Quotes on Ought

Desires to which we cling closely can easily prevent us from being what we ought to be and can be; and on the other hand, desires repeatedly mastered for the sake of present duty make us richer.Lack of desire is poverty.

You ought to be able to explain why you’re taking the job you’re taking, why you’re making the investment you’re making, or whatever it may be. And if it can’t stand applying pencil to paper, you’d better think it through some more. And if you can’t write an intelligent answer to those questions, don’t do it.

I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again.

I will gladly give lessons as a favor, particularly when I see that my student has talent, inclination, and anxiety to learn; but to be obliged to go to a house at a certain hour, or to have to wait at home for a pupil, is what I cannot do, no matter how much money it may bring me in. . . I am a composer and was born to be a Kapellmeister. I neither can nor ought to bury the talent for composition with which God in his goodness has so richly endowed me. . .

The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves or have listened only to their neighbors to learn what they ought to do, how they ought to behave, and what the values are they should be living for.

I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

Music, of all the liberal arts, has the greatest influence over the passions, and it is that to which the legislator ought to give the greatest encouragement.

If God himself was not willing to use coercion to force man to accept certain religious views, man, uninspired and liable to error, ought not to use the means that Jehovah would not employ.

If the money is raised by taxation, then the burden will fall where it ought to fall, . . . and the rich and stingy will no longer be able to evade the duties of citizenship and of humanity.

The greater a man is in power above others, the more he ought to excel them in virtue. None ought to govern who is not better than the governed.

If your treat an individual... as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.

A wise player ought to accept his throws and score them, not bewail his luck.

I believe deeply that we must find a new spirituality... in such a way that all people of good will could adhere to it... We ought to promote this concept with the help of scientists... It could lead us to what we are looking for.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice.

The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.

Freedom is not the right to do what we want, but what we ought

There is nothing of which we are apt to be so lavish as of time, and about which we ought to be more solicitous; since without it we can do nothing in this world.

Wit ought to be a glorious treat like caviar; never spread it about like marmalade.

I sit here all day trying to persuade people to do the things they ought to have the sense to do without my persuading them. That's all the powers of the President amount to.

Men's hearts ought not to be set against one another, but set with one another and all against evil only.

Money is power, and you ought to be reasonably ambitious to have it.