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Ought Quotes

“Most persons think that a state in order to be happy ought to be large; but even if they are right, they have no idea of what is a large and what a small state.... To the size of states there is a limit, as there is to other things, plants, animals, implements; for none of these retain their natural power when they are too large or too small, but they either wholly lose their nature, or are spoiled.”

Ifs Thinking Persons Ideas States Order Loses Natural Animal Ought Limits Plant Size No Idea Consumerism Spoiled Overconsumption

Book:The Essential Aristotle

Source: The Essential Aristotle

“Together with the social responsibility of businesses, there is also the social responsibility of consumers. Every person ought to have the awareness that 'purchasing is always a moral-and not simply an economic-act.”

Persons Together Social Responsibility Moral Economic Awareness Ought Consumers Social Responsibility Purchasing

Author:Pope Francis

“I think it’s unfair that people can’t give assets to whoever they want. When I die, my assets can go to my wife. And a gay person — you ought to have a system where maybe you can just say, ‘You can give your assets to anybody you want.’”

People Thinking Want Giving Persons Dies Wife Ought Gay My Wife Assets Unfair

Author:Foster Friess

“But centaurs never existed; there could never be So to speak a double nature in a single body Or a double body composed of incongruous parts With a consequent disparity in the faculties. The stupidest person ought to be convinced of that.”

Persons Body Speak Ought Convinced Faculty Disparity Stupidest Centaurs

Book:De rerum natura

Source: De rerum natura

“When I see a cheerful young man shrieking about how full of life he is, banging on a drum, and blowing on a tin trumpet, and speaking of his good spirits, it depresses me, since naturally it gives the contrary impression. It can't be real. It ought to be but it isn't. If the noisy person meant what he said, he wouldn't say it.”

Ifs Men Giving Persons Said Real Young Spirit Ought Contrary Impression Young Man Being Real Depressing Cheerful Trumpets Noisy Tin Banging

Book:Love at Second Sight

Source: Love at Second Sight

“Tolerance should, strictly speaking, be only a passing mood; it ought to lead to acknowledgment and appreciation. To tolerate a person is to affront him.”

Should Persons Ought Appreciation Tolerance Mood Passing Passings Tolerate Acknowledgment Affront

Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“How long shall we blunder along without the aid of unpartisan and authoritative scientific assistance in the administration of justice, no one knows; but all fair persons not conventionalized by provincial legal habits of mind ought, I should think, unite to effect some change.”

Thinking Knows Should Mind Persons Long Justice Effects Ought Habit Fairs Aids Administration Assistance Blunders Habits Of Mind Administration Of Justice

Author:Learned Hand

“Persons who think there is no such thing as luck good or bad are entitled to their opinion, although I think they ought to be shot for it.”

Thinking Persons Opinion Ought Shots Luck Entitled No Such Thing As Luck

Book:Autobiography of Mark Twain: Reader's Edition

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain: Reader's Edition

“And whereas many men, by accident unevitable, become unable to maintain themselves by their labour; they ought not to be left to the Charity of private persons; but to be provided for, (as far-forth as the necessities of Nature require,) by the Lawes of the Common-wealth. For as it is Unchariablenesse in any man, to neglect the impotent; so it is in the Soveraign of a Common-wealth, to expose them to the hazard of such uncertain Charity.”

Men Persons Left Wealth Common Ought Charity Accidents Labour Neglect Uncertain Hazards

Author:Thomas Hobbes

“And then there is that one-man movement, Marcel Duchamp for me a truly modern movement because it implies that each artist can do what he thinks he ought to a movement for each person and open for everybody.”

Thinking Men Persons Artist Can Do Modern Movement Ought One Man

Book:Willem de Kooning: Pittsburgh International Series, October 26, 1979-January 6, 1980, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute

Source: Willem de Kooning: Pittsburgh International Series, October 26, 1979-January 6, 1980, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute

“THERE is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blameable, than, in philosophical disputes, to endeavour the refutation of any hypothesis, by a pretence of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality. When any opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly false; but it is not certain that an opinion is false, because it is of dangerous consequence. Such topics, therefore, ought entirely to be forborne; as serving nothing to the discovery of truth, but only to make the person of an antagonist odious.”

