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Moral Quotes

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Moral Quotes

“Of all the major religions, or lack thereof, the atheist's is one of the best pretenders: his foundation for all existences, as well as moral behaviors for the permanent good of mankind, begins at science but ends at himself, the Napoleon complex of both intelligence and imagination. On the other hand the anti-theist wouldn't survive without a deity beyond himself to hunt. He doesn't pretend, he simply nullifies his own position.”

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Book:Killosophy
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“Air forces offered the possibility of striking a the enemy's economic and moral centres without having first to achieve 'the destruction of the enemy's main forces on the battlefield'. Air-power might attain a direct end by indirect means - hopping over opposition instead of overthrowing it.”

FirstsMeanEndsMightForceMoralEnemyAirEconomicAchieveMilitaryPossibilityDirectDestructionOppositionCentreBattlefieldsAir ForceIndirectAir PowerHopping
Author:B. H. Liddell Hart
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“As readers, we are seldom interested in the fine sentiments of a lesson learnt; we seldom care about the good manners of morals. Repentance puts an end to conversation; forgiveness becomes the stuff of moralistic tracts. Revenge - bloodthirsty, justice-hungry revenge - is the very essence of romance, lying at the heart of much of the best fiction.”

HeartEndsCareRomanceLyingStuffJusticeFictionMoralFineReaderLessonsConversationEssenceRevengeHungryMannersGood ManRepentanceSentimentsGood Manners
Author:Alberto Manguel
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“I have often been amused by our vulgar tendency to take complex issues, with solutions at neither extreme of a continuum of possibilities, and break them into dichotomies, assigning one group to one pole and the other to an opposite end, with no acknowledgment of subtleties and intermediate positions and nearly always with moral opprobrium attached to opponents.”

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Book:The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History
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“We started off with physical evolution and got our form. Then we somehow developed language, which meant cultural evolution could race so we could change our behavior really quickly instead of over hundreds and hundreds of years. And then comes moral evolution, which means we're not frightfully far along with people. And maybe we end up with a spiritual evolution, which is this connectedness with the rest of the life forms on the planet.”

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Author:Jane Goodall
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“No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person. Two people, when they love each other, grow alike in their tastes and habits and pride, but their moral natures (whatever we may mean by that canting expression) are never welded. The base one goes on being base, and the noble one noble, to the end.”

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Book:The Best of Willa Cather
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“What happened in World War II was what happened in war generally, and that was whatever the initiating cause, and however clear the moral reason is for the war in which one side looks better than the other, by the time the war ends both sides have been engaged in evil.”

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Book:Howard Zinn Speaks: Collected Speeches, 1963-2009
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“If this is the degree of inflation planned for in advance, the real outcome is indeed likely to be such that most of those who will retire at the end of the century will be dependent on the charity of the younger generation. And ultimately not morals but the fact that the young supply the police and the army will decide the issue: concentration camps for the aged unable to maintain themselves are likely to be the fate of an old generation whose income is entirely dependent on coercing the young.”

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Author:Friedrich August von Hayek
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“There is no Christian Gospel if history simply unwinds into a meaningless puddle, if the cosmos simply escapes into a cataclysmic black hole, or if the universe finally dies of exhausted energy. Without belief in a biblical eschatology, there is no Christian hope. Without a sense of perfect moral judgment in the end, the human heart is homeless.”

IfsHumansHeartEndsChristianDiesUniverseBeliefEnergyBlackPerfectMoralJudgmentHolesCosmosMeaninglessBiblicalHomelessExhaustedHuman HeartBlack HolePuddlesUnwindChristian HopeMoral JudgmentEschatology
Author:Albert Mohler
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“Too soon did the doctors of the church forget that the heart--the moral nature--was the beginning and the end, and that truth, knowledge, and insight were comprehended in its expansion.”

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Book:Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character on the Several Grounds of Prudence, Morality, and Religion: Illustrated by Select Passages from Our Elder Divines, Especially from Archbishop Leighton
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“The true historian, therefore, seeking to compose a true picture of the thing acted, must collect facts and combine facts. Methods will differ, styles will differ. Nobody ever does anything like anybody else; but the end in view is generally the same, and the historian's end is truthful narration. Maxims he will have, if he is wise, never a one; and as for a moral, if he tell his story well, it will need none; if he tell it ill, it will deserve none.”

