Browse 3758 quotes about Morality.
“The dilemma of our age is the combination of unprecedented material progress and systematic spiritual decline. The decline in public and private morality can be witnessed in the marketplace as well as the forums of international diplomacy. In the past, a man's honor and reputation were his most valuable assets. Business agreements were made with a handshake. Today one might be well advised to check the "bottom line" and read the "small print."”
“There are many religions, but there is only one morality.”
Source: Sesame and Lilies. Three Lectures
“In what light soever we regard the Bible, whether with reference to revelation, to history, or to morality, it is an invaluable and inexhaustible mine of knowledge and virtue.”
Source: Letters of John Quincy Adams, to His Son, on the Bible and Its Teachings
“Absolute morality is the regulation of conduct in such a way that pain shall not be inflicted.”
“The masters have been done away with; the morality of the common man has triumphed.”
“"Thou shalt not bear false witness" Exodus 20:16. When we speak of morality, we imply that a man is true to his word-true to his signature on a contract. The violations of God's laws are evidence that lying and misrepresentation are not absent from us.”
Source: The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson
“All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.”
Source: The Portable Edmund Burke
“What is the use of this fuss about morality when the issue only involves a horse? The first and most difficult teaching of civilisation concerns man's behaviour to his inferiors. Make humanity gentle or reasonable toward animals, and strife or injustice between human beings would speedily terminate.”
Source: The Illustrated Horse Management: Containing Descriptive Remarks Upon Anatomy, Medicine, Shoeing, Teeth, Food, Vices, Stables : Likewise a Plain Account of the Situation, Nature and Value of the Various Points : Together with Comments on Grooms, Dealers, Breeders, Breakers and Trainers : Also, on Carriages and Harness
“Simplicity is a pleasant thing in children, or at any age, but it is not necessarily admirable, nor is affectation altogether a thing of evil. To be normal, to be at home in the world, with a prospect of power, usefulness, or success, the person must have that imaginative insight into other minds that underlies tact and savoir-faire, morality and beneficence. This insight involves sophistication, some understanding and sharing of the clandestine impulses of human nature. A simplicity that is merely the lack of this insight indicates a sort of defect.”
Source: Two Major Works: Social Organization. Human Nature and the Social Order
“Without civic morality communities perish; without personal morality their survival has no value.”
Source: The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell
“A work of morality, politics, criticism will be more elegant, other things being equal, if it is shaped by the hand of geometry.”
“So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. . . . When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him by force. It is only as retaliation that force may be used and only against the man who starts its use. No, I do not share his evil or sink to his concept of morality: I merely grant him his choice, destruction, the only destruction he had the right to choose: his own.”
“A rational process is a moral process. You may make an error at any step of it, with nothing to protect you but your own severity, or you may try to cheat, to fake the evidence and evade the effort of the quest - but if devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.”
Source: Atlas Shrugged
“But neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive in any random manner, but will perish unless he lives as his nature requires, so he is free to seek his happiness in any mindless fraud, but the torture of frustration is all he will find, unless he seeks the happiness proper to man. The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.”
Source: The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z
“You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island - it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today - and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it.”
Source: The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z
“To wipe off the froth of falsehood from the foaming lips of inebriated virtue, when fresh from the sexless orgies of morality and reeling from the delirious riot of religion, may doubtless be a charitable office.”
Source: Swinburne Replies: Notes on Poems and Reviews, Under the Microscope [and] Dedicatory Epistle
“What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what they dislike.”
“Where beauty is worshipped for beauty's sake as a goddess, independent of and superior to morality and philosophy, the most horrible putrefaction is apt to set in. The lives of the aesthetes are the far from edifying commentary on the religion of beauty.”
Source: The collected works of Aldous Huxley
“I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance - but for us, not for God.”
“An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels. For this reason I have always been passionately opposed to systems such as we see in Italy and Russia to-day.”
Source: Ideas and Opinions
“It is a prejudice to think that morality is more favourable to the development of reason than immorality.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche
“Socrates and Plato are right: whatever man does he always does well, that is, he does that which seems to him good (useful) according to the degree of his intellect, the particular standard of his reasonableness.”
Source: Writings of Nietzsche: Volume III
“In order for once to get a glimpse of our European morality from a distance, in order to compare it with other earlier or future moralities, one must do as the traveller who wants to know the height of the towers of a city: he leaves the city.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche
“I do not mean to moralise but to those who do, I would give this advice : if you mean ultimately to deprive the best things and states of all all honour and worth then continue to talk about them as you have been doing!”
“All preachers of morality, as also all theologians have a bad habit in common: all of them try to persuade man that he is very ill, and that a severe, final, radical cure is necessary.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche
“All names of good and evil are images; they do not speak out, they only hint. He is a fool who seeks knowledge from them.”
