond to the indignities of others based upon their own principles and their own value system rather than their moods or anger.
Don't swallow your moral code in tablet form.
It's funny what actors take issue with. Some won't do parts where animals are in jeopardy; some won't ever play anyone remotely unlikable - 'Heroes only, please.' Some won't do violence. I have no such qualms.
I will admit no bond that holds me to a party a day longer than I agree to its principles
Popularity isn't the end-all, be-all. What matters far more is that you stick to your principles, that you stand up and you live a life of integrity.
Sometimes people with strong ideology, whether left-wing or right-wing, refuse to do something simply because they believe it is wrong, when doing it actually benefits them. For some people, it's not just about money and political power.
The values that I have are the values I was raised with, from where I'm from, which is a middle-class place. So that informs everything about me, my politics and all that stuff. I mean, politically, I vote against my own self-interest at every election. I actively ask these people to raise my taxes.
I cannot throw my core values into a dustbin as some do for the sake of power and position. What kind of a politician that would make me then?
Remain true to yourself and your philosophy.
My values are in my DNA and were shaped by my environment.
I formed, in early life, two purposes to which I have inflexibly adhered, under some very strong pressure from warm personal friends. They were, first, never to be a second in a duel; and, second, never to go security for another man's debts.
Our integrity determines what we really are.
The principles which men give to themselves end by overwhelming their noblest intentions.
'As a man who knows how to make his education into a rule of life not a means of showing off; who can control himself and obey his own principles.' The true mirror of our discourse is the course of our lives.
I will not change what I am for no amount of money or just kudos for my peers.
Finally, gentleman, from the considerations above mentioned, as I cannot consistently with my own honor, nor with utility to my country, considering the manner in which Business is transacted here, remain any longer in this chair, I now resign it.
I won't lay down my principles for any kind of recognition or any kind of position or trying to be more famous. It's just not in me. I'd rather be a man. And then to have all this crazy stuff on my conscience.
It's your life - but only if you make it so. The standards by which you live must be your own standards, your own values, your own convictions in regard to what is right and wrong, what is true and false, what is important and what is trivial. When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else . . . you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.