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Book:The collected essays & addresses of the Rt. Hon. Augustine Birrell, 1880-1920
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“To live and work successfully with others requires more than faithfulness to one's concrete aims. It requires an intellectual commitment to a type of order in which, even on issues which to one are fundamental, others are allowed to pursue different ends. It is for this reason that to the liberal neither moral nor religious ideals are proper objects of coercion, while both conservatives and socialists recognize no such limits.”

DifferentEndsReasonOrderReligiousMoralIssuesObjectsTypeLimitsIntellectualCommitmentIdealsAimFundamentalsPursueConcreteFaithfulnessCoercion
Author:Friedrich August von Hayek
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“Our Lord's miracles were all essential parts of His one consistent life. They were wrought as evidences not only of His power, but of His mercy. They were throughout moral in their character, and spiritual in the ends contemplated by them. They were in fact embodiments of His whole character; exemplars of His whole teaching, emblems of His whole mission.”

EndsWholeCharacterFactsSpiritualChristMoralLordTeachingEssentialsEvidenceMercyMiracleMissionsConsistentOur LordEmbodimentEmblems
Book:Christianity and Positivism: A Series of Lectures to the Times on Natural Theology and Apologetics, Delivered in New York, Jan. 16 to March 20, 1871, on the
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“The little dog-eared books in the meeting-house proved poor reading ... So many of them were about unnaturally good children who never did wrong, and unnaturally bad children who never did right. At the end there was always the word MORAL, in big capital letters, as if the readers were supposed to be too blind to find it for themselves, and it had to be put directly across the path for them to stumble over.”

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Author:Annie Fellows Johnston
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“Drama's not safe and it's not pretty and it's not kind. People expect the basic template of television drama where there might be naughty villains, but everyone ends up having a nice cup of tea. You've got to do big moral choices and show the terrible things people do in terrible situations. Drama is failing if it doesn't do that.”

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Author:Russell T Davies
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“We come before God to pray for the missing and the dead, and for those who loved them... Our purpose as a nation is firm, yet our wounds as a people are recent and unhealed and lead us to pray... This world he created is of moral design. Grief and tragedy and hatred are only for a time. Goodness, remembrance, and love have no end, and the Lord of life holds all who die and all who mourn... Neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities, nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth can separate us from God's love.”

PeopleWorldEndsHumorPoliticalPurposeDiesNationsGriefMoralLordMissingDesignThis WorldPrayingGoodnessAngelHatredAnd LoveTragedyDepthWoundsFirmHeightRemembranceMournGod's LovePolitical Humor
Author:George W. Bush
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“Poverty is a bitter thing; but it is not as bitter as the existence of restless vacuity and physical, moral, and intellectual flabbiness, to which those doom themselves who elect to spend all their years in that vainest of all vain pursuits-the pursuit of mere pleasure as a sufficient end in itself.”

YearsEndsPleasureExistenceMoralPovertyIntellectualMerePursuitBitterVainSufficientRestlessDoomVacuity
Book:Works: The strenuous life
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“Coming into World War II, we were seen as a conquering hero for beleaguered people, we are now seen as invader, an occupier. And what that is saying is we have more might than right, so we kind of have a kind of moral deficit disorder. And that's why a leader must lift us back to the higher ground, because at the end of the day what makes you strong is that you are believable, that as significant as might is, ultimately right is even stronger than might.”

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Author:Jesse Jackson
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“Film is the manipulative medium par excellence. When you think back on the history of film and the 20th century, you see the propaganda that's been made. So there are moral demands on the director to treat the spectators as seriously as he or she takes himself and not to see them merely as victims that can be manipulated to whatever ends they have.”

ThinkingMadeEndsFilmMoralCenturyDirectorsDemandTreatsVictimExcellenceMediumsPropaganda20th CenturySpectatorsManipulative
Author:Michael Haneke
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“There can be no truly moral choice unless that choice is made in freedom; similarly, there can be no really firmly grounded and consistent defense of freedom unless that defense is rooted in moral principle. In concentrating on the ends of choice, the conservative, by neglecting the conditions of choice, loses that very morality of conduct with which he is so concerned. And the libertarian, by concentrating only on the means, or conditions, of choice and ignoring the ends, throws away an essential moral defense of his own position.”

