Popular quotes about Morality! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 21
True eloquence makes light of eloquence, true morality makes light of morality; that is to say, the morality of the judgment, which has no rules, makes light of the morality of the intellect.... To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
Blaise PascalCuriosity and irreverence go together. Curiosity cannot exist without the other. Curiosity asks, "Is this true?" "Just because this has always been the way, is the best or right way of life, the best or right religion, political or economic value, morality?" To the questioner, nothing is sacred. He detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality, rebels against any repression of a free, open search of ideas no matter where they may lead. He is challenging, insulting, agitating, discrediting. He stirs unrest.
Saul AlinskyHow 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.
Pentti LinkolaMorality which depends upon the helplessness of a man or woman has not much to recommend it. Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts.
Mahatma GandhiWe need religion for religions's sake, morality for morality's sake and art for art's sake.
Victor CousinMorality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth... Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself,' they think they are referring above and beyond themselves... Nevertheless... such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction... and any deeper meaning is illusory...
Michael RuseIn 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.
Robert BorkYou who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island - it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today - and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it.
Ayn RandAll systems of morality are fine. The gospel alone has exhibited a complete assemblage of the principles of morality, divested of all absurdity. It is not composed, like your creed, of a few common-place sentences put into bad verse. Do you wish to see that which is really sublime? Repeat the Lord's Prayer.
Napoleon Bonapartereligion notoriously claims that they invented morality, they didn't. Morality exists in animals, ya know.
Seth MacFarlaneI believe in pursuing my own morality. That is all I have ever stuck by. It is my own morality that really matters.
Jonathan KingA strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality.
Gilbert K. ChestertonThey don't subscribe to our sense of morality; they don't believe in an afterlife; they don't believe in a God or religion. And the only morality they recognize, therefore, is what will advance the cause or socialism.
Ronald ReaganBut the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.
James A. BaldwinLibertarianism is the simple morality we learned as children: Donโt strike first, donโt steal or cheat, keep your promises. If you inadvertently fail to live up to these standards, make it up to the person youโve harmed. If someone harms you, you may defend yourself as needed to stop the aggressor and obtain reparations. This simple morality works group-to-group just as it works one-to-one to bring about a peaceful and prosperous world.
Mary Ruwart... the structure of our public morality crashed to earth. Above its grave a tombstone read, "Be tolerant--even of evil." Logically the next step would be to say to our commonwealth's criminals, "I disagree that it's all right to rob and murder, but naturally I respect your opinion." Tolerance is only complacence when it makes no distinction between right and wrong.
Sarah-Patton BoyleReligion 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.
Bhikkhu BodhiSouls were the same. They, too, had useless baggage that impeded their proper performance, these annoying, holier-than-thou bits dangling like an appendix waiting for infection. Faith and hope and love...prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude...all this useless clutter just packed too much damn morality into the heart, getting in the way of the soul's innate desire for malignancy.
J.R. WardWhen people say "the people" or "the public" as though it's the final repository of all morality, I sometimes flinch.
Arundhati RoyThere's such cultural rot taking place, such a disintegration throughout our culture. Values, morality, you name it. Standards have been relaxed, and people are not being held to them. People's intentions, if they're said to be good and honorable, that's all that matters.
Rush LimbaughLeadership, in short, is power governed by principle, directed toward raising people to their highest levels of personal motive and social morality.
James MacGregor BurnsWe 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.
Rebecca GoldsteinI 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.
Kevin BaconNone of us can boast about the morality of our ancestors. The record does not show that Adam and Eve were ever married.
E. W. HoweThe essence of spirit ... was to choose the thing which did not better one's position but made it more perilous. That was why the world he knew was poor, for it insisted morality and caution were identical.
Norman MailerTo enjoy and give enjoyment, without injury to yourself or others; this is true morality.
Nicolas ChamfortThe idea that boxing lends itself to cinema so well is because it's usually a morality play - good against evil, insecurity and triumph, fear strikes out, so the audience can really get drawn into the drama of it. Also, it was sensual and very primal. I think subliminaly we do two things - life is a fight, life is a struggle and we understand that from our early, early, early ancestors, and life is a race.
Sylvester StalloneIf moral precepts alone could have reformed mankind, the mission of the Son of God into all the world would have been unnecessary. The perfect morality of the gospel rests upon the doctrine which, though often controverted has never been refuted: I mean the vicarious life and death of the Son of God.
Benjamin RushIn 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?
Charles Caleb ColtonI took in a foster kid that I wanted to adopt in the state where I live, and I pay taxes, said to me, based on not your morality, not on how good you are as a mother, not on how much you've given to foster kids in Florida, based on the facts that you're in love with a woman, you can't keep her.
Rosie O'DonnellI say Democrats should not be afraid to talk about the morality of life, of caring for children who are born. It seems the Republican obsession with being pro-life lasts about nine months. After that, itโs each baby for herself.
Jennifer GranholmTrue morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding the true path for ourselves, and fearlessly following it.
Mahatma GandhiHow can we expect young people to be rooted in things such as character, morality and honesty? How is one supposed to be at once an arrow soaring skyward and an oak planted firmly in the ground? The meritocratic culture hones strivers on every aspect of their lives save one - how to cultivate character.
David BrooksWhen you choose wrong because it suits you right now, the message you give others is that when it suits you, you may likely do wrong again. You become a threat and liability to others. That's a pragmatic reason, outside of pride in morality, not to do wrong.
Laura SchlessingerI'm never trying to make a statement about morality ever. If there's a statement to be made, it's "People are complicated. They do things that may hurt other people, or exploit other people, but they may do them for the right reasons, or out of desperation." I don't judge that sort of "bad" behavior. I'm only interested in a world where people break outside of the norm, and I believe people do whatever they have to do to relieve themselves of pain. I just want to watch and see how that plays out.
Liz W. GarciaDoes history warrant the conclusion that religion is necessary to morality - that a natural ethic is too weak to withstand the savagery that lurks under civilization and emerges in our dreams, crimes and wars? ... There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.
Will DurantThe artist's morality lies in the force and truth of his description.
Jules Amedee Barbey d'AurevillyJew 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.
Maurice SamuelWatergate is the great liberal illusion that you can have public virtue without private morality.
Clare Boothe LuceIt is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of religion that we shall discover truth, reason and morality.
Baron d'HolbachWhenever a taboo is broken, something good happens, something vitalizing. Taboos after all are only hangovers, the product of diseased minds, you might say, of fearsome people who hadn't the courage to live and who under the guise of morality and religion have imposed these things upon us.
Henry MillerFor years Christians in particular have been attacked and silenced as they tried to challenge the immorality pervasive in today's society. When they tell people casual sex is wrong, they get the inevitable, "You got no right to tell me what I can or can't do. You don't get to define morality for me. It's none of your business what I do. Shut up." If they oppose sexual immorality in any form including adultery, they are maligned as sanctimonious Puritans who have not gotten with it in the twenty-first century. It's a long piece; it's well thought out.
Rush LimbaughAlmighty 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.
Thomas Jefferson