Best 1590 quotes in «morality quotes» category

Certainly the most destructive vice if you like, that a person can have. More than pride, which is supposedly the number one of the cardinal sins - is self pity. Self pity is the worst possible emotion anyone can have. And the most destructive. It is, to slightly paraphrase what Wilde said about hatred, and I think actually hatred's a subset of self pity and not the other way around - ' It destroys everything around it, except itself '. Self pity will destroy relationships, it'll destroy anything that's good, it will fulfill all the prophecies it makes and leave only itself. And it's so simple to imagine that one is hard done by, and that things are unfair, and that one is underappreciated, and that if only one had had a chance at this, only one had had a chance at that, things would have gone better, you would be happier if only this, that one is unlucky. All those things. And some of them may well even be true. But, to pity oneself as a result of them is to do oneself an enormous disservice. I think it's one of things we find unattractive about the american culture, a culture which I find mostly, extremely attractive, and I like americans and I love being in america. But, just occasionally there will be some example of the absolutely ravening self pity that they are capable of, and you see it in their talk shows. It's an appalling spectacle, and it's so self destructive. I almost once wanted to publish a self help book saying 'How To Be Happy by Stephen Fry : Guaranteed success'. And people buy this huge book and it's all blank pages, and the first page would just say - ' Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself - And you will be happy '. Use the rest of the book to write down your interesting thoughts and drawings, and that's what the book would be, and it would be true. And it sounds like 'Oh that's so simple', because it's not simple to stop feeling sorry for yourself, it's bloody hard. Because we do feel sorry for ourselves, it's what Genesis is all about.

Charity: begins at home and remains there. When it goes out, it's because it wants to brag about itself

Character is how you treat people who can't do anything for you in return. Integrity is how you act when you think nobody is looking.

Character that is fruit-producing can be summed up in the mastery of these 5 qualities: morals, but a sense of humor; love, but respect for criticism; intelligence without pretense; humility without self-loathing; and a mind open, but with solid convictions.

Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance.

Christianity is at its purest a philosophy about a person, Jesus Christ, and at its dirtiest a philosophy about requirements and law.

Clearly, the chief enemy of open conversation is dogmatism in all its forms. Dogmatism is a well-recognized obstacle to scientific reasoning, and yet, because scientists have been reluctant even to imagine that they might have something prescriptive to say about values, dogmatism is still granted remarkable scope on questions of both truth and goodness under the banner of religion

Compassion is the Gateway to Moral Innocence and Avarice’s Defeat

Community service has become a patch for morality. You can devote your life to community service and be a total schmuck.

Companies' motives to make profit means they neglect inherent social or moral values.

Conscience, Christ, and the gift of faith make evil men uneasy in their sin. They feel that if they could drive Christ from the earth, they would be free from "moral inhibitions." They forget that it is their own nature and conscience which makes them feel that way. Being unable to drive God from the heavens, they would drive his ambassadors from the earth. In a lesser sphere, that is why many men sneer at virtue--because it makes vice uncomfortable.

Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error.

... courage is as contagious as fear.

Culture, like science, is no protection against demons.

Dairy farmers routinely remove calves from their mothers at an early age so that the milk will be available for humans; anyone who has lived on a dairy farm will know that, for days after the calves have gone, their mothers keep calling for them.

Danny: You can be as morally righteous as you want—in a vacuum—but throw in a second entity and you gotta start acting in response to the other.

Day and Night The night is long: do not shorten it by sleep. The day is fair: do not darken it with wrongdoing.

Despite the many occasions when its characters feel frustrated before the weight of circumstances, and despite blaming their feeling of impotence on daiva, 'fate', moral autonomy shines through in the epic. Because they have some freedom to choose they can be praised when they follow dharma or blamed when they follow adharma. At the moment of making a decision they become conscious of their freedom, and it is this perception of autonomy that gives them the ability to lead authentic moral lives.

Destination is, ideally, where one should stop; and ideally, one should not stop. Practically, destination of a great man is where he wants to stop; of a common man, where he has to. The one ends with Will, the other with Reason. Morality is always pursued, never reached!

Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being.

Do not recite words just to prove to yourself and others that you know and love God; for he already put his breath and light inside you. Instead, put truth in your every word and action, and always let your conscience steer and guide you.

But if a good heart, a good intention, a subjective conviction are declared to be the sources from which actions derive their worth, then there is no longer any hypocrisy or evil at all; for whatever someone does, he can always turn it into something good through reflecting on his good intentions and motives, and so the moment of his convictions renders it good.

Communism has never concealed the fact that it rejects all absolute concepts of morality. It scoffs at any consideration of "good" and "evil" as indisputable categories. Communism considers morality to be relative, to be a class matter. Depending on circumstances and the political situation, any act, including murder, even the killing of hundreds of thousands, could be good or could be bad. It all depends on class ideology. And who defines this ideology? The whole class cannot get together to pass judgment. A handful of people determine what is good and what is bad. But I must say that in this respect Communism has been most successful. It has infected the whole world with the belief in the relativity of good and evil. Today, many people apart from the Communists are carried away by this idea.

Communism is a utopian view of history, because the impossible is necessary for its realization. In essence, this requires a high level of social consciousness and morality as the ultimate goal in the historical progress of mankind.

