Quotes About Morality

... the average Catholic perceives no connection between religion and morality, unless it is a question of someone else's morality.

Some people automatically associate morality and altruism with a religious vision of the world. But I believe it is a mistake to think that morality is an attribute only of religion. We can imagine two types of spirituality: one tied to religion, while the other arises spontaneously in the human heart as an expression of love for our neighbors and a desire to do them good.

Talking about sexual morality, I wouldn't agree that it's declining, but it's certainly changing. Young and old, we are very much in the process of taking a fresh look at the whole issue of morality. The only decline that's taking place - and it's about time - is in the old puritanical concept that sex is equated with sin.

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

When there is a conflict, which group's sense of right and wrong should prevail? If a morality is a system that allows individuals to form a group and to get along with each other, then the challenge is to devise a system that allows different groups to get along - what I call a meta-morality.

Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions. So doing, we know ourselves.

In a constitutional democracy the moral content of law must be given by the morality of the framer or legislator, never by the morality of the judge.

Piety and morality are but the same spirit differently manifested. Piety is religion with its face toward God; morality is religion with its face toward the world.

What is shocking and wrong is not [Lord Devlin's] idea that the community's morality counts, but his idea of what counts as the community's morality.

The revolutionary despises public opinion. He despises and hates the existing social morality in all its manifestations. For him, morality is everything which contributes to the triumph of the revolution. Immoral and criminal is everything that stands in its way.

Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.

I'm one of the undeserving poor: that's what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he's up agen middle class morality all the time.... What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything.

A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality.

Anytime you're dealing with moral issues, in a government position, you're dealing with some sticky stuff because everybody's morality is different. So you may be a Christian and say "my morality is based on the Bible." But if it doesn't line up with the way they think it should line up, now you got a problem with them. And then you can say, "I'm more in line with the Bible," but you don't care about the Bible, so they are like 'why are you imposing these difficult rules on me? I don't even believe in that.' So you just have an interesting and sticky situation.

The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.

Humans suffer from self-centred notions as to the nature of life. Humans assume that alien life forms should conform to standards that match our own, including logic and morality. Even among humans, morality is ignored when expedient. Why should we expect more from an alien life form than we demand from ourselves?

If anyone tells you that you cannot legislate morality, remeber that legislation IS morality.

Religion must affirm, in the clearest terms, that morality and ethical values are not mere decorative frills of personal opinion, not subjective superstructure, but intrinsic laws of the cosmos built into the heart of reality.

Freedom is a state of mind, I said wondering where I'd heard it before, not a state of being. We are all slaves to gravity and morality and the vicissitudes of nature. Our genes govern us much more than we'd like to think. Our bodies can not know absolute freedom but our minds can, can at least try.

The moral absolutes rest upon God's character. The moral commands He has given to men are an expression of His character. Men as created in His image are to live by choice on the basis of what God is. The standards of morality are determined by what conforms to His character, while those things which do not conform are immoral.

Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis of morality, or a sort of madness?

Meditation is the art of awareness. And once you are aware, out of your awareness your actions will arise - not out of conscience. Conscience is cultivated by others, by the vested interests, by the establishment. Consciousness is yours. It is individual, it is not collective. Conscience is part of the mob psychology. Consciousness gives you dignity because it gives you individuality. It gives you rebellion, it makes you capable of saying yes or no of your own accord. There is no foreign agency manipulating you in the name of religion, morality, etcetera.

In France, religion had been considered the enemy of liberty, but in America, as George Washington expressed it, religion and morality were the 'twin pillars of freedom.'

If there's any kind of morality, for me, it's about reality; what is reality? I have a hard time distinguishing what is valuable when it comes to the real world and the fantasy world. Like, should I invest my time in the ordinary world or the imaginary world?

I don't really worry so much about image. I try to just live my own life, my personal life, to my own sense of morality. In terms of the kinds of characters that I play, well, they could be anything.

