Popular quotes about Morals! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 9
[F]or avoiding the extremes of despotism or anarchy . . . the only ground of hope must be on the morals of the people. I believe that religion is the only solid base of morals and that morals are the only possible support of free governments. [T]herefore education should teach the precepts of religion and the duties of man towards God.
Gouverneur MorrisThe balance of private good and general welfare is at the bottom of civilized morals but the morals of the Heroic Age are founded on individuality, and on nothing else.
Lascelles AbercrombieWe get our morals from books. I didn't get mine from books, but I know that morals do come from books- theoretically at least.
Mark TwainHow deep a wound to morals and social purity has that accursed article of the celibacy of the clergy been! Even the best and most enlightened men in Romanist countries attach a notion of impurity to the marriage of a clergyman. And can such a feeling be without its effect on the estimation of the wedded life in general? Impossible! and the morals of both sexes in Spain, Italy, France, and. prove it abundantly.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeCorruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals, or the laxity of morals, of various political personalities. Its cause is altogether a material one.
Emma GoldmanWithout morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure (and) which insures to the good eternal happiness, are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.
Charles Carroll of CarrolltonBecause just as good morals, if they are to be maintained, have need of the laws, so the laws, if they are to be observed, have need of good morals.
Niccolo MachiavelliI think what you have to realise is that our generation is the first generation since its sexual awakening has come into the world and realised that sex can mean, ultimately, death. That has had a very serious effect on social morals and on the way people deal with each other. As we approach the millennium, people are getting more and more confused and contact is getting more and more sanitised, so there's a lot more mental games being played.
Brian MolkoI think subconsciously because of my upbringing, I was very aware of values and morals and that's why I experienced the occasional guilt with my habits.
Anne Marie MillerThe religious habits of the Americans form not only the basis of their private and public morals, but have become so thoroughly interwoven with their whole course of legislation that it would be impossible to change them without affecting the very essence of their government.
Francis GrundIt is a common teaching of the Saints that one of the principal means of leading a good and exemplary life is certainly modesty and the mortification of the eyes. Just as there is nothing better than modesty to preserve devotion in a soul and to edify one's neighbor, so too, there is nothing worse than immodesty and licentious glances to expose a person to the danger of becoming lax and loose in morals.
Alphonsus RodriguezReligion and morals are symmetrically opposed, just like poetry and philosophy.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich SchlegelHow many young girls there are who do not see any wrongdoing in following certain shameless styles like so many sheep. They certainly would blush if they could guess the impression they make and the feelings they evoke in those who see them. Do they not see the harm resulting from excess in certain gymnastic exercises and sports not suitable for virtuous girls? What sins are committed or provoked by conversations which are too free, by immodest shows, by dangerous reading. How lax have consciences become, how pagan morals!
Pope Pius XIIIt is this idea 'decency' should be attached to wealth -and 'indecency'' to poverty - that forms the core of one strand of skeptical complaint against the modern status-ideal. Why should failure to make money be taken as a sign of an unconditionally flawed human being rather than of a fiasco in one particular area if the far larger, more multifaceted, project of leading a good life? Why should both wealth and poverty be read as the predominant guides to an individual's morals ?
Alain de BottonPeople with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love.
Charles BukowskiThere is nothing in either savage or civilized history that is more utterly complete, more remorselessly sweeping than the Father of Mercyยดs campaign among the Midianites. The official report deals only in masses, all the virgins, all the men, all the babies. all ยดcreatures that breathe,ยด all houses. all cities. It gives you just one vast picture ...as far as the eye can reach, of charred ruins and storm-swept desolation... Would you expect this same conscienceless God, this moral bankrupt, to become a teacher of morals, of gentleness, of meekness, of righteousness, of purity?
Mark TwainWe have always known that heedless self interest was bad morals, we now know that it is bad economics.
Franklin D. RooseveltIf thou beest ever so exact in thy morals, and not a worshiper of God, then thou art an atheist.
William GurnallThe original of morals lies with the thought that 'the community is more valuable than the individual' (Menschliches 2.1.89
John CarrollThese principles have been proclaimed by God, by the Church, by the Saints, by Christian reason and morals.
Pope Pius XIIEvery age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors.
Thomas B. MacaulayWhatever may be the pros and cons of going to the public theatre, it is a patent fact that it has undermined the morals and ruined the character of many a youth in his country.
