50 Values Quotes

In a world where we are constantly bombarded with information and faced with countless decisions, it’s easy to lose sight of what truly matters—our core values. These fundamental principles guide our actions, shape our character, and define our purpose. To help you reconnect with and be inspired by the essence of what makes us human, we've curated a collection of the top 50 values quotes. Whether you're seeking motivation, reflection, or simply a moment of introspection, these powerful quotes will resonate deeply and remind you of the principles that ground you. Dive in and let the wisdom of these timeless words enrich your journey.

1. “We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."[Remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the Voice of America; Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, February 26, 1962]” - John F. Kennedy

2. “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” - J. Krishnamurti

3. “If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.” - Richard Bach

4. “We hang on to our values, even if they seem at times tarnished and worn; even if, as a nation and in our own lives, we have betrayed them more often that we care to remember. What else is there to guide us? Those values are our inheritance, what makes us who we are as a people. And although we recognize that they are subject to challenge, can be poked and prodded and debunked and turned inside out bu intellectuals and cultural critics, they have proven to be both surprisingly durable and surprisingly constant across classes, and races, and faiths, and generations. We can make claims on their behalf, so long as we understand that our values must be tested against fact and experience, so long as we recall that they demand deeds and not just words.” - Barack Obama

5. “A frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys.” - Edith Wharton

6. “If you're honest, you sooner or later have to confront your values. Then you're forced to separate what is right from what is merely legal. This puts you metaphysically on the run. America is full of metaphysical outlaws.” - Tom Robbins

7. “Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury - to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mind.” - Albert Einstein

8. “Only men would think of cutting themselves to determine who the packleader is. Idiots.” - Christopher Paolini

9. “When all that says 'it is good' has been debunked, what says 'I want' remains. (...) The Conditioners, therefore, must come to be motivated simply by their own pleasure. (...) My point is that those who stand outside all judgements of value cannot have any ground for preferring one of their own impulses to another except the emotional strength of that impulse. (...) I am very doubtful myself whether the benevolent impulses, stripped of that preference and encouragement which the Tao teaches us to give them and left to their merely natural strength and frequency as psychological events, will have much influence. I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently.” - C.S. Lewis

10. “Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root... Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.” - Ronald Reagan

11. “The more choices you have, the more your values matter.” - Michael Schrage

12. “It is their mores, then, that make the Americans of the United States...capable of maintaining the rule of democracy.... Too much importance is attached to laws and too little to mores.... I am convinced that the luckiest of geographical circumstances and the best of laws cannot maintain a constitution in spite of mores, whereas the latter can turn even the most unfavorable circumstances...to advantage.... If I have not succeeded in making the reader feel the importance I attach to the practical experience of the Americans, to their habits, laws, and, in a word, their mores, I have failed in the main object of my work. -Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in American” - Naomi Wolf

13. “Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

14. “When we cannot bear to be alone, it means we do not properly value the only companion we will have from birth to death - ourselves.” - Eda LeShan

15. “Don't waste your love on somebody, who doesn't value it.” - William Shakespeare

16. “The only ethical principle which has made science possible is that the truth shall be told all the time. If we do not penalize false statements made in error, we open up the way for false statements by intention. And a false statement of fact, made deliberately, is the most serious crime a scientist can commit.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

17. “But why must the system go to such lengths to block our empathy? Why all the psychological acrobatics? The answer is simple: because we care about animals, and we don't want them to suffer. And because we eat them. Our values and behaviors are incongruent, and this incongruence causes us a certain degree of moral discomfort. In order to alleviate this discomfort, we have three choices: we can change our values to match our behaviors, we can change our behaviors to match our values, or we can change our perception of our behaviors so that they appear to match our values. It is around this third option that our schema of meat is shaped. As long as we neither value unnecessary animal suffering nor stop eating animals, our schema will distort our perceptions of animals and the meat we eat, so that we feel comfortable enough to consume them. And the system that constructs our schema of meat equips us with the means by which to do this.” - Melanie Joy

18. “Money can't buy happiness but it can buy a huge yacht that sails right next to it.” - David Lee Roth

19. “Ideology knows the answer before the question has been asked.Principles are something different: a set of values that have to be adapted to circumstances but not compromised away.” - George Packer

20. “Ultimate prosperity is one's value within. It takes a man of depth, morality, and charm to be envied yet without a sign of wealth or romance. A passion to prove such inner worth is his permission to achieve whatever he desires.” - Criss Jami

21. “Far from rejecting outright any hierarchy of success or failure, philosophy instead reconfigures the judging process, lending legitimacy to theidea that themainstream value system may unfairly consign some people to disgrace and others to respectability.” - Alain De Botton

