Best 1590 quotes in «morality quotes» category

All lines are gray in the dark.

All my life I'd thought of myself as an essentially good person, but all I'd been was comfortable.

All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side . . . The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them

All moral judgment is ultimately about the direction toward better or worse, never an absolute truth or fact.

All my biggest failures began with the smallest compromises.

All right, he thought, okay; if thats the way it is; a savagery of anger in him now at the picture. They call them "pin-up girls" and think its cute how "our boys," now that they're drafted, love to hang them in their wall lockers. And then close up all the whorehouses, every place they can, so our young men will not be contaminated.

All religions are man-made; God has not yet revealed himself beyond doubt to anybody.

all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka

All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil.

All the social ills that law presumes to correct exist because people are not free to learn and grow.

All this talk about morality, chastity, prudence and the like are very antiquated notions created by some very old belief systems that are notoriously negative towards women.

All who seek to be nobler than their constitution permits succumb to neurosis; they would have been better in health if they had found it possible to be morally worse.

Almost every single intellectual has been obsessed with an illustrious question - what drives morality! Yet none of them has been able to find an actual answer to this question. All that they have done is to publish tons of reading material full with theories and intellectual speculations. The truth is, morality is not driven by anything, it is the one thing that drives everything else. Morality is the fundamental drive of being a civilized conscientious human, that rises through self-awareness and self-regulation.

Although profanity is part of our language that we speak everyday, it can simultaneity be used as a weapon to demoralize other people if it is offensive within its meaning.

Altruism holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only moral justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty. The political expression of altruism is collectivism or statism, which holds that man's life and work belong to the state - to society, to the group, the gang, the race, the nation - and that the state may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.

Altruism is not the product of religion, it precedes religion, and often times religion is its enemy.

Always be good to yourself and others. Always do what is right even if doing something wrong is quicker, more rewarding or easier. Always put truth in your every word and action, and never ignore your conscience until you die.

Always polish the dirt for a refreshing start and seek out to build new mental structures that can help you to become rejuvenated.

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.

A man’s character is most evident by how he treats those who are not in a position either to retaliate or reciprocate.

A man’s most valuable possession is his integrity. Unless he has no integrity. In which case, he may not have much of anything of value.

A man is more or less of a Christian only in proportion to the speed with which he advances towards infinite perfection, irrespective of the stage he may have reached at a given moment. Hence the stationary righteousness of the Pharisee is worth less than the progress of the repentant thief on the cross.

A man must not be without shame, for the shame of being without shame is shamelessness indeed.

A man who does not question his own judgment, society, and who flourishes between deceit and bewilderment, fails his moral responsibility as a rational being.

A mature society is one that reserves its moral outrage for what really matters: poverty and preventable diseases in the third world, arms sales, oppression, injustice. Bad language and sex might offend some, who certainly have a right to complain; but they do not have a right to censor. They do not have to watch or listen if they are offended: they have an 'off' button on their television sets and radios. After all, it is morally outrageous that moral outrage should be used as an excuse to perpetrate the outrage of censorship on others.

A memorable heart is the easiest way to immortality.

A moral foreign policy means your positions on certain matters are clear no matter what, and that you won't forget about them when it's convenient.

A moral economy is either a moral enterprise that is guided by a genuine spiritual desire to create one, even at the expense of strictly economic considerations, or it will degenerate into another profit-oriented and exploitative use of resources. Citizens who are not prepared to pay higher prices to support such an economy and volunteer their own efforts on its behalf are not likely to be prepared for self-governance in any form. Hence the need for a new municipal politics to become an intensely educational and participatory experience at every level of civic life.

An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty.

An active moral life cannot be evolved except where people are free to express their feelings and act upon the insights of conscience.

And again, though we cannot prove, we feel, that we are deathless. We perceive that life is not like those dramas so beloved by the people—in which every villain is punished, and every act of virtue meets with its reward; we learn anew every day that the wisdom of the serpent fares better here than the gentleness of the dove, and that any thief can triumph if he steals enough. If mere worldly utility and expediency were the justification of virtue, it would not be wise to be too good. And yet, knowing all this, having it flung into our faces with brutal repetition, we still feel the command to righteousness, we know that we ought to do the inexpedient good.

An area of land used for crops will feed about ten times as many people as the same area of land used for grass-fed beef.

An atheist is someone who is disappointed in his search of god. He is a man who strongly needed god but couldn't find him. Atheism is a cry of despair

A narcissist with power will attempt to prove in the world only what is already in his head. He can't 'see' otherwise. For him, the 'outside world' is not beyond him and does not question or challenge him and his ideas. He is the world. Others will assent to his distorted worldview, because he is powerful, not because he is believable. If he possesses any reflection, that will be exactly what will gnaw at the narcissist with power most of all: his 'truths' are inauthentic, and he is a human being without integrity. The very narcissism and power he possesses prevent him from an ongoing relationship with the truth, which begins with self-humility and the curiosity this can create in a person.

