Best 347 quotes in «morals quotes» category

how useless laws are, and how omnipotent morals are

...I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become universal law.

I could see he meant no offense, but in my thoughts I set it down as not very good manners. "Manners!" he said. "Why, it is merely the truth, and truth is good manners; manners are a fiction.

If anthropological data suggests something short of the ideal, that is not because nothing is universal, but because two universals are in conflict: universal moral knowledge and universal desire to evade it. The first one we owe to our creation. The second we owe to our fall.

I always knew what was most important to me. When I was growing up, nothing was more important than golf, but that’s the attitude of a young person who hasn’t a care in the world. Later on I figured it out. Family was first. Always. Then golf and business come after.

I believe that children in this country need a more robust literary diet than they are getting. …It does not hurt them to read about good and evil, love and hate, life and death. Nor do I think they should read only about things that they understand. '…a man’s reach should exceed his grasp.' So should a child’s. For myself, I will never talk down to, or draw down to, children. (from the author's acceptance speech for the Caldecott award)

I follow suit, said the lion, vacating his coat of arms and movie logos; and the eagle said, Get me off this flag.

I frowned at him. "Isn't sarcasm the opiate of the masses?" "You're thinking of religion," he replied. "Sarcasm is the Xanax of the morally bereft.

If our ethical code makes a purely arbitrary distinction between humans and all other species, then we have a code based on naked selfishness devoid of any higher principle.

If there is a moral to this part of the story, and I distrust morals in the same way that I distrust beginnings, it is simply this: know that with which you deal.

If I feel sure of one thing, it is that this kind of “health” imperative is not moral. It is grooming.

... if we adopt the principle of universality: if an action is right (or wrong) for others, it is right (or wrong) for us. Those who do not rise to the minimal moral level of applying to themselves the standards they apply to others -- more stringent ones, in fact -- plainly cannot be taken seriously when they speak of appropriateness of response; or of right and wrong, good and evil

I’m just saying that once that have an excuse, people will do anything. They do what they are told, and they take their money and they think it’s all okay because it’s just their job, while their real self is what happens after work, when they’re bouncing a baby on the knee, or writing poems about snowflakes or whatever.

If there is moral insanity," he said in a conspiratorial whisper, "then there may be the reverse, immoral sanity, if you will, that comes upon one suddenly, like a fever.

Immorality is glorified today. The Scripture teaches that God hates immorality! The ideal of purity is scorned, immorality is laughed at in school—“God is old-fashioned!” What else can we expect but that thousands of our young people are growing up to be immoral?7

Immorality sanctified by tradition is still immorality.

In a kingdom of thieves, the ways of an honest man will always be a crime.

In a harsh, cruel world where success is only measured by financial income, the higher moral values are ‎getting lost and forgotten. No one counts your efforts, good deeds, struggle, and giving unless if these ‎deeds make money. Money nowadays, unfortunately, is the fake God everyone follows. If you make ‎solid profits you are a human being worth respect, but if you are struggling and working so hard in life, ‎yet your struggle and good deeds don't make you the money you need, you only worth neglecting.‎ For all those who struggle to live another day by doing the right thing, hang in there, God is with you ‎and better days are coming too by God’s will.‎

If you were me you’d do the right thing, help your friends, because you’re not a coward,” Mandy sighed sadly. “I covered up a murder because I was scared to go to jail and I did the wrong thing… well, now’s my chance to do the right thing, to save someone’s life, because I don’t want you to die.” “Save someone’s life? I’m no one,” Alecto laughed morbidly. “A hundred and twelve years is definitely way too long to have survived. You’d be wasting your time and risking your own life….” “This is my life,” Mandy declared, smiling sincerely. Alecto just looked concerned and very doubtful as the rain drizzled down the roads and sidewalks, towards the harbour where it fell into the ocean, indistinguishable from all the other water in the world.

individuals are concerned not with the moral issue of realizing these standards, but with the amoral issue of engineering a convincing impression that these standards are being realized. Our activity, then, is largely concerned with moral matters, but as performers we do not have a moral concern in these moral matters. As performers we are merchants of morality. Our day is given over to intimate contact with the goods we display and our minds are filled with intimate understandings of them; but it may well be that the more attention we give to these goods, th e more d is ta n t we feel from them and from those who are believing enough to buy them. To use a different imagery, the very obligation and profitablility of appearing always in a steady moral light, of being a socialized character, forces us to be the sort of person who is practiced in the ways of the stage.

