Quotes about Values

Compromise, while at times morally necessary or at least justifiable, is more often only the first permission for a person (or society) to begin a long downhill descent.

Many liberals believe in God; many conservatives do. What matters is not whether people believe in God but what text, if any, they believe to be divine. Those who believe that He has spoken through a given text will generally think differently from those who believe that no text is divine. Such people will usually get their values from other texts, or more likely from their conscience and heart.

Without God, right and wrong are just personal beliefs. Personal opinions. I think shoplifting is okay, you don't.

A society can survive bad donkey drivers. But it cannot survive contempt for truth—whether inside or outside a courtroom.

Morally judging cultures (except Christian, Israeli and American cultures) is forbidden by the left. Indeed not judging non-Western cultures is the very definition of 'multiculturalism'.

The world's thinking is morally confused because it is informed by the morally confused.

Raise children who are grateful in general, and grateful to be an American in particular, or grateful to be the citizen of any decent country, who don't complain much, who learn to handle losing, and who are guided by values, not feelings. In other words, teach them how to be happy adults.

If your parents bring you no shame, be very grateful. If you're proud of them, celebrate.

With all our sophistication, the remarkable fact is that the Ten Commandments are more or less all we need.

The Torah's view is we are supposed to be preoccupied with making this world as heavenly as possible. Those who live by its moral laws and values are best able to achieve that goal.

However, one big obstacle to truth-telling is that believers in causes, including good causes, that don't place truth as a central value, will be very tempted to lie on behalf of their cause.

The Ten Commandments are there to warn all of us that, with very few exceptions, such as the immediate saving of innocent life, no cause is more important than truth-telling. The Ten Commandments are the greatest list of instructions ever devised for creating a good society. But such a society cannot be created or maintained if it is not based on truth.