Our Centers for Ethics:

Quotations: Citizenship, civic virtue, civility

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The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
— Mohandas Gandhi, Indian nonviolent civil rights leader (1869-1948)

What do I owe to my times, to my country, to my neighbors, to my friends? Such are the questions which a virtuous man ought often to ask himself.
— Johann Kaspar Lavater, German poet and physiognomist (1741-1801)

What the people want is very simple. They want an America as good as its promise.
— Barbara Jordan, American congresswoman and professor (1936-1996)

A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.
— Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father and third U.S. president (1743-1826), in a letter to George Hammond, 1792

It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.
— Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father and third U.S. president (1743-1826), in a letter to George Logan, 1816

Public virtue is a kind of ghost town into which anyone can move and declare himself sheriff.
— Saul Bellow, American novelist (b. 1915)

Americanism is a question of principles, of idealism, of character: it is not a matter of birthplace or creed or line of descent.
— Theodore Roosevelt, adventurer, politician and Nobel Prize-winning 26th U.S. president (1858-1919)

If we are forced, at every hour, to watch or listen to horrible events, this constant stream of ghastly impressions will deprive even the most delicate among us of all respect for humanity.
— Cicero (Marcus Tullius), Roman orator, philosopher and statesman (106-43 B.C.)

Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist, public philosopher and poet (1803-1882)

In a time of social fragmentation, vulgarity becomes a way of life. To be shocking becomes more important—and often more profitable—than to be civil or creative or truly original.
— Al Gore, politician and U.S. vice president (b. 1948)

Like the body that is made up of different limbs and organs, all moral creatures must depend on each other to exist.
— Hindu proverb

Politeness is the art of choosing among one’s real thoughts.
— Adlai Stevenson II, politician, U.S. presidential candidate (1900-1965)

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