A Quote by Lucretia Mott

If our principles are right, why should we be cowards? — © Lucretia Mott
If our principles are right, why should we be cowards?
What does purpose mean? It means the deepest desire for our short lives to mean something. . . . To speak a language of purpose is to return to first principles and to be able to answer, in plain English, the plain questions of Why? Why should we chip in to help someone else? Why should we defer gratification? Why should we care about the long term? Why should we trust anyone who seems to be limiting our ability to do what we want?
We are not responsible for our feelings, as we are for our principles and actions. ... Our care, then, should be to look to our principles, and to avoid all anxiety about our emotions. Their nature can never be wrong where our course of action is right, and for their degree we are not responsible.
It is right that we should stand by and act on our principles; but not right to hold them in obstinate blindness, or retain them when proved to be erroneous.
While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.
But there's no reason why we should abdicate our foundational principles because certain groups don't believe in them. You know, no majority should surrender its deeply held beliefs to those who don't believe in anything.
If our principles are only our principles when it is convenient for us, when they align with our visceral emotional responses, then they are, in fact, not principles at all.
I ask you to uphold the values of America and remember why so many have come here. We're in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them. No one should be singled out for unfair treatment or unkind words because of their ethnic background or religious faith.
Why should we be willing to go by faith? We do all things in this world by faith in the word of others. By faith only we know our position in the world, our circumstances, our rights and privileges, our fortunes, our parents, our brothers and sisters, our age, our mortality. Why should Religion be an exception?
If by sticking to the moral principles you have followed all your life, you jeopardize your happiness and that of others, throw over your principles. Principles for principles' sake -that is not wisdom; that is obstinacy. Principles should be fluid because life is fluid.
Why should we... constantly worry ourselves... as to what should be done and how, and what should not be done and how not? We know that the train carries all loads, so after getting on it why should we carry our small luggage on our head to our discomfort, instead of putting it down in the train and feeling at ease?
Would we be the heroes or the cowards of the piece? Would we follow orders or stick to our principles, if those two things ever conflicted? Would we be the brave ones who still found the capacity for love - and for laughter - even while we were terrified?
There's never been a nation like the United States, ever. It begins with the principles of our founding documents, principles that recognize that our rights come from God, not from our government - principles that recognize that because all of us are equal in the eyes of our creator, all life is sacred at every stage of life.
Each man must not think only of himself, but also of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this Army. They should be killed off like rats. If not, they will go home after this war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the Goddamned cowards and we will have a nation of brave men.
There is a dichotomy between people who feel economic principles should order human civilization and people who believe humanitarian principles should order human civilization. That essential disagreement is underlying practically all our world drama.
So that's my main role right now and really the politics also includes going out and communicating to the world why Apache is a good thing, why companies should be involved in it, and why individuals should be involved in it too.
The Electoral College is a project that calls on their judgment. If we don't like it, we can talk about how to eliminate it. I'm not quite convinced we should eliminate it completely. I think it's important to have a final check be somebody other than the Supreme Court. But given that it's there, we should take it seriously. And taking it seriously says they should exercise their judgment according to the moral values, the principles that are part of our constitutional tradition today. And those principles say equality.
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