Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
Alexander Solzehnitsyn

It should be remarked that, as the principle of liberty is better understood, and more nobly interpreted, a broader protest is made in behalf of women. As men become aware that few have had a fair chance, they are inclined to say that no women have had a fair chance.
Margaret Fuller

Terror is only justice: prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country.
Maximilien Robespierre

The principle of the endless melody is the perpetual becoming of a music that never had any reason for starting, any more than it has any reason for ending.
Igor Stravinsky

We have accepted the principle of democracy and we are committed to respect the popular verdict and the result of that national consultation.
Mahmoud Abbas

The principle of asceticism never was, nor ever can be, consistently pursued by any living creature. Let but one tenth part of the inhabitants of the earth pursue it consistently, and in a day's time they will have turned it into a Hell.
Jeremy Bentham

Work is important to me. I want to do things for principle, not just for the sake of doing them.
Tracey Ullman

I want it understood that all these men fought for principle, not for plunder, and that they were true-hearted, honorable soldiers, fighting for what they esteemed was a righteous cause.
Cole Younger

The rehabilitation of order as a universal principle, however, suggested at the same time that orderliness by itself is not sufficient to account for the nature of organized systems in general or for those created by man in particular.
Rudolf Arnheim

An Army is a collection of armed men obliged to obey one man. Every change in the rules which impairs the principle weakens the army.
William Tecumseh Sherman

To be ambitious of true honor, of the true glory and perfection of our natures, is the very principle and incentive of virtue.
Walter Scott

We want to assert the very principle that truth is absolute, truth is supreme, truth is never disposable in national political life.
John Howard

Ever since I began to compose, I have remained true to my starting principle: not to write a page because no matter what public, or what pretty girl wanted it to be thus or thus; but to write solely as I myself thought best, and as it gave me pleasure.
Felix Mendelssohn

In Aristotle the mind, regarded as the principle of life, divides into nutrition, sensation, and faculty of thought, corresponding to the inner most important stages in the succession of vital phenomena.
Wilhelm Wundt

As to the Indians, the guiding principle was, promise them anything just so long as they get out of the way.
Stephen Ambrose

Our guiding principle was that design is neither an intellectual nor a material affair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life, necessary for everyone in a civilized society.
Walter Gropius

On close inspection, this device turned out to be a funereal juke box - the result of mixing Lloyd's of London with the principle of the chewing gum dispenser.
Cecil Beaton

Right now, I'm following the Buddhist principle: Smile as abuse is hurled your way and this too shall pass.
Aishwarya Rai

It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.
Arnold J. Toynbee

Where ambition can cover its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of passions.
Angela Carter