Ought Quotes

A liar ought to have a good memory. (Quintilian)
We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free. View quote
Epictetus
Even when the laws have been written down, they ought not always remain unchanged. View quote
Aristotle
The highest stage in moral culture at which we can arrive, is when we recognise that we ought to control our thoughts. View quote
Charles Darwin
No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know because I've done it a thousand times. View quote
Mark Twain
Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect. View quote
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. View quote
John Adams
I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best. View quote
George Eliot
To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. View quote
Robert Louis Stevenson
We ought not to look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dear-bought experience. (George Washington)
The time of illusion, then, is the beautiful moment of passion; it represents the artistic zone in which the poet or romance writer ought to be free to do the very best that he can. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn
When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do - well, that's Memoirs. View quote
Will Rogers
One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never! View quote
Winston Churchill
Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned. View quote
Saul Bellow
The principle of the brotherhood of man is narcissistic... for the grounds for that love have always been the assumption that we ought to realize that we are the same the whole world over. View quote
Germaine Greer
Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary. View quote
Thomas Paine
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be. View quote
William Hazlitt
It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
The Eskimo has fifty-two names for snow because it is important to them; there ought to be as many for love. (Margaret Atwood)
Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honored by the name of "speculation"; but which ought to be called Gambling. View quote
William Cobbett
The fame of great men ought to be judged always by the means they used to acquire it. View quote
François de La Rochefoucauld
If a dog will not come to you after he has looked you in the face, you ought to go home and examine your conscience. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation. View quote
Jane Austen
📖 Ought Proverbs