Though many have tried, no one has ever yet explained away the decisive fact that science, which can do so much, cannot decide what it ought to do.
Joseph Wood Krutch

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.
Francis Bacon

Judges ought to be more leaned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.
Francis Bacon

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.
Francis Bacon

Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

They criticize me for harping on the obvious; if all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves.
Calvin Coolidge

I think there ought to be a club in which preachers and journalists could come together and have the sentimentalism of the one matched with the cynicism of the other. That ought to bring them pretty close to the truth.
Reinhold Niebuhr

Let men decide firmly what they will not do, and they will be free to do vigorously what they ought to do.
Mencius

Teach and practice, practice and teach - that is all we have; that is all we are good for; that is all we ever ought to do.
Ernest Holmes

A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.
Michel de Montaigne

The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when it be obeyed.
Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.
Nathaniel Hawthorne

How people keep correcting us when we are young! There is always some bad habit or other they tell us we ought to get over. Yet most bad habits are tools to help us through life.
Jack Nicklaus

Liberty, as well as honor, man ought to preserve at the hazard of his life, for without it life is insupportable.
Miguel de Cervantes

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.
Alexis de Tocqueville

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.
John Ruskin

If your knees aren't green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life.
Bill Watterson

The world of a comic strip ought to be a special place with its own logic and life... I don't want the issue of Hobbes's reality settled by a doll manufacturer.
Bill Watterson

I think somebody ought to do a survey as to how many great, important men have quit to spend time with their families who spent any more time with their family.
Walter Cronkite

It is true that a fellow cannot ignore women - but he can think of them as he ought - as sisters, not as sparring partners.
Jim Elliot