Morality Quotes

Morality is herd instinct in the individual.

The ability to see beauty is the beginning of our moral sensibility. What we believe is beautiful we will not wantonly destroy.

'Wrong' is one of those concepts that depends on witnesses.

Scandal is great entertainment because it allows people to feel contempt, a moral emotion that gives feeling of moral superiority while asking nothing in return.

I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world.

Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. That 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.

Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

I have never believed there was one code of morality for a public and another for a private man.

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.

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

If your morals make you dreary, depend on it , they are wrong.

Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

No moral system can rest solely on authority.

The higher the buildings, the lower the morals.

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.

Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.

Compassion is the basis of all morality.

Good laws have their origins in bad morals.

Truth is the secret of eloquence and of virtue, the basis of moral authority; it is the highest summit of art and life.

The soul is the captain and ruler of the life of morals.

All sects are different, because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God.

Perfection of moral virtue does not wholly take away the passions, but regulates them.

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.

History is a voice forever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.

We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

Surely what a man does when he is caught off his guard is the best evidence as to what sort of man he is.

When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right.

You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the univerise in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built.

The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.

Whenever you find a man who says he doesn't believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later.

Whenever you find a man who says he doesn't believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later.

Badness is only spoiled goodness.

Badness is only spoiled goodness.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.

Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.

Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right.

I am not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.

Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

Duty is what one expects from others.

To sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me.

Always do right - this will gratify some and astonish the rest.

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

...I hope that we will hear no more of all ways of life and all cultures being equally valid, which none of us truly believes but which many people mouth in order to appear broad-minded and generous of spirit.

I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.

Sin is its own punishment.

The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.

Have no fear of robbers or murderers. They are external dangers, petty dangers. We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murders. The great dangers are within us. Why worry about what threatens our heads or purses? Let us think instead of what threatens our souls.

Toleration is the best religion.

No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous.

If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.

People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people may accuse you of selfish motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you may win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. People who really want help may attack you if you help them. Help them anyway. Give the world the best you have and you may get hurt. Give the world your best anyway.

A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is... A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.

The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.

The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.

We're not all alike but we can all like each other.

A little neglect may breed great mischief.

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

It's not that we don't have enough scoundrels to curse; it's that we don't have enough good men to curse them.

I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.

I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.

Wherever any precept of traditional morality is simply challenged to produce its credentials, as though the burden of proof lay on it, we have taken the wrong position.

We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin.

I believe one of the reasons so many do not get a higher education is the fear of their parents that they will lose more morally than they will receive mentally.

You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.

Only the sinner has the right to preach.

Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

Bad men are full of repentance.

It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

A good conscience is a continual Christmas.

Everything that used to be a sin is now a disease.

I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell -- you see, I have friends in both places.

I once sent a dozen of my friends a telegram saying 'flee at once - all is discovered.' They all left town immediately.

If I must choose between righteousness and peace, I choose righteousness.

Reputation is character minus what you've been caught doing.

Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.

It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.

Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.

Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.

Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses and avoids.

The devil made me do it the first time, and after that I did it on my own.

A man must be willing to die for justice. Death is an inescapable reality and men die daily, but good deeds live forever.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

I shall tell you a great secret my friend. Do not wait for the last judgement, it takes place every day.

On life's journey faith is nourishment, virtuous deeds are a shelter, wisdom is the light by day and right mindfulness is the protection by night. If a man lives a pure life, nothing can destroy him.

Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.

It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better, while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.

When we played softball, I'd steal second base, feel guilty and go back.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

If devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking...the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind.

Live so that you wouldn't be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.

Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other 'sins' are invented nonsense.

The good people sleep much better at night than the bad people. Of course, the bad people enjoy the waking hours much more.

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That�s my religion.

The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back.

If we do not help a man in trouble, it is as if we caused the trouble.

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and can't really get rid of it.

Morality, like numinous awe, is a jump; in it, man goes beyond anything that can be 'given' in the facts of experience.

Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones. All men mean well.

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.

To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice.

A man does what he must, in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures, and that is the basis of all human morality.

There are two types of education. One should teach us how to make a living, And the other how to live.

What is good? Everything that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself.

What is bad? Everything that is born of weakness.

Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil.

Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.

He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own.

It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.

A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected.

So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

In the Orthodox spiritual tradition, the ultimate moral question we ask is the following: Is what we are doing, is what I am doing, beautiful or not?

Ethical religion can be real only to those who are engaged in ceaseless efforts at moral improvement. By moving upward we acquire faith in an upward movement, without limit.

Where there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.

Everyone is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

The right thing to do never requires any subterfuge, it is always simple and direct.

If you start to think about your physical or moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.

Bad men cannot make good citizens. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience are incompatible with freedom.

I never believed there was one code of morality for a public and another for a private man.

It is noble to be good; it is still nobler to teach others to be good - and less trouble.

The fool who has not sense to discriminate between what is good and what is bad is well nigh as dangerous as the man who does discriminate and yet chooses the bad.

There is one thing alone that stands the brunt of life throughout its course: a quiet conscience.

Would you live with ease? Do what you ought, not what you please.

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

America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

He was as great as a man can be without morality.

Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.

If only for the sake of elegance, I try to remain morally pure.

As soon as one is unhappy one becomes moral.

A man's very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life.

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.

Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attraction of others.

Moral courage is the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men.