Ought Quotes

Whether things turn out for the better depends on what we do. We ought not spend our time masterminding the future, but recognize our marching orders: to do the best we can for history and the planet.

Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.

Gov. Romney said he would veto the Dream Act. Gov. Romney essentially said the 11 million people ought to just go home, they ought to self-deport. President Romney, if he is elected, is not going to fix our immigration system.

Power ought to serve as a check to power.

It doesn't make a lot of sense for us to borrow money from the Chinese to go give to another country for humanitarian aid. We ought to get the Chinese to take care of the people.

To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.

In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time-lag of fifty years or a century intervening between the perception that something ought to be done and a serious attempt to do it.

I think Democrats made a mistake running away from liberalism. Liberalism, uh, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John and Robert Kennedy - that's what the Democratic party ought to reach for.

The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say; but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work.

President Bush's proposal to focus our resources on sending humans to Mars is intriguing, but it is not the most compelling reason that Americans ought to focus our interest on the Red Planet.

I think people ought to do what they feel useful at the time. If I do things because I ought to do them, I switch off.

If people knew of ethics violations, they should have sent them to the Ethics Committee. If you think there was serious ethics violation that ought to be looked at, you don't hold it back for retaliatory purposes.

Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face. The beauty who does not look surprised, who accepts her position as her due - she reminds us too much of a prima donna.

Obviously I'm young and I'm also Hispanic, two important groups in this election. And I'm confident that I can do a good job in articulating why President Obama ought to be the candidate that Americans select for the next four years.

There's always an element of self delusion among people who believe they ought to be President. There's an underestimation of your opponent and an overestimation of your own abilities. This is compatible with being rich and powerful, the idea that we were blessed by God because we deserve to be blessed.

If we're going to spend a lot of money to deal with the problem of 200 million guns in the country owned by 65 million gun owners, we ought to have a system which will work and catch criminals.

When we give a subsidy, the benefits to the public ought to exceed the benefits to the company. When it doesn't, that's our definition of corporate welfare.

I don't say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.

And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?

Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.

Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.

We ought to have more women in various management positions, because women are the ones who decide almost everything in the home.

The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.

What we ought not do is play politics with those who've been afflicted by disasters. This should not be controversial. Stop playing politics, do the right thing for the country and let's make sure we're not making politics with disaster relief.

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

What is a good enough principle for an American citizen ought to be good enough for the working man to follow.

If diversity is O.K. for God, it ought to be O.K. for Republicans.

One nuclear war is going to be the last nuclear - the last war, frankly, if it really gets out of hand. And I just don't think we ought to be prepared to accept that sort of thing.

Courage ought to have eyes as well as arms.

If we are to take for the criterion of truth the majority of suffrages, they ought to be gotten from those philosophic and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason.