quotations about morality
My thesis is that morality exists outside the human mind in the sense of being not just a trait of individual humans, but a human trait; that is, a human universal.
MICHAEL SHERMER
The Science of Good and Evil
Every man also has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook B", The Waste Books
Must someone, some unseen thing, declare what is right for it to be right? I believe that my own morality -- which answers only to my heart -- is more sure and true than the morality of those who do right only because they fear retribution.
BRANDON SANDERSON
The Way of Kings
Ethics and I had crossed paths recently, and I'm not sure that I fell on the right side of the morality line.
S. C. STEPHENS
Effortless
The highest stage in moral culture at which we can arrive, is when we recognise that we ought to control our thoughts.
CHARLES DARWIN
The Descent of Man
Moral progress is a process of isolation; the mountain tops are lonely.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Morality is but the vestibule of religion.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Moral argument tries to appeal to a capacity for impartial motivation which is supposed to be present in all of us. Unfortunately it may be deeply buried, and in some cases it may not be present at all. In any case it has to compete with powerful selfish motives, and other personal motives that may not be so selfish, in its bid for control of our behavior. The difficulty of justifying morality is not that there is only one human motive, but that there are so many.
THOMAS NAGEL
What Does It All Mean?
Our conceptions of morality, as all our other ideas, pass through a course of development; the difficulty comes in adjusting our conduct, which has become hardened into customs and habits, to these changing moral conceptions. When this adjustment is not made, we suffer from the strain and indecision of believing one hypothesis and acting upon another.
JANE ADDAMS
Democracy and Social Ethics
"Immoral" is the judgment of the stalled ox on the gamboling lamb.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"Epigrams of a Cynic"
The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying.
JOEL STEIN
Los Angeles Times, January 24, 2006
Our moral faculties must be placed highest, else they can no more flourish than could a plant growing under the shade and drip of trees.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales.
ALEISTER CROWLEY
The Confessions of Aleister Crowley
Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Every day we make our way through a moral forest, along pathways ever branching. Often we get lost. When the array of paths before us is so perplexing that we can't make a choice, or won't, we can hope that we will be given a sign to guide us. A reliance on signs, however, can lead to the evasion of all moral obligations, and thus earn a terrible judgment.
DEAN KOONTZ
Forever Odd
A man that puts himself on the ground of moral principle, if the whole world be against him, is mightier than all of them.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Yet one must also recognize that morality is based on ideas and that all ideas are dangerous--dangerous because ideas can only lead to action and where the action leads no man can say.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
Our world hinges on moral foundations. God has made it so. God has made the universe to be based on a moral law. So long as man disobeys it he is revolting against God. That's what we need in the world today: people who will stand for right and goodness. It's not enough to know the intricacies of zoology and biology, but we must know the intricacies of law. It is not enough to know that two and two makes four, but we've got to know somehow that it's right to be honest and just with our brothers. It's not enough to know all about our philosophical and mathematical disciplines, but we've got to know the simple disciplines of being honest and loving and just with all humanity. If we don't learn it, we will destroy ourselves by the misuse of our own powers.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
sermon delivered at Detroit's Second Baptist Church, February 28, 1954
Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning -- an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Kavanagh
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!
BIBLE
Isaiah 5:20