MeanMadeEndsChoicesLosesFreedomResponsibilityLibertyMoralPrinciplesVirtueConditionsPositionIgnoranceMoralityEssentialsConcernedConservativeDefenseLibertarianConsistentNeglectRootedGroundedConcentratingMoral PrinciplesMoral Choices
Author:Murray Rothbard
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“There could never be enough rules so finely crafted as to anticipate and cover every situation, and even if there were, enforcement would be impossibly expensive and burdensome. This approach leads to diminished freedom for everyone...In the end, it is only an internal moral compass in each individual that can effectively deal with the root causes as well as the symptoms of societal decay. Societies will struggle in vain to establish the common good until sin is denounced as sin and moral discipline takes its place in the pantheon of civic virtues.”

IfsWellsEndsEnoughWould BeIndividualCausesSinDealsCommonSituationMoralStruggleVirtueDisciplineApproachRootsVainExpensiveInternalsDecayEnforcementSymptomsCompassAnticipateCivicsCommon GoodRoot CauseMoral CompassPantheonCivic Virtue
Author:D. Todd Christofferson
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“The scriptures, for example, discredit an ancient philosophy that has come back into vogue in our day-the philosophy of Korihor that there are no absolute moral standards, that "every man prospers according to his genius, and that every man conquers according to his strength; and whatsoever a man does is no crime" and "that when a man is dead, that is the end thereof".”

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Author:D. Todd Christofferson
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“Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all divines and moral philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. From this principle it will follow that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest numbers of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best. All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.”

MenWellsPersonsEndsGovernmentChristianFormIndividualNumbersMoralPrinciplesVirtueModernSecurityDivinePoliticianComfortDegreesDignityAgreeAncientPhilosopherCommunicateEaseSoberOne WordPaganForms Of GovernmentInquirers
Book:The Works of John Adams: Controversial papers of the Revolution (continued) Works on government
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“The good of the governed is the end, and rewards and punishments are the means, of all government. The government of the supreme and all-perfect Mind, over all his intellectual creation, is by proportioning rewards to piety and virtue, and punishments to disobedience and vice. ... The joys of heaven are prepared, and the horrors of hell in a future state, to render the moral government of the universe perfect and complete. Human government is more or less perfect, as it approaches nearer or diverges further from an imitation of this perfect plan of divine and moral government.”

MindHumansMeanEndsStatesGovernmentJoyUniverseHeavenPerfectLibertyMoralHellVirtuePlansCreationDivineHorrorApproachIntellectualPreparedRewardsVicesSupremePunishmentImitationDisobediencePietyReward And Punishment
Author:John Adams
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“Ethical religion affirms the continuity of progress toward moral perfection. It affirms that the spiritual development of the human race cannot be prematurely cut off, either gradually or suddenly; that every stone of offence against which we stumble is a stepping-stone to some greater good; that, at the end of days, if we choose to put it so, or, rather, in some sphere beyond the world of space and time, all the rays of progress will be summed and centred in a transcendent focus.”

IfsWorldHumansEndsSpiritualSpaceRaceMoralGreaterFocusCuttingProgressDevelopmentStonesPerfectionHuman RaceThe End Of The DayEthicalRaysSpheresTime And SpaceContinuityTranscendentOffenceSpiritual DevelopmentStepping StonesGreater GoodMoral Perfection
Author:Felix Adler
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“A material resurrection seems strange and even absurd except for purposes of punishment, and all punishment which is to revenge rather than correct must be morally wrong, and when the World is at an end, what moral or warning purpose can eternal tortures answer?”

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Book:Delphi Complete Works of Lord Byron (Illustrated)
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“Law is a process. If there is equality of process for everybody, then that's our definition of justice. Whether or not what is done is right or wrong, you follow the process. And so, the end result is just by definition within that alternative universe that is American law. Most people still operate within a moral universe where principles of good and bad and what is right and wrong in itself, and not just as a result of the process.”

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Author:Francis George
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“While dwelling with pleasing satisfaction upon the superior excellence of our political institutions, let us not be unmindful that liberty is power; that the nation blessed with the largest portion of liberty must in proportion to its numbers be the most powerful nation upon earth, and that the tenure of power by man is, in the moral purposes of his Creator, upon condition that it shall be exercised to ends of beneficence, to improve the condition of himself and his fellow men.”

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Book:John Quincy Adams and American continental empire: letters, papers and speeches
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