Are we going to continue to yield personal liberties and community autonomy to the steady inexplicable centralization all political power or restore the Republic to Constitutional direction, regain our personal liberties and reassume the individual state's primary responsibility and authority in the conduct of local affairs? Are we going to permit a continuing decline in public and private morality or re-establish high ethical standards as the means of regaining a diminishing faith in the integrity of our public and private institutions?

The modernists started with the assumption that science is the only source of sure knowledge, that nature is all there is, and thus that morality is merely a human invention that can be changed to meet changing circumstances in an evolving world.

There are three points of doctrine the belief of which forms the foundation of all morality. The first is the existence of God; the second is the immortality of the human soul; and the third is a future state of rewards and punishments. Suppose it possible for a man to disbelieve either of these three articles of faith and that man will have no conscience, he will have no other law than that of the tiger or the shark. The laws of man may bind him in chains or may put him to death, but they never can make him wise, virtuous, or happy.

The morality of the 21st century will depend on how we respond to this simple but profound question: Does every human life have equal moral value simply and merely because it is human?

A government run by billionaires for billionaires is an affront to freedom and morality and humanity.

We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.

The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be rooted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle. The very corner-stone of an education intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of truth.

During my first press conference as president, in answer to a direct question, I pointed out that, as good Marxist-Leninists, the Soviet leaders have openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is that which will further their cause, which is world revolution.

The Revolutionist is a doomed man. He has no private interests, no affairs, sentiments, ties, property nor even a name of his own. His entire being is devoured by one purpose, one thought, one passion - the revolution. Heart and soul, not merely by word but by deed, he has severed every link with the social order and with the entire civilized world; with the laws, good manners, conventions, and morality of that world. He is its merciless enemy and continues to inhabit it with only one purpose - to destroy it.

Comics, which are really best described as an arrangement of images in a sequence that tell a story - an idea - is a very old form of graphic communication. It began with the hieroglyphics in Egypt, it first appeared in a recognizable form in the Medieval times as copper plates produced by the Catholic church to tell morality stories.

Change is always subjective. All through evolution you find that the conquest of nature comes by change in the subject. Apply this to religion and morality, and you will find that the conquest of evil comes by the change in the subjective alone. That is how the Advaitic system gets its whole force, on the subjective side of man.

We live in a unipolar world at this point with America as a moral arbiter and the whole morality is based on this insane corporatocracy.

If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.

I recommend Batman especially, for he tends to transcend the abysmal society in which he's found himself. His morality is rather rigid, also. I rather respect Batman.

But there was a time when each of us stood naked before the world, confronting life as a serious problem with which we were intimately and passionately concerned... There was a time when Free Love versus Catholic Morality was a question of as much importance to our hot bodies as if a pistol had been clapped to our heads. Further back, there were times when we wondered with all our souls what the world was, what love was, what we were ourselves.

As piety, religion and morality have a happy influence on the minds of men, in their public as well as private transactions, you will not think it unseasonable, although I have frequently done it, to bring to your remembrance the great importance of encouraging our University, town schools, and other seminaries of education, that our children and youth while they are engaged in the pursuit of useful science, may have their minds impressed with a strong sense of the duties they owe to their God.

Almighty God hath created the mind free. All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens...are a departure from the plan of the holy Author of our religion...No man shall be compelled to frequent or support religious worship or ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion. I know but one code of morality for men whether acting singly or collectively.

Few legislators who passed these mental health laws realized that (Brock) Chisholm and his associates defined mental illness as a sense of loyalty to a particular nation, a sense of loyalty to a moral code, and strict adherence to concepts of right and wrong. Chisholm has been obsessed for years with the idea that instilling concepts of right and wrong, love of country and morality in children by their parents is the paramount evil.

A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality.

To me, science is an expression of the human spirit, which reaches every sphere of human culture. It gives an aim and meaning to existence as well as a knowledge, understanding, love, and admiration for the world. It gives a deeper meaning to morality and another dimension to esthetics.

Liberty is the essential basis, the sine qua non, of morality.

The left wants you to believe that true morality is defined by how much money you give the government, how much money you pay the government, how much money the government gets from you, because only the government does good stuff, only the government does good works, only the government cares about people. It's bogus.

The basic of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual.