Best 1590 quotes in «morality quotes» category

He would have been careful not to violate his conscience in any way that might keep him from devoting his full attention to the sin he had decided to commit. Pedro was not really very different from all men, at least in that. Not very different from the bank teller who makes sure to give every customer exact change, even while he is embezzling.

Histories of morality are rarely written in order to inform the reader.

History reveals there is no moral high ground; there is only perspective. We often exhibit the same behaviors for which we condemn others.

Horror demands answers to the deeper questions; it requires the contemplation of life and death and the examination of good and evil. I know of no other fictional genre that puts morality as front and center as horror does.

How is it possible that suffering that is neither my own nor of my concern should immediately affect me as though it were my own, and with such force that is moves me to action?

How long does one remain in a human life (the other being animal & hell)? As long as he does not take what is not rightfully his.

Humans do not simply, innocently, and honestly disagree with each other about the good, the just, the right, the principles and applications of moral distinction and valuation, for they are already caught, like it or not, in a complex dynamic of each other’s desires, recognition, power, and comparisons which not only relativizes moral distinctions and valuations, but makes them a constant and dangerous source of discord.

Humans are not a commodity, nor is our humanity. Fight to save the lives of those who can not save themselves, and in turn, you will have saved your soul.

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead.

How will people remember you when you are gone? And for how long until they forget? Were you selfish or selfless? A gossip or a patient listener? Did you add value to the world, or did you simply take from it? Did you add value to the lives of others, or did you take the value out of someone's life? Were you a plus or negative? Meaningful or meaningless? Do you live to take or live to give?

High rise seldom survives the weak foundation.

I believe that my own morality is more sure and true than the morality of those who do right only because they fear retribution [from God].

I believe that we are henceforth incapable of returning to an order of moral life which would take the form of a simple submission to commandments or to an alien or supreme will, even if this will were represented as divine. We must accept as a positive good the critique of ethics and religion that has been undertaken by the school of suspicion. From it we have learned to understand that the commandment that gives death, not life, is a product and projection of our own weakness.

I am an atheist and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people.

I can explain why I have to do what I'm about to do, but I'm acutely aware that an explanation is not a righteous justification. What's bad is bad even if necessary.

I can see the common people, with their halo of self-defined morality (that changes conveniently based on needs), coin a term for me that I don’t quite approve of – Bitch.

I am free! for I have in me the strength of truth.

I could play many types of characters on camera, but all were, in some way, going to be variations of me, and I was conscious of who I was. I wasn’t a prude or a goody two-shoes, but I was, in many ways, still the boy my mother praised for being good, and though older and more complex, I was content with remaining that good boy. I wanted to be able to talk about my work at the dinner table and hold my head up on Sundays when my wife and I led our children into the Brentwood Presbyterian Church, where I was an elder.

....I came to consider betrayal a moral violation of another's humanity—akin to torture.

I deny morality as I deny alchemy.

I do not judge the individual based on their belief. If I were to, then I would, undoubtedly, be no better than the (religious) system that I frown upon.

I did the wrong thing, and I lost him for real. But did you do the wrong thing? Jamie thinks it was the wrong thing. But do you? No. I don't. I didn't do what Jamie would have wanted me to do, but that doesn't mean it was wrong.

I can’t look people in the eye and tell them that they’re going to die anymore.

I don't consider myself as a bad person, on the whole I consider myself a good person, I'm good to my parents. I treat my girl right… take her out and buy her stuff. And I go to church every Sunday, But I've decided that just once I wanna do a really bad thing. I mean a really seriously bad thing. 'cause, ya know, like, we're put on this earth with free will. We can choose to do this or that. We can choose to be good or bad. But sometimes I think most people are good and not bad only because they're scared they might go to jail or hell or someplace. Some guy once said: "Anything done out of fear has no moral value" Well, I think that's right. I figure the only way you can be truly good is if you've tried been good, and you've tried being bad, and being good feels better.

