Quotes About Morality

The whole meaning of morality is a rule that we ought to obey whether we like it or not. If so, then the idea of creating a morality we like better is incoherent. Moreover, it would seem that until we had created our new morality, we would have no standard by which to criticize God. Since we have not yet created one, the standard by which we judge Him must be the very standard that He gave us. If it is good enough to judge Him by, then why do we need a new one?

Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality. Morality is not bribery or threats. Religion is bribery and threats. Humans have morality. We don't need religion.

How can anyone think so insanely that the human life has the same value and mankind, the same morality, independent of numbers? It is lucid to me that everytime a new child is born, the value of every human in world decreases slightly. It is obvious to me that the morality of the population explosion is wholly unlike than when man was a sparse, noble species in its beginning.

Commerce is against morality. Morality is going to lose every time.

All religions begin with a revolt against morality, and perish when morality conquers them.

Technology without morality is barbarous; morality without technology is impotent.

The true artist doesn't substitute immorality for morality. On the contrary, he always substitutes a finer morality for a grosser one.

I'm not saying that atheists can't act morally or have moral knowledge. But when I ascribe virtue to an atheist, it's as a theist who sees the atheist as conforming to objective moral values. The atheist, by contrast, has no such basis for morality. And yet all moral judgments require a basis for morality, some standard of right and wrong.

We respect law, when the law respects our needs. Whenever legality clashes with morality, legality should be opposed and morality should be upheld.

When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole. It stands or falls with faith in God.

It is a mistake to assume that the law should always enforce morality.

The whole body of what is now called moral or ethical truth existed in the golden age as abstract science. Or, if we prefer, we may say that the laws of Nature are the purest morality.

Living our lives of faith or motivation with enthusiasm and excitment, convincing each other, dialoguing with each other about important moral issues of the day, but on fundamental issues of morality, we should let women make their own decisions.

Religion may have become a codification of morality, and it may fortify it, but it's not the origin of it.

And the west, encumbered by crippling alliances, and hardened with a morality too rigid to accommodate itself to the swing of events, must ..... eventually ..... fall.

We now possess four principles of morality: 1) a philosophical: do good for its own sake, out of respect for the law; 2) a religious: do good because it is God's will, out of love of God; 3) a human: do good because it will promote your happiness, out of self-love; 4) a political: do good because it will promote the welfare of the society of which you are a part, out of love of society having regard to yourself. But is this not all one single principle, only viewed from different sides?

The genius of capitalism consists precisely in its lack of morality. Unless he is rich enough to hire his own choir, a capitalist is a fellow who, by definition, can ill afford to believe in anything other than the doctrine of the bottom line. Deprive a capitalist of his God-given right to lie and cheat and steal, and the poor sap stands a better than even chance of becoming one of the abominable wards of the state from whose grimy fingers the Reagan Administration hopes to snatch the ark of democracy.

We may not need God to tell us where the world came from, but we need God to be able to live moral lives and for there to be morality in the first place.

To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions.

Let us with Caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.

Within legal enforcement of "morality," there is no sense of how to morally, ethically, or fairly help people live safer lives. It's all about banishment or punishment or forced destitution - all of which creates more desperation, and more social risk-taking by people in moments of crisis.

The man who is all morality and intellect, although he may be good and even great, is, after all, only half a man.

The masters have been done away with; the morality of the common man has triumphed.

Morality is standing by your friends, standing by people when it's not popular. It's sacrificing things on a big international stage, and sometimes it's sacrificing your basic comforts.

Morality and expediency coincide more than the cynics allow.

A person must have a good memory to keep the promises he has made. A person must have a strong imagination to be able to have pity. So closely is morality tied to the quality of the intellect.

I find it a challenge to cooperate in a society where it's considered moral to critique a résumé yet immoral to critique morality.

Even if it is true that all cultures share a common morality, why does this prove a supreme intelligence? After all, don't we humanists sometimes claim that there is a common thread of humanistic values running through history across cultural and religious lines?

Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to find a hygienist who does not debase his theory of the healthful with a theory of the virtuous. ... The aim of medicine is surely not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard them from the consequences of their vices.

Jew and Gentile are two worlds, between you Gentiles and us Jews there lies an unbridgeable gulf...There are two life forces in the world Jewish and Gentile...I do not believe that this primal difference between Gentile and Jew is reconcilable...The difference between us is abysmal...You might say: 'Well, let us exist side by side and tolerate each other. We will not attack your morality, nor you ours.' But the misfortune is that the two are not merely different; they are opposed in mortal enmity. No man can accept both, or, accepting either, do otherwise than despise the other.

People are so phobic and crazed about this word 'commitment.' It's weird. Everyone has taken this word to a new height of morality.

Morality measured in centimeters: all mothers believe that only their daughters dance decently.

It is long accepted by the missionaries that morality is inversely proportional to the amount of clothing people wore

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and for justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Islam takes advantage of two structural flaws that exist in the Western society. One is political correctness and other is the decline of morality.

As servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, it is our sacred responsibility to teach His standard of morality, which is the same for all of His children.

It is rather more noble to help people purely out of concern for their suffering than it is to help them because you think the Creator of the Universe wants you to do it, or will reward you for doing it, or will punish you for not doing it. The problem with this linkage between religion and morality is that it gives people bad reasons to help other human beings when good reasons are available.

That until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned: That until there are no longer first-class and second class citizens of any nation; That until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes; That until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; That until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained.

Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.

A poem may be an instance of morality, of social conditions, of psychological history; it may instance all its qualities, but never one of them alone, nor any two or three; never less than all.

These are some of the characteristics of the state of mind which the creation and appreciation of haiku demand: Selflessness, Loneliness, Grateful Acceptance, Wordlessness, Non-intellectuality, Contradictoriness, Humor, Freedom, Non-morality, Simplicity, Materiality, Love, and Courage.

Post-Watergate morality, by which anything left private is taken as presumptive evidence of wrongdoing.

There is a tone of morality throughout the rural districts of England, which is unhappily wanting in the large towns and the centres of particular manufactures

Religion blushing, veils her sacred fires, And unawares Morality expires.

Be not too hasty to trust or to admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels, but they live like men.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

cruelty to animals is contrary to man's duty to himself, because it deadens in him the feeling of sympathy for their sufferings, and thus a natural tendency that is very useful to morality in relation to other human beings is weakened.

There is no morality without temptation; otherwise it is just lack of opportunity.