Character Quotes

People of good character are not all going to come down on the same side of difficult political and social issues. Good people – people of character and moral literacy – can be conservative, and good people can be liberal. We must not permit our disputes over thorny political questions to obscure the obligation we […]

No man knows his true character until he has run out of gas, purchased something on the installment plan and raised an adolescent.

These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not for the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is […]

Some day, in years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now, in these quiet weeks. Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously […]

The circumstances amid which you live determine your reputation; the truth you believe determines your character. Reputation is what you are supposed to be; character is what you are. Reputation is the photograph; character is the face. Reputation is built in a moment; character is built in a lifetime. Reputation grows like a mushroom; character […]

The people have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge – I mean of the character and conduct of their rulers.

Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking.

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back upon himself.

Public officers, whose character and conduct remain open to debate and free discussion in the press, find their remedies for false accusations in… libel laws… and not in proceedings to restrain the publication of newspapers.

Age should not have its face lifted, but it should rather teach the world to admire wrinkles as the etchings of experience and the firm line of character.