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Moralism Quotes

Browse 26 quotes about Moralism.

Moralism Quotes

“The reactionary of any kind condemns sexual pleasure because it stimulates and repulses him at the same time. He is unable to solve the conflict within him between sexual demands and moralistic inhibitions. The revolutionary refutes the perverse, unhealthy kind of pleasure, because it is not his kind of pleasure, because it is not the sexuality of the future, but the sexuality which results from the conflict between instinct and morals, the sexuality of authoritarian society, a debased, smutty, pathological sexuality.”

FreedomPleasureAuthoritarianismSexual ViolenceSexual FreedomMoralismSexual PleasureReactionary PoliticsRevolutionary Thinking
Book:The Mass Psychology of Fascism
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“How can you improve human nature until you have changed the system? The other, what is the use of changing the system before you have improved human nature? They appeal to different individuals, and they probably show a tendency to alternate in point of time. The Moralist and the Revolutionary are constantly undermining one another. Marx exploded a hundred tons of dynamite under the Moralist position, and we are still living in the echo of that tremendous crash. But already, somewhere or other, the sappers are are work and fresh dynamite is being tamped un place to blow Marx to the moon.”

HumorHuman NatureRevolutionInstitutionsEssaysMarxismMarxMoralism
Book:Essays
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“Your conscience is what you do, not what you think or say you think. It’s also something you do when it has to be done, not as an afterthought when you’re forced to face up to your wrongdoing. Remorse is cheap and easy. It’s an insult. My awareness obliged me to act, but I did nothing: I cooperated, and my compliance enabled something monstrous. I didn’t slaughter millions, but there’s no sliding scale in atrocities, even if the robotic imagination of the law requires fixed thresholds. Each death, each act of suffering, is a complete and qualifying act of evil in itself. Humans instinctively norm. We behave like others around us, because compliance is our survival strategy. No matter how intelligent, sensible, or kind, 99 percent of human beings will carry out the most appalling acts if the rest of their tribe is doing the same. And most of our conscious acts are simply postscript rationalizations of our hard-wired unconscious decisions.”

ConscienceRight And WrongAtrocityMoralismSliding Scale
Book:Halo: Mortal Dictata
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“For rough practical purposes, pleasures may be divided into those that have their primary basis in the senses, and those that are mainly of the mind. The traditional moralist praises the latter at the expense of the former; or rather, he tolerates the latter because he does not recognise them as pleasures. His classification is, of course, not scientifically defensible, and in many cases he is himself in doubt. Do the pleasures of art belong to the senses or to the mind? If he is really stern, he will condemn art in toto, like Plato and the Fathers: if he is more or less latitudinarian, he will tolerate art if it has a ‘spiritual purpose’, which generally means that it is bad art.”

ArtSpiritualityPleasureCensorshipAestheticsPuritanismMoralismBad ArtSensual PleasuresSpiritual Art
Book:Sceptical Essays
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“As regards the whole moral twaddle of people about one another, it is time to be disgusted with it! To sit in judgment morally ought to be opposed to our taste! Let us leave this nonsense and this bad taste to those who have nothing else to do, save to drag the past a little distance further through time, and who are never themselves the present ... We, however, would seek to become what we are ... making laws for ourselves and creating ourselves! And for this purpose we must become the best students and discoverers of all the laws and necessities in the world. [335]”

KnowledgeMoralityLawsSelf CreationMoralism
Book:The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs
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“The career of Puritanism has been curious. It held brief power in England in the seventeenth century, but so disgusted the mass of ordinary citizens that they have never again allowed it to control the Government. The Puritans, persecuted in England, colonised New England, and subsequently the Middle West. The American Civil War was a continuation of the English Civil War, the Southern States having been mainly colonised by opponents of the Puritans. But unlike the English Civil War, it led to a permanent victory of the Puritan Party. The result is that the greatest Power in the world is controlled by men who inherit the outlook of Cromwell’s Ironsides.”

ReligionAmerican HistoryAmerican CultureAmerican Civil WarPuritanismMoralismCromwellEnglish Civil War
Book:Sceptical Essays
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“On reflection, moral judgment in the arts appears rather as a tribute to their power to influence emotion and possibly conduct. And reflecting further on what some critics do today, one sees that a good many have merely shifted the ground of their moralism, transferring their impulse of righteousness to politics and social issues.”

ArtTodaySocialEmotionMoralIssuesInfluenceJudgmentReflectionCriticsImpulseGood ManRighteousnessSocial IssuesReflectingTributeMoral JudgmentMoralism
Book:The Culture We Deserve
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“A good education would be devoted to encouraging and refining the love of the beautiful, but a pathologically misguided moralism instead turns such longing into a sin against the high goal of making everyone feel good, of overcoming nature in the name of equality. ... Love of the beautiful may be the last and finest sacrifice to radical egalitarianism.”

FeelsMayWould BeLastsBeautifulTurnsNamesGoalSinSacrificeOvercomingLongingFeel GoodRadicalDevotedFinestMisguidedGood EducationRefiningEgalitarianismHigh GoalsMoralism
Book:Love and Friendship
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“Goldilocks [There] lived a family of bearstogether anthropomorphically in a little cottage as a nuclear family. They were very sorry about this, of course, since the nuclear family has traditionally served to enslave womyn, instill a self-righteous moralism in its members, and imprint rigid notions of heterosexualist roles onto the next generation. [They named] their offspring the non-gender-specific "Baby.”

LittlesSelfPoliticalCoursesNextRolesGenerationsBabyMembersNotionSorryGenderNuclearFairyFairy TaleRighteousNext GenerationPolitical CorrectnessOffspringCottagesInstillSelf RighteousNuclear FamiliesMoralismGoldilocks
Author:James Finn Garner
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“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

MayEndsSometimesWisdomGovernmentWould BePoliticalPoliticsReligiousFreedomSleepLibertyMoralConscienceVictimLibertarianTyrannyCrueltyOppressionTyrantsApprovalIntoleranceTormentTheologianSincerelyGood WillGoverningFanaticsFanaticismFreedom And LibertyGood IntentionsExtremistFreedom LibertyProperty RightsLimited GovernmentDemocracies HaveRobbersSelf RighteousOmnipotentLimiting GovernmentLibertarian PartyEconomic FreedomMoralistLimited FreedomAmerica FreedomBusybodiesGood MoralGovernment And PoliticsGovernment PoliticsGovernment TyrannyMoralizingSecurity And FreedomMoralismRobber BaronOppressive GovernmentsHonest Government
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Indeed, compulsive and rigid moralism arises in given persons precisely as the result of a lack of sense of being. Rigid moralism is a compensatory mechanism by which the individual persuades himself to take over the external sanctions because he has no fundamental assurance that his own choices have any sanction of their own”

PersonsChoicesIndividualGivenResultsFundamentalsAriseExistentialismMechanismExistentialAssuranceSanctionsMoralism
Book:Existence
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“The anything-goes passiveness of the religious and political Left is matched by the preachy moralism of the religious and political Right. The person who uncritically embraces any party line is guilty of an idolatrous surrender of her core identity as Abba's Child. Neither liberal fairy dust nor conservative hardball addresses our ragged human dignity.”

HumansChildrenPersonsPoliticalLeftReligiousLinesPartyIdentityDignityEmbraceConservativeCoreSurrenderGuiltyDustFairyAddressesHuman DignityMatchedRaggedAnything GoesAbbaMoralismFairy DustPassiveness
Author:Brennan Manning
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