Principle-Driven Quotes

Putting first things first means organizing and executing around your most important priorities. It is living and being driven by the principles you value most, not by the agendas and forces surrounding you.

The Synthesis consists in assuming the Causes discovered and established as Principles, and by them explaining the Phænomena proceeding from them, and proving the Explanations.

I'm driven by issues, not driven to be political.

By sticking to my principles and what I firmly believe in - I always have my own attitude towards everything in life. I wish to create trends rather than follow them. My daily routine at the moment is really just a combination of work and family.

No man is fit to be a senator unless he is willing to surrender his political life for a great principle.

I won't say I'm uncompromising, but I won't compromise just for the hell of it.

Truth be known, President Obama has never been particularly driven by principle. Right after his election, I wrote a column in a few days warning people that even though I voted for Obama, he was not what people were describing him to be. I saw him in the Senate. I saw him in Chicago.

A life in politics is for people who know themselves and know where their own line is between loyalty and honesty.

We need a President who is more interested in being right and just than being President.

I've always said that I'm an employee and I respect that status but I'm the type of guy who walks in the front door and I'll walk out the front door if it's not right.

I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

I've been around in public life for a long time. I think people know what I stand for. They know that I have strong convictions, committed principles and I'm prepared to stand up for them.

It is better then, to save the work while it is begun. You have done the labor; maintain it - keep it. If men choose to serve you, go with them; but as you have made up your organization upon principle, stand by it; for as surely as God reigns over you, and has inspired your mind, and given you a sense of propriety, and continues to give you hope, so surely will you still cling to these ideas, and you will at last come back after your wanderings, merely to do your work over again.

We need people willing to do things because they are doing what is right, not because some powerful trade association wants it done.

I would rather be politically dead than hypocritically immortalized.

Great revolutions are the work rather of principles than of bayonets, and are achieved first in the moral, and afterwards in the material sphere.

To put it another way, I believe that purpose and principle, clearly understood and articulated, and commonly shared, are the genetic code of any healthy organization. To the degree that you hold purpose and principles in common among you, you can dispense with command and control. People will know how to behave in accordance with them, and they'll do it in thousands of unimaginable, creative ways. The organization will become a vital, living set of beliefs.

I just do whatever it is that I believe I should do, regardless of the risks to my life.

It's never been my goal to be king of the prom. It's been my goal to do the right thing and get the job done.

In today's politics, it would be good to have politicians who are more upfront about what they felt and actually not trying to bend with every breeze. They're infuriating, all of them.

I study chess eight hours a day, on principle.

We [Republicans] have to fight this battle [against slavery] upon principle alone, so I hope those with whom I am surrounded have principle enough to nerve themselves for the task, and leave nothing undone that can fairly be done to bring about the right result.

I'm not here to win a popularity contest.