Best Ought Quotes

My love is something valuable to me which I ought not to throw away without reflection.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

Every life is, more or less, a ruin among whose debris we have to discover what the person ought to have been.

Before we pray that God would fill us, I believe we ought to pray Him to empty us.

A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections…a mere heart of stone.

Never let us do wrong, because our opponents did so. Let us, rather, by doing right, show them what they ought to have done, and establish a rule the dictates of reason and conscience, rather than of the angry passions.

Most persons think that a state in order to be happy ought to be large; but even if they are right, they have no idea of what is a large and what a small state…. To the size of states there is a limit, as there is to other things, plants, animals, implements; for none of these retain their natural power when they are too large or too small, but they either wholly lose their nature, or are spoiled.

Even in a fake democracy, people ought to get what they want once in a while.

We can always find something to be thankful for, and there may be reasons why we ought to be thankful for even those dispensations which appear dark and frowning.

We ought all to make an effort to act on our first thoughts and let our unspoken gratitude find expression. Then there will be more sunshine in the world, and more power to work for what is good.

Each generation of humanity takes the earth as trustees… We ought to bequeath to posterity as many forests and orchards as we have exhausted and consumed.

If you think of a work of fiction as a kind of scale model of the world, then the positive valences – where things turn out better than you thought they would – ought to be in there somewhere, too.

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.

Many traditional religions foster attitudes that ought to have disappeared as biological understanding accumulated over the last century.

If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.

When history is written as it ought to be written, it is the moderation and long patience of the masses at which men will wonder, not their ferocity.

Indulge in procrastination, and in time yon will come to this, that because a thing ought to be done, therefore you can’t do it.

What makes us Christians shrug our shoulders when we ought to be flexing our muscles? What makes us apathetic in a day when there are loads to lift, a world to be won and captives to be set free? Why are so many bored when the times demand action?

We ought to be able to persuade on opposite sides of a question; as also we ought in the case of arguing by syllogism: not that we should practice both, for it is not right to persuade to what is bad; but in order that the bearing of the case may not escape us, and that when another makes an unfair use of these reasonings, we may be able to solve them.

We ought, so far as it lies within our power, to aspire to immortality, and do all that we can to live in conformity with the highest that is within us; for even if it is small in quantity, in power and preciousness, it far excels all the rest.

You should never argue with a crazy mind, you ought to know my now.

You ought to let the Jews have Jerusalem; it is they who made it famous.

One ought to be just before one is generous

Who sows virtue ought to reap honour.

Those who ought to be secure from calumny are generally those who avoid it least.

You ought not to be ashamed of being bored. What you ought to be ashamed of is being boring.

You will find that reason, which always ought to direct mankind, seldom does; but that passions and weaknesses commonly usurp itsseat, and rule in its stead.

We ought to be respecting the principle of equality.

As soon as she (woman) begins to be ashamed of what she ought not, she will not be ashamed of what she ought.

To say that majorities, as such, have a right to rule minorities, is equivalent to saying that minorities have, and ought to have, no rights, except such as majorities please to allow them.

The rights of one sex, political and otherwise, are the same as those of the other sex, and this equality of rights ought to be fully recognized.

Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.

Jealousy ought to be tragic, to save it from being ridiculous.

Friendships ought to be immortal, hostilities mortal.

I hate the word ‘ought’ – it always implies something dull, cold, and commonplace. The ‘ought nots’ of life are its pleasantest things.