Quotes about loyalty

„Those who betray an oath of loyalty and commitment are in training to become a master of deceit and deception.“

—  RJ Intindola (Gandolfo)

2016

„My honor is my loyalty.“

—  Heinrich Himmler Nazi officer, Commander of the SS 1900 - 1945

Himmler formulated this as the watchword of the Schultzstaffel, an organization that eventually became an enormous organization ranging from the staff of the concentration camps to the Gestapo and SD, to the Waffen-SS, Hitler's personal soldiers. Above all else, Himmler and the rest of the Nazi leadership stressed the importance of loyalty to the Reich and the Fuehrer. As translated in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), by Hannah Arendt Ch. 10
Undated

„There is a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and much less prevalent.“

—  George S. Patton United States Army general 1885 - 1945

War As I Knew It (1947); also quoted in Patton's One-Minute Messages: Tactical Leadership Skills for Business Management (1995) by Charles M. Province, p. 88
Context: There is a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and much less prevalent. One of the most frequently noted characteristics of great men who have remained great is loyalty to their subordinates.

„For showing loyalty in the midst of prosperity calls for no particular admiration, but always, if men show themselves steadfast when friends have fallen upon misfortunes, this is remembered for all times.“

—  Xenophon ancient Greek historian and philosopher -430 - -354 BC

Hellenica Bk. 4, as translated by Carleton L. Brownson (1918)

„I suggested that liberals might have even more difficulty understanding conservatives than the other way around, because liverals often have difficulty understanding how the Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity foundations have anything to do with morality.“

—  Jonathan Haidt, book The Righteous Mind

The Righteous Mind (2012)

„If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.“

—  James Herriot veterinary surgeon and writer 1916 - 1995

Source: All Creatures Great and Small

„Honesty and loyalty work in collaboration with each other; therefore, where you find dishonesty, lives disloyalty.“

—  RJ Intindola (Gandolfo)

1976

„Mara Margetić from Slavonski Kobaš stands next to Marija Bursać from Kamenica, or even to Judith the daughter of Merari from Bethulia. What a moving example of love, perseverance and loyalty!“

—  Vinko Vrbanić 1951

Women

„Learning is to a man as the leaves and branches are to a tree, and it can be said that he should not be without it. Learning is not only reading books, however, but is rather something that we study to integrate with our own way of life.
One who is born into the house of a warrior, regardless of his rank or class, first acquaints himself with a man of military feats and achievements in loyalty, and, listening to just one of his dictums each day, will in a month know 30 precepts. Needless to say, if in a year he learns 300 precepts, at the end of that time he will be much the better.
Thus, a man can divide his mind into three parts: he should throw out those thoughts that are evil, take up those ideas that are good, and become intimate with his own wisdom… I would honor and call wise the man who penetrates this principle, though he lacks the knowledge of a single Chinese character. As for those who are learned in other matters, I would avoid them regardless of how deep their knowledge might be. That is how shallow and untalented this monk is.“

—  Takeda Shingen Japanese daimyo of the Sengoku period 1521 - 1573

William Scott Wilson, ‎Gregory Lee. Ideals of the Samurai: Writings of Japanese Warriors, 1982. p 95

„I learned the real meaning of love. Love is absolute loyalty. People fade, looks fade, but loyalty never fades. You can depend so much on certain people, you can set your watch by them. And that's love, even if it doesn't seem very exciting.“

—  Sylvester Stallone American actor, screenwriter, and film director 1946

„Women’s loyalty has to be earned with trust and affection, rather than barbaric rituals. The time has come to leave the old ways of suffering behind“

—  Waris Dirie, book Desert Flower

Source: Desert Flower

„Living on the hyphen is a complex cultural existence at times, and we’re often pulled in many directions where allegiance is always demanded. It is a fractured state of being, though I don’t think it’s necessarily bad; at least the having multiple ways of looking at life-the Mexican and American/the male and female. Where that goes awry is when we want to make one way of approaching life, The One Way. That’s where things begin to disintegrate, loyalties are questioned, and patriarchies are born…“