22. “أي قتيل في سبيل شيئ فوق نفسه فهو شهيد، وقد تتغير قيم الأشياء أما موقف الإنسان منها فهو قيمة لا تتغير.” - نجيب محفوظ

23. “لو أن لبائع اللب قدرة على الجدل لدلل على أنه يلعب دوراً خطيراً في حياة البشر، ولا يبعد أن يكون لكل شيئ قيمة ذاتية ولا يبعد كذلك ألا يكون لشيئ قيمة البتة، كم مليوناً من البشر يلفظون أنفاسهم في هذه اللحظة؟ في الوقت نفسه يرتفع صوت طفل بالبكاء على فقد لعبة، أو صوت عاشق يبث الليل والكون متاعب قلبه، أأضحك أم أبكي؟” - نجيب محفوظ

24. “Above all, it seems to me wrongheaded and dangerous to invoke historical assumptions about environmental practices of native peoples in order to justify treating them fairly. ... By invoking this assumption [i.e., that they were/are better environmental stewards than other peoples or parts of contemporary society] to justify fair treatment of native peoples, we imply that it would be OK to mistreat them if that assumption could be refuted. In fact, the case against mistreating them isn't based on any historical assumption about their environmental practices: it's based on a moral principle, namely, that it is morally wrong for one people to dispossess, subjugate or exterminate another people.” - Jared Diamond

25. “[T]he values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs.” - Jared Diamond

26. “He could very likely have appealed for leniency. At least he could have saved his life by agreeing to leave Athens. But had he done this he would not have been Socrates. He valued his conscience--and the truth-- higher than life.” - Jostein Gaarder

27. “I don't want to become obsessed with work or money or change any of the values I have now. I don't have reason to believe that I ever should change, as much as I have this feeling of urgency to pursue my dreams...” - Tanya Kimberly Orme

28. “Successfully functioning in a society with diverse values, traditions and lifestyles requires us to have a relationship to our own reactions rather than be captive of them. To resist our tendencies to make right or true, that which is nearly familiar, and wrong or false, that which is only strange.” - Robert Kegan

29. “Thomas More: Will, I'd trust you with my life. But not your principles. You see, we speak of being anchored to our principles. But if the weather turns nasty you up with an anchor and let it down where there's less wind, and the fishing's better. And "Look," we say, "look, I'm anchored! To my principles!” - Robert Bolt

30. “If values are woven into the very concept of education, where is the need for separate value education?” - Vijaya Bharathy

31. “One is often so busy doing life that it is easy to avoid evaluating whether you are putting your energy in the direction you value most.” - Deborah Day

32. “To feel more fulfilled your actions and activities need to be in alignment with what you deem important.” - Deborah Day

33. “Living in a way that reflects one's values is not just about what you do, it is also about how you do things.” - Deborah Day

34. “Tatlo ang magulang ng henerasyon natin. Ang tatay, ang nanay, at ang mga patalastas o media. Kaya kung mahina yung dalawang nauna, naagawan sila ng ikatlo sa pagpapalaki sa bata.” - Bob Ong

35. “Your choice is to be active or passive in your responses.” - Deborah Day

36. “I don't know what sort of world she will live in and I have no fixed opinions concerning how she should live in it. I only know that if she does not come to value what is true above what is useful, it will make little difference whether she lives at all.” - Cormac McCarthy

37. “We set no special value on the possession of a virtue until we percieve that it is entirely lacking in our adversary.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

38. “Ehren wir die Freiheit. Arbeiten wir für den Frieden. Halten wir uns an das Recht. Dienen wir unseren inneren Maßstäben der Gerechtigkeit."[Ansprache am 8. Mai 1985 in der Gedenkstunde im Plenarsaal des Deutschen Bundestages]” - Richard von Weizsäcker

39. “Enttäuschung und Frustration werden [...] alle erleben, die sich wie im Märchen danach sehnen, Glück in einem Schlaraffenland zu finden ... Nur, dass unser Schlaraffenland nicht ein großer Berg von süßem Brei ist ... wir haben andere Fantasien und Bilder von Fülle und Erfülltheit in einem imaginären Schlaraffenland, das nur eben unglücklicherweise niemals dort ist, wo wir tatsächlich leben. Vielmehr leben wir mit der Hoffnung auf ein Glück, das uns das Schicksal irgenwann einmal gewähren müsse. [...] So können wir das Schlaraffenland je nach unserer eigenen Fasson ausgestalten - und wir tun es. Privat und auch gesellschaftlich.Doch sobald wir anfangen, uns mit diesem Glücksmodell anzufreunden, und gespannt darauf warten, wie im Lotto das große Los zu ziehen, werden wir auf einem Weg sein, wo das Glück ganz bestimmt nicht zu uns findet! Wir bleiben hungrig und ungesättigt. Denn geheimnisvollerweise ist das Glück dort, wo wir Bezogenheit leben - selbst in dem unspektatulärsten Tun des Alltags.” - Joachim Gauck

