“The greatest ideal that man can aspire to is not to be a show-case of virtue, but just to be a genial, likable and reasonable human being.”

“Well, I think “likability” is an overused word. I don’t watch people ’cause I like them; I watch them because they’re compelling. Sympathetic is a little different … Likable just thins you out. Working to make a character likable is what kills most TV shows.”

“People naturally aspire to the symbols and the ideals of our nation. Yet whether it is a political party, a church, a charity - any institution built by man can fail and can fall. The key thing is to aspire to be better. And, for our political institutions, to understand that self sacrifice - just like forgiveness - is at the centre of the order of things.”

“A life-creating ability is what gives meaning to human ideals and aspirations for their embodiment!”

“Justice alone knows liberty, equality, and fraternity, and justice is a human virtue arising from man's human capacity to reason.”

“Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ.”

“There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human, are created, strengthened and maintained.”

“Every human being has within him an ideal man, just as every piece of marble contains in a rough state a statue as beautiful as the one that Praxiteles the Greek made of the god Apollo.”

“Was his very boyishness the reason he was chosen? In that case, was it not a virtue to be admired, and not a failing to be despised?”

“In truth, O judges, while I wish to be adorned with every virtue, yet there is nothing which I can esteem more highly than being and appearing grateful. For this one virtue is not only the greatest, but is also the parent of all the other virtues.”
Etenim, iudices, cum omnibus virtutibus me adfectum esse cupio, tum nihil est quod malim quam me et esse gratum et videri. Haec enim est una virtus non solum maxima sed etiam mater virtutum omnium reliquarum.