However glorious an action in itself, it ought not to pass for great if it be not the effect of wisdom and intention.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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

In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.
William James

Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.
William James

Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Thou ought to be nice, even to superstition, in keeping thy promises, and therefore equally cautious in making them.
Thomas Fuller

We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity.
Thomas Fuller

What one has, one ought to use: and whatever he does he should do with all his might.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

Let us not listen to those who think we ought to be angry with our enemies, and who believe this to be great and manly. Nothing is so praiseworthy, nothing so clearly shows a great and noble soul, as clemency and readiness to forgive.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

In a republic this rule ought to be observed: that the majority should not have the predominant power.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

The United States form a young republic, a confederacy which ought ever to be cemented by a union of interests and affection, under the influence of those principles which obtained their independence.
Mercy Otis Warren

One sometimes says: 'He killed himself because he was bored with life.' One ought rather to say: 'He killed himself because he was bored by lack of life.'
Victor Hugo

I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.
Thomas Huxley

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
Samuel Johnson

Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.
Thomas B. Macaulay

It ought to be illegal for an artist to marry. If the artist must marry let him find someone more interested in art, or his art, or the artist part of him, than in him. After which let them take tea together three times a week.
Ezra Pound

I think we ought to raise the age at which juveniles can have a gun.
George W. Bush