Anatomy lab, in the end, becomes less a violation of the sacred and more something that interferes with happy hour, and that realization discomfits. In our rare reflective moments, we were all silently apologizing to our cadavers, not because we sensed the transgression but because we did not.

And I saw then again, and for good, what I had always been afraid to see, and had pretended not to see in him: that he was a woman as well as a man. Any need to explain the sources of that fear vanished with the fear; what I was left with was, at last, acceptance of him as he was. Until then I had rejected him, refused him his own reality. He had been quite right to say that he, the only person on Gethen who trusted me, was the own Gethenian I distrusted. For he was the only one who had entirely accepted me as a human being: who had liked me personally and given me entire personal loyalty, and who therefore had demanded of me an equal degree of recognition, of acceptance. I had not been willing to give it. I had been afraid to give it. I had not wanted to give my trust, my friendship to a man who was a woman, a woman who was a man.

And now they were weary and frightened because they had gone against a system they did not understand and it had beaten them. They knew that the team and the wagon were worth much more. They knew the buyer man would get much more, but they didn't know how to do it. Merchandising was a secret to them.

And that is why I consider promiscuity immoral. Not because sex is evil, but because sex is too good and too important... What sex should involve is a very serious relationship. Whether that relationship should or should not become a marriage is a question which depends on the circumstances and the context of the two persons' lives. I consider marriage a very important institution, but it is important when and if two people have found the person with whom they wish to spend the rest of their lives -- a question of which no man or woman can be automatically certain. When one is certain that one's choice is final, then marriage is, of course, a desirable state. But this does not mean that any relationship based on less than total certainty is improper. I think the question of an affair or a marriage depends on the knowledge and the position of the two persons involved and should be left up to them. Either is moral, provided only that both parties take the relationship seriously and that it is based on values.

And we remember that there must be a balance. No birth without death. No life without tears. What is taken from the world must be given back, and from him who takes and does not give back, who would tip the balance of the river, from him all will be taken. No one should live forever, but should give his blood to the river when the time comes so that tomorrow another may live. And so it goes.

And those who will carefully study the so-called 'Mosaic code' contained in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, will see that, though Jahveh's prohibitions of certain forms of immorality are strict and sweeping, his wrath is quite as strongly kindled against infractions of ritual ordinances. Accidental homicide may go unpunished, and reparation may be made for wilful theft. On the other hand, Nadab and Abihu, who 'offered strange fire before Jahveh, which he had not commanded them,' were swiftly devoured by Jahveh's fire; he who sacrificed anywhere except at the allotted place was to be 'cut off from his people'; so was he who ate blood; and the details of the upholstery of the Tabernacle, of the millinery of the priests' vestments, and of the cabinet work of the ark, can plead direct authority from Jahveh, no less than moral commands.

And we, from within the sigh of the trees, and the soft moss underfoot, and the calling of night birds, watched him as he watched, gazing where he should not.

Animal rights are not a gift we give to animals. They are a birthright we have taken from them.

An ignorant man, who is not fool enough to meddle with his clock, is however sufficiently confident to think he can safely take to pieces, and put together at his pleasure, a moral machine of another guise, importance and complexity, composed of far other wheels, and springs, and balances, and counteracting and co-operating powers. Men little think how immorally they act in rashly meddling with what they do not understand. Their delusive good intention is no sort of excuse for their presumption. They who truly mean well must be fearful of acting ill.

An insincere individual would feel afraid to admit the truth because he or she wants to avoid facing the consequences with a guilty conscious . Eventually, he or she will get caught and will face more serve consequences for their guilty actions including committing acts of dishonesty.

An educated, healthy & confident nation is harder to govern

Angels are good not simply because they see bad as bad, but also because they see bad as corny.

Any attempt to “cover everything” would succeed only in producing a completely unmanageable mountain of data. Indeed, in proportion to its increase, which has been enormous in the past half century, the sheer volume of historical scholarship—what Daniel Lord Smail has recently called “the inflationary spiral of research overproduction, coupled with an abiding fear of scholarly exposure for not keeping up with one’s field”—paradoxically militates against comprehension of the past in relationship to the present. A different approach is needed if we are to avoid being overwhelmed by specialized scholarship, the proliferation of which tends to reinforce ingrained assumptions about historical periodization that in turn hamper an adequate understanding of change over time.

Anxiety can make anybody act nasty, big or small. You will be tested for your strength, and if you are seen as too weak, you will sometimes be treated abusively, discarded and avoided. I'm not saying that this should happen. I'm simply describing human beings as they are.

Any humane, modern society must provide a reliable, well-financed, state-of-the-art health system, which supports and promotes a prosperous and morally responsible society.

Any moral ethic worth examining must be universal. That is if something is right or wrong for me, it must also be right or wrong for you. This is a system of ethics that applies universally to all individuals regardless of culture, nationality, race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, wealth, or any other distinguishing feature. Otherwise, we would have difficulty judging human action.