Source: Essays Moral, Political, and Literary

“That general warrants, whereby an officer or messenger may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, or whose offence is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are grievous and oppressive, and ought not to be granted.”

May Persons Facts Ought Evidence Committed Granted Officers Messengers Offence Warrants

Author:George Mason

“I think every religious person should have a deep sense of respect for other people's religious documents and religious symbols just as we were deeply opposed to the Taliban destroying the two historic buddhas which they blew up. So I think we ought to all oppose burning the Koran.”

People Thinking Should Persons Two Religious Ought Should Have Symbols Burning Destroying Documents Historic Respecting Others Taliban Religious Person

Author:Newt Gingrich

“If you go back into military history, the person who's leading the troops ought to be in with the troops and not just standing on the backline sending them into battle.”

Ifs Persons Military Ought Battle Standing Troops Military History

Author:Richard Branson

“It ought to concern every person, because it is a debasement of our common humanity. It ought to concern every community, because it tears at our social fabric. It ought to concern every business, because it distorts markets. It ought to concern every nation, because it endangers public health and fuels violence and organized crime. I’m talking about the injustice, the outrage, of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name - modern slavery.”

“What, then, do they want a government for? Not to regulate commerce; not to educate the people; not to teach religion, not to administer charity; not to make roads and railways; but simply to defend the natural rights of man -- to protect person and property -- to prevent the aggressions of the powerful upon the weak -- in a word, to administer justice. This is the natural, the original, office of a government. It was not intended to do less: it ought not to be allowed to do more.”

Source: The Man versus the State: Great Essays

“Shame is the proper reaction when one has purposefully violated the accepted behavior of society. Inflicting it is etiquette's response when its rules are disobeyed. The law has all kinds of nasty ways of retaliating when it is disregarded, but etiquette has only a sense of social shame to deter people from treating others in ways they know are wrong. So naturally Miss Manners wants to maintain the sense of shame. Some forms of discomfort are fully justified, and the person who feels shame ought to be dealing with removing its causes rather than seeking to relieve the symptoms.”

Source: Miss Manners Rescues Civilization: From Sexual Harassment, Frivolous Lawsuits, Dissing, and Other Lapses in Civility

“Should you happen to notice that another person is extremely tall or overweight, eats too much or declines convivial drinks, has red hair or goes about in a wheelchair, ought to get married or ought not to be pregnant -- see if you can refrain from bringing these astonishing observations to that person's attention.”

Ifs Should Persons Happens Attention Too Much Hair Ought Drink Married Red Observation Tall Decline Pregnant Astonishing Refrain Overweight Wheelchairs Red Hair

Author:Judith Martin

“a person who was clever ought to be clever enough not to be unjust or deliberately unkind to anyone.”

Persons Enough Ought Clever Unjust Unkind Unkindness

Book:Sara Crewe: Or, What Happened at the Miss Minchin's Boarding School

Source: Sara Crewe: Or, What Happened at the Miss Minchin's Boarding School

“People who praise illness as bringing out the best in people ought to have their heads examined. Pain forces you to think about yourself, directs your interest to your own body and what is happening to it. You don't reach out benevolently, filled with good will for others. You don't seem to care enough. Pain makes you a little person, not a big one, and not a nice one, except perhaps in the case of saints, and I've never known one.”

Source: Put out the light

“Unlike proportionality, progression provides no principle which tells us what the relative burden of different persons ought to be the argument based on the presumed justice of progression provides no limitation, as has often been admitted by its supporters, before all incomes above a certain figure are confiscated, and those below left untaxed.”

Persons Different Certain Left Justice Principles Figures Ought Argument Burden Income Limitation Relative Supporter Progression Proportionality

Author:Friedrich August von Hayek

“He that boasts of his ancestors confesses that he has no virtue of his own. No person ever lived for our honor; nor ought that to be reputed ours, which was long before we had a being; for what advantage can it be to a blind man to know that his parents had good eyes? Does he see one whit the better?”

