"A man's first duty is to his..." - Quote by Mark Twain
A man's first duty is to his own conscience and honor; the party and country come second to that, and never first.
More by Mark Twain
“Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.”
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. So many look to eradicate fear from their lives, when that is an impossible task. You can certainly experience moments in absence of fear, however accept that fear will be with you whenever you are in the process of living creatively. The challenge is to go ahead regardless, simply notice the feeling and manage being courageous.”
“The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.”
More on Conscience
“About what we neither know nor feel precisely while awake-whether we have a good or a bad conscience toward a certain person-our dreams instruct us fully and unambiguously.”
“Man was born into barbarism when killing his fellow man was a normal condition of existence. He became endowed with a conscience.And he has now reached the day when violence toward another human being must become as abhorrent as eating another's flesh.”
“I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.”
More on Integrity
“[N]either in war nor yet at law ought any man to use every way of escaping death. For often in battle there is no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death; and in other dangers there are other ways of escaping death, if a man is willing to say and do anything. The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.”
“Once a gentleman, and always a gentleman.”
“No power can be maintained when it is only represented by hypocrites.”