—  Isabel Quintero

On the Mexican American experience in “2015 Morris Award: An Interview with Finalist Isabel Quintero” http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/2015/01/26/morris-award-finalist-interview-isabel-quintero/ in YALSA (2015 Jan 26)

„The real difficulty of the situation lies in the practical working of the coercion. Let it be laid down that the League as a whole will take the necessary action, economic or military. Well and good; but the League is not a military or economic unit and possesses no central executive. It is a society of independent sovereign states, their independence somewhat modified by treaty obligations and a habit of regular conference, but none the less real. I doubt whether the League as a League could declare war or wage war. The force would have to be supplied by each state separately, of its own deliberate will. ... One cannot expect Siam or Canada to mobilize because one Balkan state attacks another. And if the duty is not incumbent on all members, who is to decide what members are to undertake it? The Council has no absolute authority. No nation will be eager to subject itself to the strain and sacrifice of coercive action unless its own interests are sharply involved. But the question is whether, in a world that increasingly detests war and mistrusts force as a instrument of international policy, the various national Parliaments or Governments will in general have sufficient loyalty to the League, sufficient public spirit and sense of reality, to be ready to face the prospects of war not in defence of their own frontiers or immediate national interests, but simply to maintain the peace of the world.“

—  Gilbert Murray Anglo-Australian scholar 1866 - 1957

The Ordeal of This Generation: The War, the League and the Future (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1929), p. 91

„Loyalty to the Queen does not require a man to bow down to her manservant, her maidservant, her ox… or her ass!“

—  Alexander Mackenzie 2nd Prime Minister of Canada 1822 - 1892

responding to McDougall who claimed he was disloyal for not supporting the Government - Lambton debates 1867 - Buckingham page 229

„I watched him while he moved about in the nearby spinney below, bending and straightening, shaking snow from the sticks he found, and for some reason was reminded of the parable of Abraham and his son. Why should one serve a God who demanded such insane loyalty, who demanded that one deny the very humanity He was said to have created?“

—  Michael Moorcock, book The War Hound and the World's Pain

Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 8 (p. 92)

„Whoever visits some estates there, and witnesses the good-humored indulgence of some masters and mistresses, and the affectionate loyalty of some slaves, might be tempted to dream the oft-fabled poetic legend of a patriarchal institution, and all that; but over and above the scene there broods a portentous shadow — the shadow of law.“

—  Harriet Beecher Stowe, book Uncle Tom's Cabin

So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to a master — so long as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil — so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated administration of slavery.
Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 1.

„In 1965, the people of Britain may have been poorer, smaller, shabbier, dirtier, colder, narrower, more set in their ways, ignorant of olive oil, polenta and - even - lager. But they knew what united them, they shared a complicated web of beliefs, attitudes, prejudices, loyalties and dislikes.“

—  Peter Hitchens author, journalist 1951

Source: From 'The Abolition of Britain' (1999), p.23

„Not that freedom ensured happiness. Indeed, to be free was to live in absence. Of responsibilities, of loyalties, of the pressures that expectation imposed.“

—  Steven Erikson, book House of Chains

House of Chains (2002)

„And never forget that the Marxist societies call themselves, and indeed are, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Some of the aims of socialism, are the aims of a Marxist society, and they result in the subjugation of the rights of people to political theory. Because the Marxist system has become morally and materially bankrupt, citizens who live beneath its yoke see hope in our ideals. Ideals which limit the power of the State so that the varied talents and abilities of each person may flourish giving dignity and meaning to life. Ideals which respect the family, its loyalties, affections and responsibilities. Ideals where the rule of law is just and impartially administered. Those who live under the heel of Marxist tyranny look with envy at the very things we take for granted. They know that politics is about more than economics in a free society. So do we—we belong to the oldest and most enduring democratic Party in the world.“

—  Margaret Thatcher British stateswoman and politician 1925 - 2013

Speech to Conservative Women’s Conference (20 May 1981) https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104653
First term as Prime Minister