If you go door to door in our nation and talk to citizens about domestic violence, almost everyone will insist that they do not support male violence against women, that they believe it to be morally and ethically wrong. However, if you then explain that we cannot end male violence against women by challenging patriarchy, and that means no longer accepting the notion that men should have more rights and privileges than women because of biological difference or that men should have the power to rule over women, that is when the agreement stops. There is a gap between the values they claim to hold and their willingness to do the work of connecting thought and action, theory and practice to realize these values and thus create a more just society.

In business 'professionalism' is not a tactic but a moral value.

In insisting that personal habit and political action be one and the same, absolutist moralizing limits the possibilities of both.

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis argues that human beings cannot be truly good or moral without faith in God and without submis- sion to the will of Christ. Unfortunately, Lewis does not provide any actual data for his assertions. They are nothing more than the mild musings of a wealthy British man, pondering the state of humanity’s soul between his sips of tea. Had Lewis actually famil- iarized himself with real human beings of the secular sort, per- haps sat and talked with them, he would have had to reconsider this notion. As so many apostates explained to me, morality is most certainly possible beyond the confines of faith. Can people be good without God? Can a moral orientation be sustained and developed outside of a religious context? The answer to both of these questions is a resounding yes.

Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it—that no substitute can do your thinking—that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.

In projecting onto others their own moral sense, therapists sometimes make terrible errors. Child physical abusers are automatically labeled “impulsive," despite extensive evidence that they are not necessarily impulsive but more often make thinking errors that justify the assaults. Sexual and physical offenders who profess to be remorseful after they are caught are automatically assumed to be sincere. After all, the therapist would feel terrible if he or she did such a thing. It makes perfect sense that the offender would regret abusing a child. People routinely listen to their own moral sense and assume that others share it. Thus, those who are malevolent attack others as being malevolent, as engaging in dirty tricks, as being “in it for the money,“ and those who are well meaning assume others are too, and keep arguing logically, keep producing more studies, keep expecting an academic debate, all the time assuming that the issue at hand is the truth of the matter. Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Learned Author: Anna C. Salter. Ethics & Behavior, Volume 8, Issue 2 June 1998 p122

I never swear, Monseigneur. I say Yes or No, and as I am a gentleman, I keep my word.

Innocence could be lost more than once after all.

In some stories, it's easy. The moral of "The Three Bears," for instance, is "Never break into someone else's house." The moral of "Snow White" is "Never eat apples." The moral of World War One is "Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand.

In the African society, divorce is seen as being morally unacceptable

Integrity - one word that means so much; costs so little yet makes a real difference in this world.

In short, she (Seraphina) had luck and judgment, but no morals.

In The Inhuman... Lyotard, like Weber, reminds us of the distinction between technological development and 'human' progress. He argues, in particular, that the development of technology, or 'techno-science', is driven by the quest for maximum efficiency and performance, and as such leads to the emergence of new 'inhuman' (technological) forms of control rather than to the emancipation of 'humanity'. Lyotard reasserts the instrumental nature of the modern system, arguing that 'All technology ... is an artefact allowing its users to stock more information, to improve their competence and optimize their performances'. In this view, techno-science may be seen to stand against all instances of the unknown, including the aporia of the future anterior, and thus to have little respect for forms which are different or other to itself. This is compounded by the fact that technological development is intimately connected to the drive for profit. Lyotard proposes that this directs the production of knowledge and conditions the nature of knowledge itself, for information, itself a commodity, is increasingly produced in differentiated, digestible forms ('bits') for ease of mass exchange, transmission and consumption, and with the aim of enabling the optimal performance of the global system.