I don’t like vegans, either. Bunch of whiny zealots. A cow or a pig wouldn’t give a damn if a person died… animals tear apart other animals while they’re still alive, but we aren’t so cruel, so vegans should learn to shut up. Vegans use palm oil and never think about the forests and endangered species at risk from that… and they all exploit the world in other ways, buying their computers and their sweatshop clothes and their Starbucks coffees. Anyway, cats and dogs eat their owners after the owner dies. I saw on the news a few times that there was a lot of open animal food in the houses where that sort of thing happens, but the pets eat the dead owner… just because. Maybe a pet’s notion of ‘unconditional love’ is like Jeffrey Dahmer… he used to eat and kill the people he professed to love, too. He was a sicko… I don’t believe animals have any empathy. Do elephants ever consider Holocaust victims? Do dogs ever cry over the Rwanda Genocide?

I don’t know what the hell I was doing, all right?! I don’t recognize myself. I don’t know who I am anymore. And it’s all fun and games until someone loses an I.

I don't think God is so jealous about our worship of Him that He will want to separate those who serve His purposes, serve His goodness, because they have read a book, even one written by an atheist, and have been moved, or because they have wanted to be fair all their lives, but have never stepped in a church, from those who have heard God's words in church or read His words in the Bible and become convinced by them.

If a criminal was once a saint & a saint was once a criminal, then who is the criminal & who is the saint?

If a man like that is killed, there is always another to take his place. That is not the important thing. But to act so that no man dares to strike you because he knows you speak the truth, to act so that you can no longer be arrested because you are asking for the right to live, to act so that all of this will end, both here and elsewhere; that is what should be in your thoughts. That is what you must explain to others, so that you will never again be forced to bow down before anyone, but also so that no one shall be forced to bow down before you. It was to tell you this that I asked you to come, because hatred must not dwell with you.

If art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally.

If God were to remove all evil from our world (but somehow leave human beings on the planet), it would mean that the essence of 'humanness' would be destroyed. We would become robots. Let me explain what I mean by this. If God eliminated evil by programming us to perform only good acts, we would lose this distinguishing mark - the ability to make choices. We would no longer be free moral agents. We would be reduced to the status of robots. Let's take this a step further. Robots do not love. God created us with the capacity to love. Love is based upon one's right to choose to love. We cannot force others to love us. We can make them serve us or obey us. But true love is founded upon one's freedom to choose to respond.

If government played by the same rules as the rest of us, it would cease to be government.

If 10 percent of the population were to take a consciously ethical outlook on life and act accordingly, the resulting change would be more significant than any change of government,

If all meaning were relative, then the meanings of the terms in the proposition "All meaning is relative" would be relative. Therefore the proposition "All meaning is relative" destroys itself. It is nothing but an evasion of reality. That seems a high price to pay, even for the privilege of killing people.

If any morality or ethics does not include kindness as their fundamental ingredient, then they are just an absurdity.

If God creates morality, then morality is nothing more than the whimsy of a divine being blindly followed by humans.

...if good is defined as something else, it is then impossible either to prove that any other definition is wrong or even to deny such definition.

If I'm all alone, then the standard for sanity is up to me entirely.

If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge.

If its not worthy don't think, not true don't speak, not right don't act.

If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void. (95)

If only we were all better educated. If then, higher education would at last be a journey for skill and knowledge rather than for power and status.

If i am asked 'what is good? my answer is that good is good, and that is the end of the matter. Or if I am asked 'How is good to be defined?' my answer is that it cannot be defined, and that is all I have to say about it

If I attempt virtue it brings light to my life. If I indulge desires, I invite fog and confusion.

If people cannot rise to the level of applying to ourselves the same standards we apply to others they have no right to talk about right and wrong.

If science could make a person understand the true significance of morality in human existence, - and more importantly, if science could enable a person to manifest his or her innate morality, then the scientists would be the least promiscuous people, and most faithful partners on earth.

[From a May 1, 2004 article entitled "Still Up to Mischief" from The Guardian reporting on and quoting Altman] Still, it's worth noting that by the age of 20 this whistle- blower had resisted two of the most powerful institutions - church and army, both. He is an atheist, 'And I have been against all of these wars ever since.

If someone thinks that they are invincible, they would start to become arrogant with others and greedy about power. Eventually, people who are more intelligent can defeat him or her and give them a taste about their weakness.

If the Bahreini royal family can have an embassy, a state, and a seat at the UN, why should the twenty-five million Kurds not have a claim to autonomy? The alleviation of their suffering and the assertion of their self-government is one of the few unarguable benefits of regime change in Iraq. It is not a position from which any moral retreat would be allowable.