Oath Quotes - Page 4

• The Four Oaths: Never be late with respect to the way of the warrior; be useful to the lord; be respectful to your parents; get beyond love and grief: exist for the good of man.

  Yamamoto Tsunetomo

  War, Grief, Men

  10 Copy quote

• The law hath so many contradictions and varyings from itself, that the law may not improperly be called a law-breaker. It is become too changeable a thing to be defined: it is made little less a Mystery than the Gospel. The clergy and the lawyers, like the Freemasons, may be supposed to take an oath not to tell the secret.

  Sir George Savile, 8th Baronet

  Law, Secret, May

  4 Copy quote

• The oaths of a woman I inscribe on water.

  Sophocles

  Water

  9 Copy quote

• The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the plain at West Point?but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that old soldiers never die; they just fade away.

  Douglas MacArthur

  Soldier, West, World

  1951 Address to Congress after being relieved of his duty by President Truman,19 Apr.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• God forbid that Judges upon their oath should make resolutions to enlarge jurisdiction.

  William Cowper

  Judging, Resolution, Should

  4 Copy quote

• When a gentlemen is disposed to swear, it is not for any standers-by to curtail his oaths.

  William Shakespeare

  Gentleman, Profanity, Swearing

  1610 Cloten. Cymbeline, act 2, sc.1, l.10-11.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Yet the arts of Severus cannot be justified by the most ample privileges of state reason. He promised only to betray; he flattered only to ruin; and however he might occasionally bind himself by oaths and treaties, his conscience, obsequious to his interest, always released him from the inconvenient obligation.

  Edward Gibbon

  Art, History, Might

  Edward Gibbon (1998). “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.100, Wordsworth Editions

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's always got to be room for what you might call benign corruption. Nobody blames a man who steals food to feed his starving children, but on the other hand, somebody who picks up a badge and takes an oath to serve and protect; we do expect a certain level of essential honesty.

  Denzel Washington

  Children, Honesty, Men

  Source: movieweb.com

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• If these precedents are to stand unimpeached, and to provide sanctions for the continued conduct of America affairs-the Constitution may be nullified by the President and officers who have taken the oath and are under moral obligation to uphold it....they may substitute personal and arbitrary government-the first principle of the totalitarian system against which it has been alleged that World War II was waged-while giving lip service to the principle of constitutional government.

  Charles A. Beard

  War, Taken, America

  14 Copy quote

• Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in the Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the opposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

  George Washington

  Religious, Justice, Mind

  George Washington’s "Farewell Address", oll.libertyfund.org. September 19, 1796.

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• Thus, experience has ever shown, that education, as well as religion, aristocracy, as well as democracy and monarchy, are, singly, totally inadequate to the business of restraining the passions of men, of preserving a steady government, and protecting the lives, liberties, and properties of the people . . . . Religion, superstition, oaths, education, laws, all give way before passions, interest, and power, which can be resisted only by passions, interest, and power.

  John Adams

  Passion, Men, Law

  4 Copy quote

• The voting records of virtually every member of Congress reveal that the oath of office is more a ceremonial gesture than a sacred commitment.

  Tom Coburn

  Commitment, Oath Of Office, Political

  Senator Tom Coburn, John Hart (2013). “Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders”, p.19, Thomas Nelson Inc

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If its individual citizens, to a man, are to be believed, it always is depressed, and always is stagnated, and always is at an alarming crisis, and never was otherwise; though as a body, they are ready to make oath upon the Evangelists, at any hour of the day or night, that it is the most thriving and prosperous of all countries on the habitable globe.

  Charles Dickens

  Country, Night, Men

  Charles Dickens (2017). “The Complete Novels of Charles Dickens: 20 Illustrated Classics in One Volume: Oliver Twist, The Pickwick Papers, Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, Barnaby Rudge, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield…”, p.3414, e-artnow

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The oath of renunciation and allegiance is a solemn vow taken by thousands of immigrants each year to become a United States citizen. The oath is the fundamental statement of allegiance to the United States, and this allegiance is what unites America.