Contemporary Christians have declared war on individual immorality but seem remarkably silent about the evil of systems, especially corporate greed and malfeasance. (p. 176)

Contemporary attitudes toward urban parks fall into three levels of sophistication. The first, the most naive assumption, is that parks are just plots of land preserved in their original state. If asked to discuss the issue at all, many laymen have maintained this much, that parks are bits of nature created only in the sense that some decision was made not to build on the land. Many are surprised to learn that parks that an artifact conceived and deliberated as carefully as public buildings, with both physical shape and social usage taken into account. The second, a little more informed, is that parks are aesthetic objects and that their history can be understood in terms of an evolution of artistic styles independent of societal considerations. The third is the view that each of the elements of the urban park represents part of planners' strategy for moral and social reform, so that today, as in the past, the citizen visiting a park is subject to an accumulated set of intended moral lessons.

Da een blev straffet, efterdi han havde Medhustruer, svarede han, at han fulte sin Tilbøyelighed, som var at være løsagtig, og spurte, hvi GUd ikke havde skabt ham med samme Temperament som en Deel andre, hvilke kunde lade sig nøye med een Hustrue. Den samme undskyldte paa lige Maade sin Vrede, sigende, at Erfarenhed viser, at et Menneske er skabt meere vreedagtigt end et andet, og at, hvad som er en medfødt, kand ikke tilregnes ham, men Skaberen. Grønlænderne meene, at Moralitet best læres hos dem, hvorudover, naar de see et fromt Menneske af andre Nationer, sige de, at han er saa from og skikkelig som en Karolek, det er, en Grønlænder.

Delarosa was trying to save the human race," said Mkele. "Her only crime was that she was willing to go too far in order to do it. We decided, briefly, that we didn't want to go along with her, but look at us: We're hiding in a basement, letting Delarosa fight our battles, seriously considering lettering her deploy a nuclear bomb. We are long past the point where we can pick and choose our morality. We either save our species or we don't." "Yes," said Tovar, "but I'd prefer it if we were still worth saving by the end of it.

Don’t curse the gods; you will feel shame when you have to call on them for help

Don't ever, ever try to lie to the internet - because they will catch you.

Don't give anyone the proxy for your conscience.

Don't judge me. Ethics and morality no longer exist in our world. It's a luxury of the past, afforded only to those who had a future.

Don't tell a lie to be loved, speak the truth to be hated.

Do something unconventional and they call it depravity.

Do right simply because it is right.

Do we honestly believe that the best witness we can have as Christians before a watching world is to show moral perfection? While that might convince some, our odds of pulling it off seem less than slim. In truth, the most compelling witness to our faith can be a willingness to humbly accept responsibility for our failings and seek to restore relationships at any cost.

Do unto others' is a boomerang. Whatever you decide to throw out there will return to you. If you do not like what comes back - change your output.

Do you keep silent to keep a friendship or do you try to lend your support unconditionally, even if what they are doing goes against everything you believe in? Will it be principles over friendship, morality over love?

Democracy is only as moral and just as those in power, and only as wise as the citizens who elect them.

Democracy could be worthless and counterproductive in the absence of sound moral leadership!

Do you prefer being judged by your morals or by ethics?

Even older and deeper than ethics, however, is religion. Religion concerns itself not with (mere) right and wrong, but with good and evil themselves - with the archetypes of right and wrong. Relgion concerns itself with the domain of value, ultimate value. That is not the scientific domain. It is not the domain of emperical description. The people who wrote the Bible, for example, weren't scientists. They couldn't have been scientists, even if they had wanted to be. The viewpoints, methods and practices of science hadn't been formulated when the Bible was written.

Even the richest of brands are robbed by poor character.

Even the suicide desires his own good: he wrongly imagines that he would be better off dead. The moral problem is not that we love ourselves but that we love ourselves the wrong way.

Even though Christ Himself would not deliver us from the power of the Totalitarian State, as He did not deliver Himself, we must see His purpose in it all. Maybe his children are being persecuted by the world in order that they might withdraw themselves from the world. Maybe His most violent enemies may be doing His work negatively, for it could be the mission of totalitarianism to preside over the liquidation of a modern world that became indifferent to God and His moral laws.

Even the staunchest atheist growing up in Western society cannot avoid having absorbed the basic tenets of Christian morality. Our societies are steeped in it: everything we have accomplished over the centuries, even science, developed either hand in hand with or in opposition to religion, but never separately. It is impossible to know what morality would look like without religion. It would require a visit to a human culture that is not now and never was religious. That such cultures do not exist should give us pause.

Even though there is neither much altruism nor equality in the world, there is almost universal endorsement of the values of altruism and equality - even, notoriously (and as Nietzsche seemed well aware), by those who are is worst enemies in practice. So Nietzsche's critique is that a culture in the grips of MPS [Morality in the Pejorative Sense], even without acting on MPS, poses the real obstacle to flourishing, because it teaches potential higher types to disvalue what would be most conductive to their creativity and value what is irrelevant or perhaps even hostile to it.

Every act intends some good.

Every day the choice is presented to us, in a thousand different ways, to live up to the spirit which is in us or to deny it. Whenever we talk about right and wrong we are turning the light of scrutiny upon our neighbors instead of upon ourselves. We judge in order not to be judged. We uphold the law, because it is easier than to defy it. We are all lawbreakers, all criminals, all murderers, at heart. It is not our business to get after the murderers, but to get after the murderer which exists in each and every one of us. And I mean by murder the supreme kind which consists in murdering the spirit.

Every day we make our way through a moral forest, along pathways ever branching. Often we get lost. When the array of paths before us is so perplexing that we can't make a choice, or won't, we can hope that we will be given a sign to guide us. A reliance on sighs, however, can lead to the evasion of all moral obligations, and thus earn a terrible judgment.