Best 1590 quotes in «morality quotes» category

You are not my father." So it all meant nothing, all those years of shared jokes, of affection, of defending her, of caring for her children, of assisting her and Hector with money and time. Love and family meant nothing to her? Nothing mattered to her at this moment but her pride. Did she think she was being brave in disobeying him? She, Hector, the whole mad lot of them, they knew nothing of courage. Everything had been given to them, everything had been assumed as rightfully theirs. She even believed her defense of her friend was the matter of honour. One war, one bomb, one misfortune and she would fall apart. He meant noting to her because like all of them she was truly selfish. She had no idea of the world and so she believed her drama to be significant. [........] She had no humility and no generosity. Monsters, they had bred monsters.

You are not white, but a rainbow of colors. You are not black, but golden. You are not just a nationality, but a citizen of the world. You are not just for the right or left, but for what is right over the wrong. You are not just rich or poor, but always wealthy in the mind and heart. You are not perfect, but flawed. You are flawed, but you are just. You may just be conscious human, but you are also a magnificent reflection of God.

You can always tell the heart of man by what he do, and by what he don't do...

You can build the Empire State Building. Train the Prussian army. Elevate the hierarchy of a totalitarian state higher than the throne of the Most High. But there are still people whose moral superiority defeats your own.

You can never take it for guaranteed what is happening beyond the mind. Whatever you think is real and true strongly depends on what is going on inside the mind. There is no moral principle, or ethical code outside the mind. Whatever you assume as a moral duty or ethical norm is a product of the human mind. If there is not mind, there cannot be any such kind of things. You can reorganize and rearrange them in your mind again and again, but you cannot completely destroy kill them. You need some underlying principles of your life in order to distinguish more essential things from less essential ones, thus giving a certain meaning to your life. And a science in itself cannot give any meaning to your life, religion would rather make a fool of you, but only you can do this for yourself, using your brain, critically reflecting and all doubting, until you find your own truth. Science supports you with its immense empirical facts and theories for their interpretations, religion fools around with its illusive and pseudo-reality, but philosophy stimulate you to find the ultimate goal of your mundane existence.

You can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its context (Exodus 21). The second is from the Gospels and says that only those without sin should cast the first stone. The first is a moral basis for capital punishment and other barbarities; the second is so relativistic and "nonjudgmental" that it would not allow the prosecution of Charles Manson. Our few notions of justice have had to evolve despite these absurd codes of ultra vindictiveness and ultracompassion.

... You can say what you want, whatever makes you feel better, but it's just noise. You are what you do." "It's not that simple." "It's exactly that simple. People like to believe it's complicated to feel better about what they do. Anybody who thinks it's complicated is just avoiding what that one simple principle tells them about themselves.

You can't be spontaneous within reason.

You come down here to console me. That is charming of you. You find me consoled, and you are furious. How like a sympathetic person!

You don’t have to choose between being scientific and being compassionate.

You have behaved in an exemplary manner until now. Even when you could have gained by doing something wrong, you refrained from doing so. You didn't fall prey to the logic of doing a small wrong for the sake of the greater good; of the ends justifying the means. That takes moral courage.

You may need different wording for being religious in a new way: living a life of reverence, contemplation, solid ethics, developing a sense of wonder and awe; or responding creatively to the mysteries. If you're going to use the "religion" at all, as I do, you have to redefine it for yourself... "Moral" doesn't mean "moralistic." Moralism is a defense against morality, its opposite. Morality means acting in ways that are sensitive to the needs of the other and of the world that is in our care. Moralism is the assumption that you know what is the right behavior for everyone and that it can be itemized in a list of right and wrong that everyone should follow. In tone, moralism is usually negative and unyielding and has little room for thoughtfulness and kindness. The moral person appreciates the complexity of human life and emotion, and factors this into any judgment about what is the best thing to do --- not moral relativism, but moral subtlety. People usually become more morally sensitive as they age, while moralistic standards are considered absolute for all times. I have never met a person who hasn't had some moralism in him. It's convenient and always serves the self or ego. It isn't generous or understanding. In fact, it's usually sadistic and is connected to a deep desire to punish. It's more of that raw material of the psyche in need of refinement. Yet, eventually, with work, it could become morality.