  Jim Ryun

  Taken, Years, America

  12 Copy quote

• Whether it's possible or not, being a doctor, you take an oath. To care for your patient, not to kill them. You take an oath to do things that are proper in the medical world. Not to administer something outside of a hospital setting that's not even your area.

  Jermaine Jackson

  Doctors, World, Care

  "Piers Morgan Tonight", www.cnn.com. September 18, 2011.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is profoundly troubling when you have Supreme Court justices not following their judicial oath. And taking the role of policy makers and legislators, rather than being judges.

  Ted Cruz

  Justice, Judging, Roles

  "Meet the Press" with Chuck Todd, www.nbcnews.com. July 5, 2015.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• you'd like the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That must be the most futile oath anyone ever swears.

  P. D. James

  Nothing But The Truth, Swear, Whole

  P. D. James (2008). “The Lighthouse”, p.203, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• [About the demand of the Board of Regents of the University of California that professors sign non-Communist loyalty oaths or lose their jobs within 65 days.] No conceivable damage to the university at the hands of hypothetical Communists among us could possibly have equaled the damage resulting from the unrest, ill-will and suspicion engendered by this series of events.

  Joel Henry Hildebrand

  Loyalty, Jobs, Science

  4 Copy quote

• When we think how narrow and devious this path of nature is, how dimly we can trace it, for all our lamps of science, and how from the darkness which girds it round great and terrible possibilities loom ever shadowly upwards, it is a bold and a confident man who will put a limit to the strange by-oaths into which the human spirit may wander.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Science, Men, Thinking

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2017). “ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE Ultimate Collection: 21 Novels, 188 Short Stories, 88 Poems & 7 Plays, Including Works on Spirituality, Historical Writings & Personal Memoirs (Illustrated): The Sherlock Holmes Series, The Professor Challenger Books, The Brigadier Gerard Stories, The White Company, The Great Shadow, Mystery of Cloomber, Beyond The City, A History of the Great War…”, p.5995, e-artnow

  32 Copy quote

  Show source

• Friendship is by its very nature freer of deceit than any other relationship we can know because it is the bond least affected by striving for power, physical pleasure, or material profit, most liberated from any oath of duty or of constancy. With Eros the body stands naked, in friendship our spirit is denuded.

  Francine du Plessix Gray

  Deceit, Naked, Body

  Francine Du Plessix Gray (1987). “Adam & Eve and the City: Selected Non Fiction”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The person who takes the oath of office in the next four months will shape not just the next four years, but the next forty years of our nation. In these next four years, we need proven leadership, proven judgment and proven values. America needs four more years of President Barack Obama.

  Rahm Emanuel

  Oath Of Office, Years, America

  Rahm Emanuel's Speech at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 4, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• To place any dependence upon Militia, is, assuredly, resting upon a broken staff ... If I was called upon to declare upon Oath , whether the Militia have been most serviceable or hurtful upon the whole; I should subscribe to the latter.

  George Washington

  Broken, Hurtful, Staff

  6 Copy quote

• We have sworn, and not lightly. This oath we will keep. We are threatened with many evils, and treason not least; but one thing is not said: that we shall suffer from cowardice, from cravens or the fear of cravens. Therefore I say that we will go on, and this doom I add: the deeds that we shall do shall be the matter of song until the last days of Arda.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Song, Evil, Suffering

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Silmarillion”, p.63, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have just repeated word for word the oath taken by George Washington 200 years ago, and the Bible on which I placed my hand is the Bible on which he placed his. It is right that the memory of Washington be with us today, not only because this is our Bicentennial Inauguration, but because Washington remains the Father of our Country.

  George H. W. Bush

  Country, Memories, Father

  Presidential Inaugural Address, delivered 20 January 1989

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.

  Abraham Lincoln

  War, Government, Hands

  Abraham Lincoln (2008). “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln”, p.261, Wildside Press LLC

  7 Copy quote

  Show source