“The only guide to man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.”
Winston Churchill
“Justice is a certain rectitude of mind whereby a man does what he ought to do in the circumstances confronting him”
St. Thomas Aquinas
“Where are they now that we, the men whom they sent off to war, have returned? These are commanders who have deserted their troops, and there is no more serious crime in the law of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The Marines say they never leave even their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They have left the real stuff of their reputation bleaching behind them in the sun in this country.”
Senator John Kerry
“Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Two man talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and searching sort.”
“The value of an idea has nothing whatever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.”
Oscar Wilde
“The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity”
Andre Gide