Knows Men Persons Long Doe Eye Parent Virtue Ought Honor Advantage Blind Ancestor Boast Ancestry Blind Man

Author:Pierre Charron

“May we not have a picture of Christ, who has a true body? By no means; because, though he has a true body and a reasonable soul, John 1:14, yet his human nature subsists in his divine person, which no picture can represent, Psalm 45:2. Why ought all pictures of Christ to be abominated by Christians? Because they are downright lies, representing no more than the picture of a mere man: whereas, the true Christ is God-man”

Men Humans May Mean Persons Soul Body Christian Lying Christ Human Nature Divine Ought Mere Reasonable Representing Psalms

Author:James Fisher

“Education ought everywhere to be religious education. At the same time, parents are farther bound to employ no instructors who will not educate their children religiously. To commit our children to the care of irreligious persons, is to commit lambs to the superintendency of wolves.”

Children Persons Care Parent Religious Education Ought Bounds Commit Lambs Instructors Religious Education

Author:Timothy Dwight V

“Patriotism is considered to be an emotion a person ought to feel. But why? Why is it nobler to love your own country than to love someone else's?”

Feels Persons Country Emotion Love You Ought Love Someone

Book:Essays

Source: Essays

“To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.”

Persons Two Ought Reader Translate Translators Paraphrase

Author:W. H. Auden

“A born-again person ought to possess unspeakable peace in the spirit.”

Persons Spirit Born Ought Born Again Unspeakable

Book:The Spiritual Man

Source: The Spiritual Man

“The English Writers of Tragedy are possessed with a Notion, that when they represent a virtuous or innocent Person in Distress, they ought not to leave him till they have delivered him out of his Troubles, or made him triumph over his Enemies.”

Persons Made Enemy Trouble Ought Criticism Tragedy Theater Notion Innocent Triumph Possessed Virtuous Distress Innocent Person

Book:The spectator

Source: The spectator

“A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.”

Source: Golden Hours with Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“The goal in raising one's child is to enable him, first, to discover who he wants to be, and then to become a person who can be satisfied with himself and his way of life. Eventually he ought to be able to do in his life whatever seems important, desirable, and worthwhile to him to do; to develop relations with other people that are constructive, satisfying, mutually enriching; and to bear up well under the stresses and hardships he will unavoidably encounter during his life.”

“However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that, however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.”

Ifs May Persons Strong Opinion Possibility Ought Moved Consideration Dogma Strong Opinions Dead Dog

Book:On Liberty

Source: On Liberty

“Never call yourself a philosopher, nor talk a great deal among the unlearned about theorems, but act conformably to them. Thus, at an entertainment, don't talk how persons ought to eat, but eat as you ought. For remember that in this manner Socrates also universally avoided all ostentation.”

Persons Remember Deals Ought Philosopher Entertainment Avoided Theorems Ostentation

Book:The Handbook of Epictetus

Source: The Handbook of Epictetus

“A lot of people are talking about defunding planned parenthood, as if that's a huge game changer. I think it's time to do something even more bold. I think the next president ought to invoke the Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the constitution now that we clearly know that that baby inside the mother's womb is a person at the moment of conception.”

“We often think more highly of ourselves than we ought to, and it's easy to judge others and be critical of their weaknesses and shortcomings. But this self-righteous attitude is a sin that we can be blinded to because we're so focused on what the other person did wrong. The reality is this attitude is worse than the wrong behavior we're judging.”

Thinking Persons Self Reality Easy Sin Attitude Judging Ought Behavior Weakness Critical Focused Righteous Shortcomings Blinded Self Righteous Easy To Judge

Author:Joyce Meyer

“The Basic Eight and Watch Your Mouth both have first-person voices, and I ended up investigating those voices and investing so much in them that I think many people took them more seriously than they ought to have.”

People Thinking Firsts Persons Voice Watches Ought Mouths Investing Eight First Person Investigating

Author:Daniel Handler

“I go out to preach with two propositions in mind. First, every person ought to give his life to Christ. Second, whether or not anyone else gives him his life, I will give him mine.”

Giving Mind Firsts Persons Two Christian Christ Mines Ought Christian Inspirational Propositions

Author:Jonathan Edwards

“If you want to be the person you ought to be, you've got to welcome competition.”

Ifs Want Persons Ought Competition Welcome Be You

Book:The Heart of a Champion: Inspiring True Stories of Challenge and Triumph

Source: The Heart of a Champion: Inspiring True Stories of Challenge and Triumph

“If there is any person to whom you feel a dislike, that is the person of whom you ought never to speak.”