Integrity is doing what is right. Ethics is doing what is right for a society. The philosophy of ethics is very interesting and unsettling. Ethics often depends on societal beliefs, religious beliefs, personal beliefs, personal emotions, and the laws of a country. Honor killings are ethical in some societies even though they are considered evil acts for a civilized society. We should promote what is right for your conscience and for universal human rights. We can create a universal ethical stand point.

In today's youth, morals and manners are replaced by money and mischiefs.

Is it possible that future generations will regard our present agribuisness and eating practices in much the same way we now view Nero's entertainments or Mengele's experiments? My own initial reaction is that such a comparison is hysterical, extreme - and yet the reason it seems extreme to me appears to be that I believe animals are less morally important than human behings; and when it comes to defending such a belief, even to myself, I have to acknowledge that (a) I have an obvious selfish interest in this belief, since I like to eat certain kinds of animals and want to be able to keep doing it, and (b) I haven't succeeded in working out any sort of personal ethical system in which the belief is truly defensible instead of just selfishly convenient.

Is lawlessness to be permitted, simply because it is effected with a certain style? Jane, Jane! Where are your finer sensibilities? All o'erthrown, by a man with a golden tongue and a mocking glance?

It became my mission to work with young people to help show them the way, not save them! But help them understand that there are choices that can be made that will make the difference for the rest of their lives.

...I realized that my father, of all these men, was the most obstinate, helplessly bonded to his better instincts and their excessive demands. I only then understood that he had quit his job not merely because he was fearful of what awaited us down the line should we agree like the others to be relocated, but because, for better or worse, when he was bullied by superior forces that he deemed corrupt it was his nature not to yield--in this instance, to resist either running away to Canada, as my mother urged our doing, or bowing to a government directive that was patently unjust. There were two types of strong men: those like Uncle Monty And Abe Steinheim, remorseless about their making money, and those like my father, ruthlessly obedient to their idea of fair play.

It is always easier to find your sense of value by demeaning another’s value. It is easier to define yourself as ‘not that,’ rather than do an actual accounting of your own qualities and put them on the scale.

It is the mark of a supreme soul not know how to inflict pain on others.

It's all a matter of perception. What one person deems to be important may be just as equally unimportant to another. What one deems to be right may seem very wrong to someone else. Your moral compass and values may not always be totally in sync with others you meet. In the end it's all just your perception of how you choose to live your life and this may not always win you friends. In fact it may gain you some enemies. Live your life how you choose to and if people don't like the way you do things then disagree if you must, but be nice & be respectful and then if you must, move on and leave it all behind you. It's your life after all and only you can live it. Choose your path and set your compass then start walking.

Invoking the moral high ground somehow makes you lose it. Using a secret as a weapon makes you almost as bad as the transgressor.

It is not what a man is capable of doing, but what he chooses to do that is important.

It was not that Madame Santeuil's moral values had altered, but only her view of the moral values of others.

It seems it doesn't pay to be good anymore, when people are short-changing you for evil.

I wonder if it's harder to be good in this age?

I was only twelve. But I knew how much I loved her. It was that love that comes before all significance of body and morals. It was that love that was no more bad than wind and sea and sand lying side by side forever. It was made of all the warm long days together at the beach, and the humming quiet days of droning education at the school. All the long Autumn days of the years past when I carried her books home from school.

It was always the view of my parents," Emily said, "that hot weather encouraged loose morals among young people.

Look to the Kingdom of Heaven and all its righteousness and all things shall be added unto you. What is righteousness but character, morals and value! Enter the Kingdom and what affect then does the world hold? And all things shall be added unto you so you can walk through lifes valley of death like a lion who's courageous and bold. Will you take heed to the knowledge given that will fulfill your every earthly need? Or would you rather be enslaved in your chains, forever dealing with lifes anguish and never-ending pains? Free-will is a choice between yes and no, right or wrong? It's a choice that makes you weak or a choice that makes you strong.