Best 1590 quotes in «morality quotes» category

My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists - and in a single choice: to live.

My morality and faith are choices. My sexual orientation however isn't.

My own view is that Kant's conception of the duality of the good (morality and happiness, the good of our person and the good of our state or condition) is a distinctively modern view.

My take on the torture thing and even drones is: If we're going to get into assassination and torture, the second question is the morality, but the first is the effectiveness of it.

Myths are stories that express meaning, morality or motivation. Whether they are true or not is irrelevant.

My version of relativism is pluralistic and attributes functions to morality that in combination with human nature place limits on what could count as a true morality. Unlike many other relativists, I do not hold that people are subject to a morality because they all belong to a certain group. That is, I don't hold that being a member of a group makes one's subject to some set of generally accepted norms. What is true is that others around us teach us morality and moral language, so they inevitably influence us.

'Never put off tomorrow what you can do today.' Under the influence of this pestilent morality, I am forever letting tomorrow's work slop into today's and doing painfully and nervously today what I could do quickly and easily tomorrow.

No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher.

No morality can be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine.

No individual anonymous participant can influence the prices and therefore you really can speculate in the market without paying attention to morality. That's one of the positive features of markets. That's why they function.

[nonviolence] seeks to secure moral ends through moral means.

Nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

Nothing is falser than people's preconceptions and ready-made opinions; nothing is sillier than their sham morality.

Observe decorum, and it will open a path to morality.

Obscenity is a moral concept in the verbal arsenal of the establishment, which abuses the term by applying it, not to expressions of its own morality but to those of another.

Obviously, marriage is not a synonym for morality. But stable marriages and families do encourage moral behavior.

Of all the lessons history teaches, this one is the plainest: the person who tries to achieve ends through force is always unscrupulous and is always cruel. We should remember this in an age where morality seems to be disappearing and is being replaced by politics.

One can buy anything with money except morality.

Of course 'Hamlet' is a debate about the nature and morality of revenge and whether it is right to do something to assuage your angry feelings.

Official morality has always been oppressive and negative: it has said "thou shalt not," and has not troubled to investigate the effect of activities not forbidden by the code.

[Oliver Wendell] Holmes never believed in the truth and morality of the laws he was upholding. He said, "I loathe the thick-fingered clowns we call the people.

Once you know something is wrong, you're responsible, whether you see it, or hear about it, and most particularly when you're a part of it.

One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.

Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.

One may sigh for all that one loses in giving up the old religion... but the new irreligion is the manlier, honester and simpler thing, and affords a better throry of life and a more solid basis for morality.

Only religious fanatics and totalitarian states equate morality with legality.

One should not quarrel with a dog without a reason sufficient to vindicate one through all the courts of morality.

...only the pleasure which proceeds from a rational value judgement can be regarded as moral, pleasure, as such, is not a guide to action nor a standard of morality.

Only what is thought, said, or done at a certain rare coincidence is good.

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.

Our basic problem today is that we have two religions in conflict, humanism and Christianity, each with its own morality and the laws of that morality.

Our errors and our controversies, in the sphere of morality, arise sometimes from looking on men as though they could be altogether bad, or altogether good.

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.

Our morality seems to be only a check on the ultimate domination of force, just as our politeness is a check on the impulse of every pig to put his feet in the trough.

Overemphasis on the sex aspect of morality has led to a neglect of its other aspects and a narrowing of its range.

Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people.

Our vanity would have just that which we do best count as that which is hardest for us. The origin of many a morality.

Over the last few years, I've been focusing on questions having to do with the self, and questions having to do with morality. I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.

Philosophers and theologians have argued for centuries over the morality of targeted assassinations - a technique that the Israelis use with some frequency - without ever reaching anything approaching consensus.

Peace is only possible if men cease to place their happiness in the possession of things "which cannot be shared," and if they raise themselves to a point where they adopt an abstract principle superior to their egotisms. In other words, it can only be obtained by a betterment of human morality.

Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms.

Police have both extra constraints and extra permissions - on the one hand, they can't dodge involvement in social disorder as the rest of us can and they may be required to conduct themselves privately in a way that does not undermine their public authority; on the other hand, they have permission to engage in deceptions, invasions of privacy and uses of force that are forbidden to the rest of us. But this does not put them beyond common morality.

Politics is opposed to morality, as philosophy to naïveté.

Politeness induces morality. Serenity of manners requires serenity of mind.

Politics is about ethics and morality, openly or not openly.

Rational egoism is the only morality that is for human life; thus, it is the only morality that is actually moral. Those who choose to be rationally self-interested thereby make the most of their life - and they are morally good because of it.

Post-Watergate morality, by which anything left private is taken as presumptive evidence of wrongdoing.

Principles do not mainly influence even the principled; we talk on principle, but we act on interest.

Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree (for all forbid us to steal, murder, plunder, or bear false witness), and that we should not intermeddle with the particular dogmas in which all religions differ, and which are totally unconnected with morality.