Ought Quotes

A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.

We ought to recognize that we have an offensive responsibility to take the war to the terrorists where they are. That responsibility has waned in the last year as military and intelligence resources were withdrawn from Afghanistan and Pakistan to be used in Iraq.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

If I belong to a tradition, it is a tradition that makes the masterpiece tell the performer what to do, and not the performer telling the piece what it should be like, or the composer what he ought to have composed.

Don't let anyone tell you what you ought to like... Some wines that some experts think are absolutely exquisite don't appeal to me at all.

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

Advertising ought to work by telling you what it is you want to tell, you should understand what you want us to do, what you want us to think, where you want us to shop.

The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad; they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state.

Internationalism is a social and political theory, a certain concept of how human society ought to be organized, and in particular a concept of how the nations ought to organize their mutual relations.

I add, that those who are bent on restoring the whole church ought to be well instructed in the word, and to abstain from doing anything under the pretext of simplicity.

The truth doesn't hurt unless it ought to.

The principle of the brotherhood of man is narcissistic... for the grounds for that love have always been the assumption that we ought to realize that we are the same the whole world over.

Half our mistakes in life arise from feeling where we ought to think, and thinking where we ought to feel.

This is a basic function of Congress to keep the government running. And so, what we ought not to do is play politics with those who have been affected by disasters.

When leading evangelicals say terrible things about Islam, evil things about Islam, terrible things about Muhammad, they ought to be ashamed of themselves.

No matter how correct a mathematical theorem may appear to be, one ought never to be satisfied that there was not something imperfect about it until it also gives the impression of being beautiful.

Actors are rogues and vagabonds. Or they ought to be.

I ought not to speak about the dead because the dead are all over the place.

To have guilt you've got to earn guilt, but sometimes when you earn it, you don't feel the guilt you ought to have. And that's what The Firebombing is about.

Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.

Know that each acre of fallow ought to support yearly two sheep at the least, then a hundred acres of fallow can support two hundred sheep, two hundred acres, four hundred sheep and so on.

I would like us to think about it more explicitly, and not take our intuitions as the given of ethics, but rather to reflect on it, and be more open about the fact that something is an ethical issues and think what we ought to do about it.

True liberty consists only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will.

Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done.

From the very commencement the student should set out to witness the progress and effects of sickness and ought to persevere in the daily observation of disease during the whole period of his studies.

Any man who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.

Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied.

Everybody ought to have a lower East Side in their life.

I decided I ought to pick a project that would not be controversial, that would not really cost the government a lot of money.

Every society, all government, and every kind of civil compact therefore, is or ought to be, calculated for the general good and safety of the community.