40. “You have many fine qualities that I admire. But you are out of time. You should have been born a century ago, when values such as yours meant something.” - Jasper Fforde

41. “Values are sometimes worth living and dying for, and are certainly worth dating and breaking up over.” - Henry Cloud and John Townsend

42. “We live among ruins in a World in which ‘god is dead’ as Nietzsche stated. The ideals of today are comfort, expediency, surface knowledge, disregard for one’s ancestral heritage and traditions, catering to the lowest standards of taste and intelligence, apotheosis of the pathetic, hoarding of material objects and possessions, disrespect for all that is inherently higher and better — in other wordsa complete inversion of true values and ideals, the raising of the victory flag of ignorance and the banner of degeneracy. In such a time, social decadence is so widespread that it appears as a natural component of all political institutions. The crises that dominate the daily lives of our societies are part of a secret occult war to remove the support of spiritual and traditional values in order to turn man into a passive instrument of dark powers.The common ground of both Capitalism and Socialism is a materialistic view of life and being. Materialism in its war with the Spirit has taken on many forms; some have promoted its goals with great subtlety, whilst others have done so with an alarming lack of subtlety, but all have added, in greater or lesser measure, to the growing misery of Mankind. The forms which have done the most damage in our time may be enumerated as: Freemasonry, Liberalism, Nihilism, Capitalism, Socialism, Marxism, Imperialism, Anarchism, Modernism and the New Age.” - Seyyed Hossein Nasr

43. “See that the mind is honest, first; the rest may follow or not as God wills. [That] the fundamental treason to the mind ... is the one fundamental treason which the scholar's mind must not allow is the bond uniting all the Oxford people in the last resort.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

44. “Work hard, do your best, live the truth, trust yourself, have some fun...and you'll have no regrets.” - Byrd Baggett

45. “Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

46. “As a basic step of self-esteem, learn to treat as the mark of a cannibal any man’s demand for your help. To demand it is to claim that your life is his property – and loathsome as such claim might be, there’s something still more loathsome: your agreement. Do you ask if it’s ever proper to help another man? No- if he claims it as his right or as a moral duty that you owe him. Yes- if such is your own desire based on your own selfish pleasure in the value of his person and his struggle. Suffering as such is not a value, only man’s fight against suffering is. If you choose to help a man who suffers, do it only on the ground of his virtues, of his fight to recover, of his rational record, or of the fact that he suffers unjustly; then your action is still trade, and his virtue is the payment for your help. But to help a man who has no virtues, to help him on the ground of his suffering as such, to accept his faults, his need, as a claim – is to accept the mortgage of a zero on your values. A man who has no virtues is a hater of existence who acts on the premise of death; to help him is to sanction his evil and to support his career of destruction. Be it only a penny you will miss or a kindly smile he has not earned, a tribute to a zero is treason to life and to all those who struggle to maintain it. It is of such pennies and smiles that the desolation of your world was made.” - Ayn Rand

47. “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.” - Parker J. Palmer

48. “By using repetition, images, and other strategies - all of which communicate truths in ways that are not cognitively or propositional - marketing forms us into the kind of persons who want to buy beer to have meaningful relationships, or to buy a car to be respected, or buy the latest thing to come along simply to satisfy the desire that has been formed and implanted in us. It is important to appreciate that these disciplinary mechanisms transmit values and truth claims, but not via propositions or cognitive means; rather, the values are transmitted more covertly...This covertness of the operation is also what makes it so powerful: the truths are inscribed in us through the powerful instruments of imagination and ritual.” - James K.A. Smith

49. “In a rule-based society, we often choose efficiency over value, but, while rules-based governance systems may often serve well the values of fairness and representation, their seeming efficiency hides a deep and important flaw: We often rely on rules when they are not, in fact, the most efficient or effective solution to getting the result that we desire.” - Dov Seidman

50. “I believe strongly that my books are entertainment. I hope you might learn a thing or two while reading them, but first and foremost, my job is to entertain you. If I’m waving a flag in Hot Target, it’s the same flag I’ve always waved in all my books—the American flag. And that’s a flag that’s supposed to stand for acceptance and understanding. For freedom for all—and not just freedom for all Americans, but freedom for all of the diverse and wonderful people living on this planet; freedom to live their lives according to their definitions of freedom. It’s a flag that’s supposed to stand for real American values like honor and honesty and peace and love and hope.” - Suzanne Brockmann