Best action & moral Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

Source: A Treatise on Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning Into Moral Subjects; and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

“Although a person acting under authority performs actions that seem to violate standards of conscience, it would not be true to say that he loses his moral sense. Instead, it acquires a radically different focus. He does not respond with a moral sentiment to the actions he performs. Rather, his moral concern now shifts to a consideration of how well he is living up to the expectations that the authority has of him.”

Wells Persons Doe Different Seems Action Loses Acting Moral Focus Authority Standards Expectations Conscience Concern Being True Acquire Consideration Sentiments

Author:Stanley Milgram

“The people are led to find in the productive apparatus the effective agent of thought and action to which their personal thought and action can and must be surrendered. And in this transfer, the apparatus also assumes the role of a moral agent. Conscience is absolved by reification.”

People Action Moral Roles Conscience Assuming Agents Productive Transfers Thoughts And Actions

Book:One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society

Source: One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society

“Machiavelli says that if as a ruler you accept that your every action must pass moral scrutiny, you will without fail be defeated by an opponent who submits to no such moral test. To hold on to power, you have not only to master the crafts of deception and treachery but to be prepared to use them where necessary.”

Ifs Use Action Accepting Moral Failing Masters Tests Prepared Crafts Deception Opponents Rulers Submit Defeated Be Prepared Scrutiny Treachery

Author:J. M. Coetzee

“The weakest man is the one who is able to correct his moral defects, but doesn't take action.”

Men Able Action Moral Defects

Author:Ali ibn Abi Talib

“If the subjectivist view hold true, thinking cannot be of any help in determining the desirability of any goal in itself. The acceptability of ideals, the criteria for our actions and beliefs, the leading principles of ethics and politics, all our ultimate decisions are made to depend upon factors other than reason. They are supposed to be matters of choice and predilection, and it has become meaningless to speak of truth in making practical, moral or esthetic decisions.”

“Moral truth, resting entirely upon the ascertained consequences of actions, supposes a process of observation and reasoning.”

Action Process Moral Morality Consequence Observation Reasoning

Book:A few days in Athens: being the translation of a Greek manuscript discovered in Herculaneum

Source: A few days in Athens: being the translation of a Greek manuscript discovered in Herculaneum

“The greatness of action includes immoral as well as moral greatness--Cortes and Napoleon, as well as Luther and Washington.”

Wells Action Moral Greatness Immoral Luther

Book:Literature and life, lects

Source: Literature and life, lects

“Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value - and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes.”

Long Action Values Evil Moral Taken Benefits Oneself Altruism Criteria Moral Values Beneficiaries Anything Goes

Book:Ayn Rand Reader

Source: Ayn Rand Reader

“For memory is a moral action, a choice. You can choose to remember. You can choose not.”

Action Remember Choices Memories Moral Remember You Remembers You Moral Action

Book:I Am No One You Know: And Other Stories

Source: I Am No One You Know: And Other Stories

“God has so framed us as to make freedom of choice and action the very basis of all moral improvement, and all our faculties, mental and moral, resent and revolt against the idea of coercion.”

Ideas Action Choices Moral Bases Improvement Faculty Coercion Revolt Resent Freedom Of Choice Framed

Author:William Matthews

“A tendency to resume the same mode of action at stated times is peculiarly the characteristic of the nervous system; and on this account regularity is of great consequence in exercising the moral and intellectual power. All nervous diseases have a marked tendency to observe regular periods; and the natural inclination to sleep at the approach of night is another instance of the same fact.”

“That which does not correspond to the truth or to the moral norm possesses, objectively, no right either to existence or to propagation or to action.”

Doe Action Existence Moral Norm Propagation

Author:Pope Pius XII

“It is an assumption that there is always one single dimension for assessing persons and their actions that has canonical priority. This is the dimension of moral evaluation; "good/evil" is supposed always to trump any other form of evaluation, but that is an assumption, probably the result of the long history of the Christianisation and then gradual de-Christianisation of Europe, which one need not make. Evaluation need not mean moral evaluation, but might include assessments of efficiency, ... simplicity, perspicuousness, aesthetic appeal, and so on.”

Needs Mean Persons Long Might Action Form Evil Results Moral Trump Europe Simplicity Priorities Appeals Assumption Dimensions Aesthetic Efficiency Assessment Evaluation Good Evil Assessing

Author:Raymond Geuss

“Only a moral education based on free inner discipline can bring to bear a salutary action and lead to a true morality.”

