The quote database

The observed worker should be made to realize the purpose and importance of the measurement. The observing should always be done with his full knowledge and hearty coöperation.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.

Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen.

If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

The confirmed criminal is as much entitled to redress as his most virtuous fellow citizen; no record of crime, however long, makes one an outlaw.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

the right to be let alone--the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men

They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone

in the exercise of this high power, we must be ever on our guard, lest we erect our prejudices into legal principles

Do not, I beg you, dread those things which the immortal gods apply to our minds like spurs: misfortune is virtue's opportunity.

Discourse no more of what a good man should be; but be one.

Recollect all you have passed through, all that you have had strength to bear.

Bear toil and pain, not as if wretched under it, nor as courting pity or admiration.

No man can hinder the proper work of the mind.

For death also is one piece of the business of life, and, here as elsewhere, it is enough to do well what comes to our hand.

Tell over next all those you have known, one after the other: think how one buried his fellow, then lay dead himself, to be buried by a third.

Find your sole delight and recreation in proceeding from one unselfish action to another, with God ever in mind.

Spend, then, the fleeting remnant of your time in a spirit that accords with Nature, and depart contentedly.

If you want liberty you yourselves must strike the blow. If you must be free you must become so through your own effort, through your own initiative.

To me, a man has no master but God. Man in his authority is a sovereign lord.

he kept his mind at full stretch like a bow, and never gave in to old age by growing slack

An actor, in order to earn approval, is not bound to perform the play from beginning to end; let him only satisfy the audience in whatever act he appears.

The fact is that old age is respectable just as long as it asserts itself, maintains its proper rights, and is not enslaved to any one.

The real limit to be observed in friendship is this: the characters of two friends must be stainless.

it was the virtue of the man that I loved, and that has not suffered death