It's easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

- Frederick Douglass

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.

- Dale Carnegie

The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

Have you not observed that faith is generally strongest in those whose character may be called the weakest?

- Madame de Stael

There is no such thing as a "self-made" man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success.

- George Matthew Adams

A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

Conscience is doubtless sufficient to conduct the coldest character into the road of virtue; but enthusiasm is to conscience what honor is to duty; there is in us a superfluity of soul, which it is sweet to consecrate to the beautiful when the good has been accomplished.

- Madame de Stael

Character is a journey, not a destination.

- Bill Clinton

All honor's wounds are self-inflicted.

- Andrew Carnegie

As a man is, so he sees.

- William Blake

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

Character building begins in our infancy, and continues until death.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Sports do not build character. They reveal it.

- Heywood Broun

The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.

- Margaret Chase Smith

The great hope of society is individual character.

- William Ellery Channing

The Roots of Violence:
Wealth without work,
Pleasure without conscience,
Knowledge without character,
Commerce without morality,
Science without humanity,
Worship without sacrifice,
Politics without principles.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi



Dreams are the touchstones of our character.

- Henry David Thoreau



Character builds slowly, but it can be torn down within incredible swiftness.

- Faith Baldwin



Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent. Most talents are, to some extent, a gift. Good character, by contrast, is not given to us. We have to build it, piece by piece -- by thought, choice, courage, and determination.

- H. Jackson Brown Jr.



I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group.
[Letter to the US House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, 1952]

- Lillian Hellman



People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

- Eleanor Roosevelt



It is no dishonor to be in a minority in the cause of liberty and virtue.

- Sam Adams



It is the duty of men to judge men only by their actions. Our faculties furnish us with no means of arriving at the motive, the character, the secret self. We call the tree good from its fruits, and the man, from his works. (sermon, October 15, 1826)

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



This is the final test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible value to him.

- William Lyon Phelps



Character develops itself in the stream of life.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe



Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance.

- Thomas Carlyle



There never was a good knife made of bad steel.

- Benjamin Franklin



Abraham Lincoln did not go to Gettysburg having commissioned a poll to find out what would sell in Gettysburg. There were no people with percentages for him, cautioning him about this group or that group or what they found in exit polls a year earlier. When will we have the courage of Lincoln?

- Robert Coles



Character is the indelible mark that determines the only true value of all people and all their work.

- Orison Swett Marden



Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

- Abraham Lincoln



People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back.

- Abigail Van Buren



Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

- Helen Keller



To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.

- Mark Twain



If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig.

- Woodrow Wilson



Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.

- Margaret Chase Smith



What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.

- Victor Frankl



Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.

- Anne Frank



The Gods we worship write their names on our faces; be sure of that. A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.

- Albert Einstein



With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in men, than any other association of men.

- Clarence Darrow



I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.



It is virtue, virtue, which both creates and preserves friendship. On it depends harmony of interest, permanence, fidelity.

- Cicero



In the world to come, I shall not be asked, "Why were you not Moses?" I shall be asked, "Why were you not Zusya?"

- Rabbi Zusya



How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seedtime of character?

- Henry David Thoreau