Quotes About Morality

Everywhere the tendency has been to separate religion from morality, to set them in opposition even. But a religion without morality is a superstition and a curse; and anything like an adequate and complete morality without religion is impossible. The only salvation for man is in the union of the two as Christianity unites them.

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

I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.

The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.

Morality must always precede and accompany religion, and yet religion is much more than morality.

The conservative movement, to which I subscribe, has as one of its basic tenets the belief that government should stay out of people’s private lives. Government governs best when it governs least – and stays out of the impossible task of legislating morality. But legislating someone’s version of morality is exactly what we do by perpetuating discrimination against gays.

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 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.

The fact that both Jews and Christians ignore some of God's or Jesus's commands, but scrupulously obey others, is absolute proof that people pick and choose their morality not on the basis of its divine source, but because it comports with some innate morality that they derived from other sources.

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

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

To assert that it is possible to establish peace between men of different nations is simply to assert that man, whatever his ethnical background, his race, religious beliefs, or philosophy, is capable of reason. Two forces within the individual contribute to the development of his conscience and of his morality: reason and sensitivity.

There's going to be a demand for perfectionism on the part of Hillary Clinton, or any other pro-equality woman candidate, that would not be made of men. There are going to be attacks based on different standards of morality and different standards of dress and physical attractiveness.

Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis.

The social system based on and consonant with the altruist morality-with the code of self-sacrifice- is socialism, in all or any of its variants: fascism, Nazism, communism. All of them treat man as a sacrificial animal to be immolated for the benefit of the group, the tribe, the society, the state.

I think that as human beings we tend to compartmentalize, and we have a selective morality based on the situation we're in.

Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.

Killing for pleasure is wrong and should be banned. Fox hunting, stag hunting and hare coursing are moral issues. It is time that we stood up for morality. The commandment Thou shall not kill may be hedged with exceptions.Thou shall not kill for pleasure is not; it is a commandment for the 21st century and it is time that we respected it unambiguously, without prevarication and without procrastination.

The garden [of Eden] is the realm of pure beauty from which man is expelled when he becomes interested in ethics, in the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The return into paradise, the homecoming, depends on him penetrating the veils of morality to glimpse again the lineaments of lost beauty.

Leadership, in short, is power governed by principle, directed toward raising people to their highest levels of personal motive and social morality.

Modern societies march towards morality in proportion as they leave religion behind.

The State, on the other hand, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.

Mindfulness is about love and loving life. When you cultivate this love, it gives you clarity and compassion for life, and your actions happen in accordance with that. All ethics and morality, and a sense of interconnectedness, come out of the act of paying attention.

[W]hen a group of people make something sacred, the members of the cult lose the ability to think clearly about it. Morality binds and blinds.

Donna E. Smyth - adventures with words; she is always doing something new and unique. Beginning with her visceral morality, her stories are startling, nerve wracking, provocative: she combines Angela Carter's beautiful style with Patricia Highsmith's malevolent atmospheres. Smyth shatters clichs and dismisses mere sociology. She knows that pleasure is besieged by terror. She tells us what we don't want to know, but need to know. Smyth's writing disturbs us, enrichingly, because truth can never be at peace with language.

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.

In cases of doubtful morality, it is usual to say is there any harm in doing this? This question may sometimes be best answered by asking ourselves another; is there any harm in letting it alone?

Morality only is eternal. All the rest is balloon and bubble from the cradle to the grave.

Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.

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.

Therefore the great mediator of any community is human morality.

I think the greater responsibility, in terms of morality, is where leadership begins.

Sex is the point of contact between man and nature, where morality and good intentions fall to primitive urges.

I don't feel in any way obligated to remain current with the culture. I feel no social obligation whatsoever. I trust my morality in the narrow path I trek through the world as I work.

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?

Morality is more than possible without God, it is entirely independent of him.

Thought makes the whole dignity of man; therefore endeavor to think well, that is the only morality.

It is ridiculous to say that art has nothing to do with morality. What is true is that the artist's business is not that of the policeman.

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.

It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of religion that we shall discover truth, reason and morality.

If laws were real they wouldn’t need to be enforced, because if they were real they couldn’t be broken. Try breaking the law of gravity. Now that’s a law. Laws made by man are rules reflecting the current status of his moral codes. As he alters and whittles away his morality, casting bits and pieces aside, his codes change to reflect it.

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

All true religion, all true morality, all true mysticism have but one object, and that is to act on humanity, collective and individual, in such a manner that it shall correspond efficiently with the great law of development, and co-operate consciously therewith to achieve the end of development.

I owe everything to the gift of Pentecost. For fifty days the facts of the Gospel were complete, but no conversions were recorded. Pentecost registered three thousand souls. It is by fire that a holy passion is kindled in the soul whereby we live the life of God. The soul's safety is in its heat. Truth without enthusiasm, morality without emotion, ritual without soul, make for a Church without power.

Morality is not a large, constructed *thing* you have or have not, but simply a capacity. Something you carry with you in your brain and in your hands.

Know it for certain that without steady devotion for the Guru and unflinching patience and perseverance, nothing is to be achieved. You must have strict morality.