Definition of "principle" []

• A basic truth, law, or assumption: the principles of democracy. (noun)
• A rule or standard, especially of good behavior: a man of principle. (noun)
• The collectivity of moral or ethical standards or judgments: a decision based on principle rather than expediency. (noun)
• A fixed or predetermined policy or mode of action. (noun)
• A basic or essential quality or element determining intrinsic nature or characteristic behavior: the principle of self-preservation. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Douglas sometimes says that all the States (and it is part of this same proposition I have been discussing) that have become free have become so upon his “great principle; ” that the State of Illinois itself came into the Union as a Slave State, and that the people, upon the “great principle” of Popular Sovereignty, have since made it a Free State."
• "However, the key difference in principle is whether the people ` s liberty should be sacrificed to this end (despite scant evidence it provides the means)."
• "And I commented before that all the practical objections you raise are right, and any kind of "pure" national consumption tax of the sort I am discussing in principle is impossible in practice."