Best 1590 quotes in «morality quotes» category

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

Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 about ethics and morality, openly or not openly.

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.

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

Politics is opposed to morality, as philosophy to naïveté.

Posterity has never made the grave's embrace less cruel. It simply assuages our fear of death, because there is no better cure for out inevitable morality then the illusion of a beautiful eternity. But there is one illusion I still hold dear: that is the thought of an enlightened nation. That is the only future I still dream of.

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.

Reason is incompetent to answer any fundamental question about God, or morality, or the meaning of life.

Real morality is possible when the sanctions for morality are also tangible and real.

Religion is not simply a theory, it is a higher life, of which morality is an integral part - a life devoted to the worship of the good and the true, for God, the absolute, is the supreme source of all perfection" ("La religion n'et pas une smple théorie, elle est une vie supérieure, dont la moralité fait partie intégrante - une vie vouée au culte du bien et du vrai, car Dieu, l'absolu est la source de toute perfection", Fr.)

Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society.

Religion without morality is a superstition and a curse, and morality without religion is impossible.

Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality.

Science and technology are what we can do; morality is what we agree we should or should not do.

Rough Johnson, the great moralist.

Rigour is to the mathematician what morality is to men.

Science is the search for truth, that is the effort to understand the world: it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality.

Sexual morality - as society in its extreme form, the American, defines it - is contemptible. I advocate an incomparably freer sexual life.

Scientists search for truth. Philosophers search for morality. A criminal trial searches for only one result: proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Self-respect governs morality: respect for others governs our behavior.

See, when I smoked pot it was illegal, but not immoral. Now, it is illegal AND immoral. The law didn't change, only the morality… That's why you get to go to jail and I don't.

Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it.

Some authors regard morality in the same light as we regard modern architecture. Convenience is the first thing to be looked for.

Social taboos are shy like virtue; once lost, there is no remedy

Taste cannot be controlled by law. We must resist at all costs any attempt to regulate our individual freedoms and to legislate our personal moralities.

State a moral case to a plowman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.

Study, analyse the social structure - that's always far more effective than moralising.

Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality.

taste governs every free - as opposed to rote - human response. Nothing is more decisive. There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion - and there is taste in acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas.

Subordination to morality can be slavish or vain or self- interested or resigned or gloomily enthusiastic or thoughtless or an act of despair, just as subordination to a prince can be: in itself it is nothing moral.

Surveillance induced morality: relics of cultural retardation.

Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are.

That economics is untrue which ignores or disregards moral values.

The alcoholic and the drug addict harm only themselves by their behavior; the person who violates the rules of morality governing mans life in society harms not only himself, but everyone.

The body you're given, the mind you're given, the morality and the hang ups you're given, they're yours. Deal with it.