Character

"Outside show is a poor substitute for inner worth."
        --Aesop

"Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do."
        --Saint Thomas Aquinas

"He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god."
        --Aristotle

"He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god."
        --Aristotle

"Political history is far too criminal and pathological to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villains from fiction."
        --W.H. Auden

"Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect."
        --Marcus Aurelius

"Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish."
        --Anne Bradstreet

"Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young peoples, and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation."
        --Edmund Burke

"There never was a bad man that had ability for good service."
        --Edmund Burke

"Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character."
        --Henry Clay

"The superior man cannot be known in little matters, but he may be entrusted with great concerns. The small man may not be entrusted with great concerns, but he may be known in little matters."
        --Confucius

"Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed."
        --Benjamin Disraeli

"Ill habits gather by unseen degrees -- As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas."
        --John Dryden

"Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think."
        --Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles."
        --Patrick Henry

"...Virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone that renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed...so long as our manners and principles remain sound, there is no danger."
        --Patrick Henry

"Manīs character is his fate."
        --Heraclitus

"[T]he man who craves disciples and wants followers is always more or less of a charlatan. The man of genuine worth and insight wants to be himself; and he wants others to be themselves, also."
        --Elbert Hubbard

"The brave man inattentive to his duty, is worth little more to his country than the coward who deserts her in the hour of danger."
        --Andrew Jackson

"It is a great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual, he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all it's good dispositions."
        --Thomas Jefferson

"When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property."
        --Thomas Jefferson

"It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives."
        --Samuel Johnson

"Character is the accumulated confidence that individual men and women acquire from years of doing the right thing, over and over again, even when they don't feel like it. People with character understand that their lives are filled with events and choices that are significant, above all, not because of the short term success or failure of the search for money or position, but because the choices we make are actually making us into one kind of person, or another. Our life of choices is a life-long labor to make ourselves into a person who has begun to respond adequately to the awesome gift we received from God when He made us in His image."
        --Alan Keyes

"If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."
        --Martin Luther King

"You must study to be frank with the world: frankness is the child of honesty and courage. Say just what you mean to do on every occasion, and take it for granted that you mean to do right."
        --Robert E. Lee

"...[T]here is no more dangerous experiment than that of undertaking to be one thing before a man's face and another behind his back."
        --Robert E. Lee

"Not to be, but to seem, virtuous -- it is a formula whose utility we all discovered in the nursery."
        --C.S. Lewis

"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."
        --Abraham Lincoln

"Nearly all men can withstand adversity; if you want to test a manīs character, give him power."
        --Abraham Lincoln

"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."
        --Abraham Lincoln

"Virtue is harder to be got than a knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered."
        --John Locke

"The great man does not think beforehand of his words that they may be sincere, nor of his actions that they may be resolute -- he simply speaks and does what is right."
        --Mencius

"No man can climb out beyond the limitations of his own character."
        --John Viscount Morley, of Blackburn

"[There can be no] rational administration of government when good men are held in the same esteem as bad ones."
        --Polybius

"A man must first govern himself ere he is fit to govern a family; and his family ere he be fit to bear the government of the commonwealth."
        --Sir Walter Raleigh

"There is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit."
        --Ronald Reagan, Sign on his desk

"īLiarī is just as ugly a word as īthief,ī because it implies the presence of just as ugly a sin in one case as in the other. If a man lies under oath or procures the lie of another under oath, if he perjures himself or suborns perjury, he is guilty under the statute law."
        --Theodore Roosevelt

"No man who is corrupt, no man who condones corruption in others, can possibly do his duty by the community"
        --Theodore Roosevelt

"No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency."
        --Theodore Roosevelt

"Integrity is its own reward."
        --Dr. Laura Schlessinger

"Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy."
        --Gen. H. Norman Schwartzkopf, U.S. Army, retired

"Character is the single most important ingredient of leadership. Proper leadership would have prevented the wars in Kosovo and Somalia."
        --Gen. H. Norman Schwartzkopf, U.S. Army, retired

"The purest treasure mortal times afford Is spotless reputation."
        --William Shakespeare

"The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power."
        --William Shakespeare

"True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings;
Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings."
        --William Shakespeare

"True nobility is exempt from fear."
        --William Shakespeare

"When the leader is morally weak and his discipline not strict, when his instructions and guidance are not enlightened, when there are no consistent rules, neighboring rulers will take advantage of this."
        --Sun Tzu

"It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them."
        --Mark Twain

"Yield not to evils, but attack all the more boldly."
        --Virgil

"Character is doing whatīs right when nobody's looking."
        --J.C. Watts

"When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, 'just men who will rule in the fear of God.' The preservation of [our] government depends on the faithful discharge of this Duty; if the citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or disregarded. If [our] government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the Divine Commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the Laws."
        --Noah Webster