You may plainly perceive the traitor through his mask; he is well known every-where in his true colors; his rolling eyes and his honeyed tones impose only on those who do not know him. People are aware that this low-bred fellow, who deserves to be pilloried, has, by the dirtiest jobs, made his way in the world; and that the splendid position he has acquired makes merit repine and virtue blush. Yet whatever dishonourable epithets may be launched against him everywhere, nobody defends his wretched honour. Call him a rogue, an infamous wretch, a confounded scoundrel if you like, all the world will say “yea, ” and no one contradicts you. But for all that, his bowing and scraping are welcome everywhere; he is received, smiled upon, and wriggles himself into all kinds of society; and, if any appointment is to be secured by intriguing, he will carry the day over a man of the greatest worth. Zounds! these are mortal stabs to me, to see vice parleyed with; and sometimes times I feel suddenly inclined to fly into a wilderness far from the approach of men.

You never require a teacher to lead you into the wrong path, but you do require a kindly word to conduct you aright.

You must never, at any rate, lend yourself to the wrong, in any form, which you condemn.

Your moral values & ability to rationalize; not your religious beliefs or political affiliations define what you should stand for in society.

You think because he arrested me that throws it off again I reckon? I don’t. It’s his job. It’s what he gets paid for. To arrest people that break the law. And I didn’t jest break the law, I made a livin at it. . . . More money in three hours than a workin man makes in a week. Why is that? Because it’s harder work? No, because a man who makes a livin doin something that has to get him in jail sooner or later has to be paid for the jail, has to be paid in advance not jest for his time breakin the law but for the time he has to build when he gets caught at it. So I been paid. Gifford’s been paid. Nobody owes nobody. If it wadn’t for Gifford, the law, I wouldn’t of had the job I had blockading and if it wadn’t for me blockading, Gifford wouldn’t of had his job arrestin blockaders. Now who owes who?

You should have noticed by now, sometimes a monster looks just like any other man.

You think you're superior to the others, don't you? We'll you're not. In fact you're worse for mistaking basic human decency for moral superiority.

You. What is the moral difference, if any, between the soldier and the civilian?" "The difference," I answered carefully, "lies in the field of civic virtue. A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life. The civilian does not.

You want to be good. All right, I can understand that. But you have to be careful who you let define your good.

You will miss a normal life while living a successful life, but not as much as the craving for a successful life while you were living a normal life.

Absolute morality leads logically to absolute intolerance.

After I have said what is required by my vanity and my morality, I may find a moment for Truth.

A certain alloy of expediency improves the gold of morality and makes it wear all the longer.

A church that is deeply aware of it's misery and nakedness before a holy God will cling tenaciously to an all sufficient Savior, while one that is self-confident and relatively unaware of its inherent sinfulness will reach for religion and morality whenever it seems convenient

Aim above morality. If you apply that to life, then youre bound to live life fully.

All phenomena link together in a mutually conditioning network.

[Albert Camus] was viewed by many as an austere moralist, but it was on the football pitch and in the theatre that he learnt his 'morality'. It's something sensed, it won't pass uniquely through thought. It couldn't possibly.

All I know of morality I learned from football

All stories teach, whether the storyteller intends them to or not. They teach the world we create. They teach the morality we live by. They teach it much more effectively than moral precepts and instructions.

All that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football.

All things come out of the one, and the one out of all things.

All true religion must stand on true morality.

All true religion, all true morality, all true mysticism have but one object, and that is to act on humanity, collective and individual, in such a manner that it shall correspond efficiently with the great law of development, and co-operate consciously therewith to achieve the end of development.

A man is not moral because he is obedient through fear or ignorance. Morality lives in the realm of perceived obligation.

A lover would find life less broken apart after a misguided love affair if they could feel that they had been sinful rather than foolish.

Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.

Any legitimate religion consists of rules of morality linked by love. That's it.

[Andre] Gide can say it to me: it is a writer's morality only addressed to a few privileged people. For that reason it no longer interests me.

A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.

A moral person is someone who accepts the consequences of their own morality, not those of others.

And here I always thought morality was useless.

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

Any politician who tells you morality has nothing to do with the law and government is about to do something extremely immoral.

A person may be qualified to do greater good to mankind and become more beneficial to the world, by morality without faith than by faith without morality.

Any virtue systematically applied becomes a vice. Morality is attention, not system.

Are you sick and tired of these moralizing moralizers imposing their morality on the rest of us? I know I am.

A popular government wields a moral force, which is infinitely superior to the physical force that the foreign government could summon to its assistance.

A rational process is a moral process.