Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.
Pope John Paul II

Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.
Niccolo Machiavelli

A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.
Niccolo Machiavelli

Severities should be dealt out all at once, so that their suddenness may give less offense; benefits ought to be handed ought drop by drop, so that they may be relished the more.
Niccolo Machiavelli

All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.
James Madison

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.
James Madison

If we are to take for the criterion of truth the majority of suffrages, they ought to be gotten from those philosophic and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason.
James Madison

The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.
James Madison

We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.
Marcus Aurelius

A man ought to live so that everybody knows he is a Christian... and most of all, his family ought to know.
Dwight L. Moody

The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.
T. S. Eliot

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

We ought not to treat living creatures like shoes or household belongings, which when worn with use we throw away.
Plutarch

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.
Blaise Pascal

If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!
Blaise Pascal

All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.
John Locke

A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
Milton Friedman

Duty, Honor, Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.
Douglas MacArthur

If your treat an individual... as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The formation of one's character ought to be everyone's chief aim.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe