Selected Quotes & Ideas from the Book

Background

• "Justice is not a thing that happens, it's something that is made, that is continuing to be made, even as you read this."
• "Virtue is something we do. It's something we choose...It's a daily challenge, one we face not once but constantly, repeatedly. Will we be selfish or selfless? Brave or afraid? Strong or weak? Wise or stupid?...The easy way or the right way?"
• "The virtue of a person is measured not by his outstanding efforts but by his everyday behavior." -Blaise Pascal

Honesty

• In 256 BC, Roman war hero Marcus Atilius Regulus was captured as a prisoner of war by Carthage. After five years of languishing in Carthage, they released him temporarily to negotiate a prisoner swap with Rome. "After Regulus dutifully delivered Carthage's message, he had advice of his own to add: The offer must be rejected. Carthage was weak, he said, or they wouldn't have sent me as leverage. Fight on. The war was winnable. Grateful, the Romans followed his advice...and Regulus packed his bags. Not to rejoin the army, but to return to Carthage, as a prisoner. His friends were stunned. You're safe now, why would you return? 'I have sworn to them to return,' Regulus explained of the honor system he had been paroled on. 'I will not transgress my oaths, not even when they have been given to enemies.'"
• "Each time we deceive or break faith, we undermine the public trust—we make it hard for people to trust each other. But the converse is also true: Each time we keep our word, we make a deposit, we add a strand to the rope that binds the world together."
• "We keep our word to ourselves—that's discipline. We keep our word to others because it's justice."
• "How many truly honest people do you know? People who tell the truth even when it's inconvenient? Who make it clear where they stand? Who don't equivocate? Could you honestly put yourself in that category?"

Living with Integrity

• "My whole theory about life is that glory and accomplishment are of far less importance than the creation of character and the individual good life." -William Alexander Percy
• "Trying to keep your hands clean earns you enemies. Your decision implicitly rebukes theirs...But what matters is that at the end of the day, you comported yourself with dignity and self-respect."
• "Integrity is living by what you think is right. Not what you can get away with, not what everyone else is doing."
• "Better to do right and go unrewarded than to do wrong and go unpunished."

Transparency

• "There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a vice, which does not live by secrecy." -Joseph Pulitzer
• "The decision to live and work with transparency serves as a kind of immunization against corruption, dishonor, or dishonesty."
• "If we're inclined to hide it, we probably shouldn't do it. If we dread the publicity, maybe we're not living or doing right. We should strive for the opposite. We want people to see what we're doing. We want to be the city on the hill. We should be the kind of person who the more they hear about us, the more they respect and admire us."

Fighting for Others

• "Change happens when people get outraged about other people's rights."
• "We should actively seek out learning things that make us blush. We need to learn about the unpleasant facts of history. We need to learn about the inequities of society."
• "Did you not know? Or did you just not care to know?"
• "When you shrug at the suffering of someone else, you invite it, inevitably, on yourself and people you love down the line."
• "When the wolves of hate are loosed on one people, then no one is safe." -Ralph McGill