Mahatma GandhiIn the first season (of 'Californication'), when we had the threesome with the nipple clamps, I was, like, 'I don't get this, I don't know how you're gonna do it.' And then, all of a sudden, there's a crane with a camera hanging over our heads, and you're, like, 'Okayyyyyyy. But how are you gonna sell this? How are you gonna make it work?' And they ended up shooting it brilliantly, cutting it together, and it just all ended up working without me having to compromise my own personal morals.
Pamela AdlonSociety is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.
Alexis de TocquevilleOnly Atheists have morals, the religious have reward and punishment. That's not morality, that's sucking up.
Penn JilletteI have found by experience that they who have spent all their lives in cities, improve their talents but impair their virtues; and strengthen their minds but weaken their morals.
Charles Caleb ColtonEvery fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.
Ralph Waldo EmersonI certainly donโt believe in religion, although I find it fascinating that itโs become so powerful in the world and itโs kind of dictated morals down through societies for thousands of years, but I donโt see the hand of God at work in the world anywhere.
Noel GallagherThere are people accusing me that I'm sick, that I'm a danger to morals, western civilization and basically everything under the sun. And they've got these wild stories about me, completely off the wall, completely untrue. They thought them up and it makes you wonder what goes on in their brain, but of course, they don't consider themselves sick. They think they're normal because they don't dress like I do.
Marilyn MansonAt most, the greatest persons are but great wens, and excrescences; men of wit and delightful conversation, but as morals for ornament, except they be so incorporated into the body of the world that they contribute something to the sustentation of the whole.
John DonneLet not men then in the pride of power, use the same arguments that tyrannic kings and venal ministers have used, and fallaciously assert that women ought to be subjected because she has always been so.... It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity.... It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.
Mary WollstonecraftThere are some liberals eager to embrace a culture void of morals, but the majority of America is made up of honest, hard-working families who turned out in droves to protect the traditional way of life.
John DoolittleBy reason of its soporigous quality, lettuce ever was, and still continues the principal foundation of the universal tribe of Sallets, which is to cool and refresh, besides its other properties... including beneficial influences on morals, temperance, and chastity.
John EvelynCourage consists, however, in agreeing to flee rather than live tranquilly and hypocritically in false refuges. Values, morals, homelands, religions, and these private certitudes that our vanity and our complacency bestow generously on us, have many deceptive sojourns as the world arranges for those who think they are standing straight and at ease, among stable things
Gilles DeleuzeThe Jew is not satisfied with de-Christianizing, he Judiazizes, he destroys the Catholic or Protestant faith, he provokes indifference but he imposes his idea of the world of morals and of life upon those whose faith he ruins. He works at his age old task, the annilation of the religion of Christ.
Bernard LazareMy children came out as individuals in their own right. They were not my products. They had their own characters and were very strong-minded. I gave them a lot of freedom when they were still very young. The one thing they got from me is morals. They would never betray anyone. They are really good people.
Vivienne WestwoodKnowledge is one of our direst needs. But it is insufficient on its own. If knowledge was stripped from true up-bringing, it would increase man's strength, but not his morals.
Ameen RihaniJesus was not content to derive his ethics from the scriptures of his upbringing. He explicitly departed from them. [...] Since a principal thesis of this chapter is that we do not, and should not, derive our morals from scripture, Jesus has to be honoured as a model for that very thesis.
Richard DawkinsI'm always changing. I still have the same morals and values and foundation of who I was, growing up in Jacksonville, FL, but I'm such a different person from who I was when I was 17. You live and you learn and you grow.
Ashley GreeneMan must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals.
Albert SchweitzerPeople have no morals, I swear to God. The things that people do for ratings! It's unforgivable.
Madonna CicconeEvery group, every system has a set of values and morals and when you get outside those, then the alarms ring. I was politically incorrect to 95% of the country; luckily my 5% had the bread to come see me.
Lenny BruceHow could politics be a science, if laws and forms of government had not a uniform influence upon society? Where would be the foundation of morals, if particular characters had no certain or determinate power to produce particular sentiments, and if these sentiments had no constant operation on actions?
David HumeIf America is to be run by the people, it is the people who must think. And we do not need to put on sackcloth and ashes to think. Nor should our minds work like a sundial which records only sunshine. Our thinking must square against some lessons of history, some principles of government and morals, if we would preserve the rights and dignity of men to which this nation is dedicated.
Herbert Hoover