Ifs Feels Persons Evil Speak Ought Dislike

Book:Remains and Miscellanies of the Rev. R. Cecil: To which is Prefixed, a View of His Character

Source: Remains and Miscellanies of the Rev. R. Cecil: To which is Prefixed, a View of His Character

“Ought to have a universal compulsory force to move and arrange each part in the manner best suited to the whole. Just as nature gives each man an absolute power over all his members, the social compact gives the body politic an absolute power over all its members." "We grant that each person alienates, by the social compact, only that portion of his power, his goods, and liberty whose use is of consequence to the community; but we must also grant that only the sovereign is the judge of what is of consequence.”

“A Christian minister is a person who in a peculiar sense is not his own; he is the servant of God, and therefore ought to be wholly devoted to Him.”

Persons Christian Ought Ministers Servant Peculiar Devoted Servant Of God

Book:An Enquiry Into the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens: In which the Religious State of the Different Nations of the World, the Success of Former Undertakings, and the Practicability of Further Undertakings are Considered,

Source: An Enquiry Into the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens: In which the Religious State of the Different Nations of the World, the Success of Former Undertakings, and the Practicability of Further Undertakings are Considered,

“Pathology has made us acquainted with a great number of states in which the boundary lines between the ego and the external world become uncertain or in which they are actually drawn incorrectly. There are cases in which parts of a person's own body, even portions of his own mental life - his perceptions, thoughts and feelings -, appear alien to him and as not belonging to his ego; there are other cases in which he ascribes to the external world things that clearly originate in his own ego and that ought to be acknowledged by it.”

Source: The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud

“... the photographer is a thief who chooses what he steals (which, at this stage of the crisis, is a luxury) and does not democratize the image, that is to say, the photographer selects the pictures, a privilege which ought to be granted to the person being photographed.”

Persons Doe Stage Ought Crisis Photographer Privilege Stealing Luxury Granted Thieves

Author:Subcomandante Marcos

“The cases involving the question of whether U.S. courts should be open to claims of international human rights violations brought by foreign persons against foreign government officials. And the State Department on the one side has got a very consistent and powerful view that U.S. courts should be open to those claims because there needs to be a place in the world where they can be brought. And those human rights norms ought to be real and enforceable, and we ought to be a beacon to the world.”

“Kant does not think that along with choice of an action we also choose in each case the motive from which we do it. He thinks all is well if I act beneficently, realizing that it is my duty but also having sympathetic feelings for the person I help. But I ought to strive to be the sort of person who would still help even if these feelings were absent. And it is such a case that he presents when the sympathetic friend of humanity finds his sympathetic feelings overclouded by his own sorrows, and still acts beneficently from duty.”

Ifs Thinking Wells Persons Doe Stills Helping Feelings Action Humanity Choices Realizing Cases Duty Ought Sorrow Strive Motive Absent Sympathetic

Author:Allen W. Wood

“The value of "one person, one vote," the value of equality, is a value that was given to us more than 50 years ago as a central part of our constitutional tradition. So, under that principle, we ought to be applying the same standard today that I would have said we should have applied a year ago.”

Should Years Persons Said Today Values Given Principles Ought Standards Years Ago Tradition Should Have Vote

Author:Lawrence Lessig

“The head of the government ethics ought to be careful, because that person is becoming extremely political. Apparently, may have made a - publicly supported Hillary Clinton as calling out the president with information on Twitter about our disentangle - disentangling of the business over a month ago.”

May Persons Made Government Political President Information Months Ought Becoming Calling Ethics Clinton Careful Be Careful

Author:Reince Priebus

“I was stupid enough to think that we ought to speak the truth about each person eulogised, and to make this the foundation, and from these truths to choose the most beautiful things and arrange them in the most elegant way; and I was quite proud to think how well I should speak, because I believed that I knew the truth.”

Thinking Way Should Wells Persons Enough Beautiful Speak Stupid Ought Proud Foundation Beautiful Things Elegant Speak The Truth I Was Stupid

Book:Great dialogues of Plato

Source: Great dialogues of Plato

“The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile.”

People Feels Persons Stills Effort Ought Ego Unselfish Moralist Futile Efforts

Author:Alan Watts

“You had no right to be born; for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person's strength.”

Persons Use Born Ought Reasonable Parasites

Book:The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

“All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right, and not what is established.”

Persons Ought Endeavor

Author:Aristotle