Best 1590 quotes in «morality quotes» category

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

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

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

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

Observe decorum, and it will open a path to 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.

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

[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.

One can buy anything with money except morality.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms.

Politics is opposed to morality, as philosophy to naïveté.

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

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.

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

Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society.

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