A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
Almost anything that can be praised or advocated has been put to some disgusting use. There is no principle, however immaculate, that has not had its compromising manipulator.
Americans are willing to go to enormous trouble and expense defending their principles with arms, very little trouble and expense advocating them with words. Temperamentally we are ready to die for certain principles (or, in the case of overripe adults, send youngsters to die), but we show little inclination to advertise the reasons for dying.
Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help.
Every principle is a judgment, every judgment the outcome of experience, and experience is only acquired by the exercise of the senses; whence it follows that religious principles bear upon nothing whatever and are not in the slightest innate. Ignorance and fear, you will repeat to them, ignorance and fear — those are the twin bases of every religion.
Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages.
I find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed.
I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
In any assembly the simplest way to stop transacting business and split the ranks is to appeal to a principal.
In matters of principals, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the current.
It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Its easy to have principles when you're rich. The important thing is to have principles when you're poor.
Nobody ever did anything very foolish except from some strong principle.
Obey the principles without being bound by them.
Our principles are the springs of our actions. Our actions, the springs of our happiness or misery. Too much care, therefore, cannot be taken in forming our principles.
People must have righteous principals in the first, and then they will not fail to perform virtuous actions.
Principal is a passion for truth!
Principle, particularly moral principal, can never be a weathervane, spinning around this way and that with the shifting winds of expediency. Moral principle is a compass forever fixed and forever true. And that is as important in business as it is in the classroom.
Principles aren't of much account anyway, except at election time. After that you hang them up to let them season.
Prosperity is the best protector of principle.