Action Moral Bears Discipline Morality Moral Education

Author:African Spir

“What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love. That is why faith, the choice to believe, is, in the final analysis, an action that is positively laden with moral significance.”

Believe Action Choices Moral Reflection Embrace Finals Analysis Who We Are Significance Positively

Author:Terryl L. Givens

“It must not be supposed that happiness will demand many or great possessions; for self-sufficiency does not depend on excessive abundance, nor does moral conduct, and it is possible to perform noble deeds even without being ruler of land and sea: one can do virtuous acts with quite moderate resources. This may be clearly observed in experience: private citizens do not seem to be less but more given to doing virtuous actions than princes and potentates. It is sufficient then if moderate resources are forthcoming; for a life of virtuous activity will be essentially a happy life.”

“If then, as we say, good craftsmen look to the mean as they work, and if virtue, like nature, is more accurate and better than any form of art, it will follow that virtue has the quality of hitting the mean. I refer to moral virtue [not intellectual], for this is concerned with emotions and actions, in which one can have excess or deficiency or a due mean.”

Ifs Looks Mean Art Action Form Emotion Quality Moral Virtue Intellectual Concerned Dues Excess Accurate Hitting Deficiency Craftsman Moral Virtues If Then

Book:The Nicomachean ethics

Source: The Nicomachean ethics

“Not every action or emotion however admits of the observance of a due mean. Indeed the very names of some directly imply evil, for instance malice, shamelessness, envy, and, of actions, adultery, theft, murder. All these and similar actions and feelings are blamed as being bad in themselves; it is not the excess or deficiency of them that we blame. It is impossible therefore ever to go right in regard to them - one must always be wrong.”

Mean Feelings Action Evil Names Emotion Moral Virtue Impossible Murder Regard Blame Dues Envy Instance Excess Adultery Theft Malice Deficiency Observance Being Bad

Author:Aristotle

“Moral virtue is a mean . . . between two vices, one of excess and the other of defect; . . . it is such a mean because it aims at hitting the middle point in feelings and in actions. This is why it is a hard task to be good, for it is hard to find the middle point in anything.”

Mean Two Hard Feelings Action Moral Virtue Middle Tasks Aim Vices Be Good Excess Hitting Defects Moral Virtues

Book:The Nicomachean ethics

Source: The Nicomachean ethics

“[Prudence] is the virtue of that part of the intellect [the calculative] to which it belongs; and . . . our choice of actions will not be right without Prudence any more than without Moral Virtue, since, while Moral Virtue enables us to achieve the end, Prudence makes us adopt the right means to the end.”

Mean Ends Action Choices Moral Virtue Achieve Intellect Prudence Our Choices Moral Virtues

Author:Aristotle

“The law is not known, since there is nothing in it to know. We come across it only through its action, and it acts only through its sentence and its execution. It is not distinguishable from the application. We know it only through its imprint on our heart and our flesh: we are guilty, necessarily guilty. Guilt is like the moral thread which duplicates the thread of time.”

Knows Heart Action Law Known Moral Guilt Sentences Flesh Guilty Application Execution Thread Duplicate

Book:Kant's Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties

Source: Kant's Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties

“I enjoyed Old Man's War immensely. A space war story with fast action, vivid characters, moral complexity and cool speculative physics, set in a future you almost want to live into, and a universe you sincerely hope you don't live in already.”

Men Want War Character Stories Action Universe Space Moral Physics Enjoyed Complexity Old Man Vivid Sincerely War Stories

Author:Ken MacLeod

“If an action must be taken that will benefit the majority at the cost of the minority, is it morally indefensible? If an action taken for the benefit of a majority occurs at the expense of a minority, is it moral action?”

Ifs Action Moral Taken Cost Benefits Majority Minorities Expenses Moral Action

Author:Garth Nix

“Our approach to existential risks cannot be one of trial-and-error. There is no opportunity to learn from errors. The reactive approach - see what happens, limit damages, and learn from experience - is unworkable. Rather, we must take a proactive approach. This requires foresight to anticipate new types of threats and a willingness to take decisive preventive action and to bear the costs (moral and economic) of such actions.”

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Action Quotes