Quotes About Morality

My version of relativism is pluralistic and attributes functions to morality that in combination with human nature place limits on what could count as a true morality. Unlike many other relativists, I do not hold that people are subject to a morality because they all belong to a certain group. That is, I don't hold that being a member of a group makes one's subject to some set of generally accepted norms. What is true is that others around us teach us morality and moral language, so they inevitably influence us.

Morality, and the ideal of freedom which is the political expression of morality, are not the property of a given party or group, but a value that is fundamentally and universally human... No people will be truly free till all are free.

It is a depressing fact that Americans tend to confuse morality and art (to the detriment of both) and that, among the educated, morality tends to mean social consciousness.

"Taste is not only a part and index of morality, it is the only morality. The first, and last, and closest trial question to any living creature is "What do you like?" Tell me what you like, I'll tell you what you are."

A person may be qualified to do greater good to mankind and become more beneficial to the world, by morality without faith than by faith without morality.

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.

Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.

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.

True eloquence makes light of eloquence. True morality makes light of 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.

Without civic morality communities perish; without personal morality their survival has no value.

His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be

Today courts wrongly interpret separation of church and state to mean that religion has no place in the public arena, or that morality derived from religion should not be permitted to shape our laws. Somehow freedom for religious expression has become freedom from religious expression. Secularists want to empty the public square of religion and religious-based morality so they can monopolize the shared space of society with their own views. In the process they have made religious believers into second-class citizens.

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.

See, then, how powerful religion is; it commands the heart, it commands the vitals. Morality,--that comes with a pruning-knife, and cuts off all sproutings, all wild luxuriances; but religion lays the axe to the root of the tree. Morality looks that the skin of the apple be fair; but religion searcheth to the very core.

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

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.

Rhetoric takes no real account of the art in literature and morality takes no account of the art in life.

Veracity is the heart of morality.

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.

Those who enjoy the blessings of liberty under a divinely inspired constitution should promote morality, and they should practice what the Founding Fathers called civic virtue.

I am glad that Angela Merkel is the German Chancellor, as she tries to combine a sense of responsibility with morality and values. Because this is the essence of Europe.

Wine is a part of society because it provides a basis not only for a morality but also for an environment; it is an ornament in the slightest ceremonials of French daily life, from the snack to the feast, from the conversation at the local cafT to the speech at a formal dinner.

The foundations of national morality must be laid in private families.

There'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.

It is true that legality is not morality, and sticking to the law is necessary for good citizenship, but it is not sufficient.

Each individual possesses a conscience which to a greater or lesser degree serves to restrain the unimpeded flow of impulses destructive to others. But when he merges his person into an organizational structure, a new creature replaces autonomous man, unhindered by the limitations of individual morality, freed of humane inhibition, mindful only of the sanctions of authority.

Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.

It is an accepted commonplace in psychology that the spiritual level of people acting as a crowd is far lower than the mean of each individual's intelligence or morality.

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.

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.

Never presume yours is a better morality.

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

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality.

We hear a lot of talk these days about teaching values in higher education. Frankly, I am not sure this can be accomplished through a separate course in morality or ethics. I am convinced, however, that values are sustained on campus by the honesty of our words, and by the confidence we have in the words of others.

An important species of pleasure, and therewith the source of morality, arises out of habit.

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

Every wave of passion restrained is a balance in your favor. It is therefore good policy not to return anger for anger, as with all true morality.

I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born, in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuadinig arguments of my best friends.

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.

Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.

It is hard to witness to truth to people who believe truth is relative. It is hard to proclaim the forgiveness of sins to people who believe that, since morality is relative, they have no sins to forgive.

The Marxist combination of materialism and determinism is fatally anti-humanistic. It denies a consciousness, a mind, that is independent of material conditions and class relations. It denies a will and volition that are capable of shaping the course of history. It denies an individuality that is not reducible to class. It denies both the idea and the reality of freedom, a freedom that is something more than the "bourgeois" freedom to buy and sell. It denies a morality that transcends class interests. And it denies the spirituality of man.

Knowing about the neurobiological and evolutionary basis for social behavior can soften the arrogance and self-righteousness that often attends discussions of morality. It may help us all to think a little more carefully and rationally.

Christianity is neither a system of ideas nor of morality but a way, a way of life.