Values Quotes

“People focus on role models; it is more effective to find antimodels - people you don't want to resemble when you grow up”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“The classical man's worst fear was inglorious death; the modern man's worst fear is just death”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“I can pretty much guarantee that you will at some point find yourself doing something that at one point you swore you'd never do. You'll do it for the sake of getting high, either directly or indirectly. Trust me. It will happen. You might think you know yourself better than anyone, but you have yet to become acquainted with your addiction. It will introduce itself in ways that you never thought were possible.”
― Ashly Lorenzana

“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for me to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed or enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Is it really worth dying for the person you love?”
[Maureen] thinks about this for a moment. “That’s not the real question, Oliver. What you should be asking is, Can you live without her?”
― Jodi Picoult, Between the Lines

“A nation lives forever through its concepts, honour, and culture. It is for these reasons that the rulers of nations must judge and act not only on the basis of physical and material interests of the nation but on the basis of the nation's historical honour, of the nation's eternal interests. Thus: not bread at all costs, but honour at all costs.”
― Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, For My Legionaries

“Work hard, do your best, live the truth, trust yourself, have some fun...and you'll have no regrets.”
― Byrd Baggett

“You have many fine qualities that I admire. But you are out of time. You should have been born a century ago, when values such as yours meant something.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Last Dragonslayer

“Then it was that Jo, living in the darkened room, with that suffering little sister always before her eyes and that pathetic voice sounding in her ears, learned to see the beauty and the sweetness of Beth's nature, to feel how deep and tender a place she filled in all hearts, and to acknowledge the worth of Beth's unselfish ambition to live for others, and make home happy by that exercise of those simple virtues which all may possess, and which all should love and value more than talent, wealth, or beauty.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“[I]t's difficult to make people see that what you have been taught counts for nothing, and that the only things worth having are the things you find out for yourself. Also, that when so many brands of what Chesterton calls 'fancy souls' and theories of life are offered you, there is no sense in not looking pretty carefully to see what you are going in for. [...] It isn't a case of 'Here is the Christian religion, the one authoritative and respectable rule of life. Take it or leave it'. It's 'Here's a muddling kind of affair called Life, and here are nineteen or twenty different explanations of it, all supported by people whose opinions are not to be sneezed at. Among them is the Christian religion in which you happpen to have been brought up. Your friend so-and-so has been brought up in quite a different way of thinking; is a perfectly splendid person and thoroughly happy. What are you going to do about it?' -- I'm worrying it out quietly, and whatever I get hold of will be valuable, because I've got it for myself; but really, you know, the whole question is not as simple as it looks.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist

“God must have a weird sense of values, and if there’s a Judgment Day, as some folks think, He’s going to have a lot to answer for.”
― Philip Appleman