Source: Nietzschean narratives
“For all things are baptized at the font of eternity, and beyond good and evil; good and evil themselves, however, are but intervening shadows and damp afflictions and passing clouds.”
“This demand follows from an insight that I was the first to articulate: that there are no moral facts.”
Source: Twilight of the Idols
“The law given from Sinai was a civil and municipal as well as a moral and religious code; it contained many statutes . . . of universal application-laws essential to the existence of men in society, and most of which have been enacted by every nation which ever professed any code of laws.”
Source: Letters of John Quincy Adams, to His Son, on the Bible and Its Teachings
“There are three points of doctrine the belief of which forms the foundation of all morality. The first is the existence of God; the second is the immortality of the human soul; and the third is a future state of rewards and punishments. Suppose it possible for a man to disbelieve either of these three articles of faith and that man will have no conscience, he will have no other law than that of the tiger or the shark. The laws of man may bind him in chains or may put him to death, but they never can make him wise, virtuous, or happy.”
Source: Letters of Mrs. Adams: the wife of John Adams
“[I]t is impossible that any people of government should ever prosper, where men render not unto God, that which is God's, as well as to Caesar, that which is Caesar's.”
“Without freedom there can be no morality.”
“[T]he Christian religion, in its purity, is the basis, or rather the source of all genuine freedom in government. . . . and I am persuaded that no civil government of a republican form can exist and be durable in which the principles of that religion have not a controlling influence.”
“[F]or avoiding the extremes of despotism or anarchy . . . the only ground of hope must be on the morals of the people. I believe that religion is the only solid base of morals and that morals are the only possible support of free governments. [T]herefore education should teach the precepts of religion and the duties of man towards God.”
“[Why] should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a school book? Its morals are pure, its examples captivating and noble. The reverence for the Sacred Book that is thus early impressed lasts long; and probably if not impressed in infancy, never takes firm hold of the mind.”
Source: Works of Fisher Ames: With a Selection from His Speeches and Correspondence
“Without religion, I believe that learning does real mischief to the morals and principles of mankind.”
“If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted . . . . If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the Divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the laws.”
Source: Instructive and Entertaining Lessons for Youth: With Rules for Reading with Propriety, Illustrated by Examples: Designed for Use in Schools and Families
“The foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the preeminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens, and command the respect of the world.”
Source: The speeches, addresses and messages, of the several presidents of the United States, at the openings of Congress and at their respective inaugurations: Also, the Declaration of independence, the Constitution of the United States, and Washington's farewell address to his fellow-citizens
“Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness.”
“Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths . . . ?”
Source: The Writings of George Washington: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, Selected and Published from the Original Manuscripts; with a Life of the Author, Notes, and Illustrations
“Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree.”
Source: Jefferson: Political Writings
“The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations.”
Source: The Writings: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, Selected and Published from the Original Manuscripts : with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“In such a performance you may lay the foundation of national happiness only in religion, not by leaving it doubtful "whether morals can exist without it," but by asserting that without religion morals are the effects of causes as purely physical as pleasant breezes and fruitful seasons.”
Source: Letters: 1793-1813
“Religion is the only solid Base of morals and that Morals are the only possible Support of free governments.”
Source: A Diary of the French Revolution
“The ecclesiastical establishments of Europe, which serve to support tyrannical governments, are not the Christian religion, but abuses and corruptions of it. The religion of Christ and his apostles, in it primitive simplicity and purity, unencumbered with the trappings of power and the pomp of ceremonies, is the surest basis of a republican government.”
Source: History of the United States: to which is prefixed a brief historical account of our [English] ancestors, from the dispersion at Babel, to their migration to America, and of the conquest of South America, by the Spaniards
“Nothing has a greater tendency to lessen the reverence which mankind ought to have for the Supreme Being, than a careless repetition of his name upon every trifling occasion . . . . To prevent this profanation, such passages are selected from scripture, as contain some important precepts of morality and religion, in which that sacred name is seldom mentioned. Let sacred things be appropriated to sacred purposes.”
“The character of Anglo-American civilization . . . is the product . . . of two perfectly distinct elements that elsewhere have often made war with each other, but which, in America, they have succeeded in incorporating somehow into one another and combining marvelously. I mean to speak of the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom.”
“The happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend on piety, religion, and morality.”
“It is a fool only, and not the philosopher, nor even the prudent man, that will live as if there were no God... Were a man impressed as fully and strongly as he ought to be with the belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of belief; he would stand in awe of God and of himself, and would not do the thing that could not be concealed from either.”
Source: The Thomas Paine Collection: Common Sense, Rights of Man, Age of Reason, An Essay on Dream, Biblical Blasphemy, Examination Of The Prophecies
“Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it?”
Source: Washington's Farewell Address to the People of the United States of America: Published in September, 1796