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Morality Quotes

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Morality Quotes

“Psychological man may be going nowhere, but he aims to achieve a certain speed and certainty in going. Like his predecessor, the man of the market economy, he understands morality as that which is conducive to increased activity. The important thing is to keep going.”

MenMayImportantCertainEconomyAchieveHe ManMoralityActivityAimImportant ThingsSpeedPsychologicalCertaintyKeep GoingPredecessorsMarket Economy
Book:The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud
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“When we assume God to be a guiding principle well, sure enough, a god is usually characteristic of a certain system of thought or morality. For instance, take the Christian God, the summum bonum: God is love, love being the highest moral principle; and God is spirit, the spirit being the supreme idea of meaning. All our Christian moral concepts derive from such assumptions, and the supreme essence of all of them is what we call God.”

WellsIdeasEnoughChristianSpiritCertainLove IsMoralPrinciplesMoralityHighestConceptsEssenceAssumingSupremeInstanceCharacteristicsAssumptionGod Is LoveMoral PrinciplesGuiding PrinciplesChristian God
Author:Carl Jung
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“[The church] is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. "What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy.”

PeopleThinkingWorldWayHumansStillsMatterDoneCertainSufferingChurchMoralProgressObjectsOughtMoralityMajorsImprovementChosenLabelsOpponentsDiminishMaking People HappyHuman Happiness
Book:Why I Am Not a Christian
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“THERE is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blameable, than, in philosophical disputes, to endeavour the refutation of any hypothesis, by a pretence of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality. When any opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly false; but it is not certain that an opinion is false, because it is of dangerous consequence. Such topics, therefore, ought entirely to be forborne; as serving nothing to the discovery of truth, but only to make the person of an antagonist odious.”

PersonsCertainCommonOpinionDangerousOughtMoralityDiscoveryConsequencePhilosophicalMethodReasoningServingAbsurdityTopicsHypothesisDisputesEndeavourPretenceAntagonistRefutation
Book:Essays Moral, Political, and Literary
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“It takes courage to have a conscience when you seem to see others getting something tangible out of not bothering to struggle with the morality of a situation. It gets frustrating and demoralizing. This is precisely where character comes in. All throughout history special people have felt compelled to do what they objectively saw as right and good - even in the face of humiliation or rejection or expulsion or torture or death. That is because they believed that certain ideas were more important than individual well-being.”

PeopleWellsImportantIdeasCharacterSeemsFacesCertainIndividualFeltSituationStruggleSawsSpecialMoralityConscienceWell BeingBotherTortureRejectionHumiliationCompelledFrustratingTangibleDemoralizingExpulsionSpecial People
Author:Laura Schlessinger
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“A man needs no arguments to make him discern and approve what is beautiful: it strikes at first sight, and attracts without a reason. And as this beauty is found in the shape and form of corporeal things, so also is there analogous to it a beauty of another kind, an order, a symmetry, and comeliness in the moral world. And as the eye perceiveth the one, so the mind doth by a certain interior sense perceive the other, which sense, talent, or faculty, is ever quickest and purest in the noblest minds.”

MenWorldNeedsMindFirstsKindReasonEyeBeautifulFormCertainOrderFoundBeautyMoralTalentMoralityShapesPerceptionArgumentSightStrikesPerceiveFacultyInteriorsSymmetry
Book:Alciphron: Or, The Minute Philosopher. In Seven Dialogues Containing an Apology for the Christian Religion Against Those who are Called Free-thinkers
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“The obsession with gold, actually and politically, occurs among those who regard economics as a branch of morality. Gold is solid, gold is durable, gold is rare, gold is even (in certain very peculiar circumstances) convertible. To believe in thrift, solidity and soundness is to believe in some way in the properties of gold.”

WayBelieveCertainMoneyCircumstancesMoralityEconomicsGoldRegardPropertyObsessionBranchesPeculiarThriftSoliditySoundness
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“Whatever good you would do out of fear of punishment, or hope of reward hereafter, the Atheist would do simply because it is good; and being so, he would receive the far surer and more certain reward, springing from well-doing, which would constitute his pleasure, and promote his happiness.”

WellsCertainPleasureAtheismMoralityRewardsAtheistPunishmentHereafter
Book:Mistress of herself: speeches and letters of Ernestine L. Rose, early women's rights leader
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“Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors.”

KindPersonsAgeCertainNationsWonderMoralGenerationsFashionMoralitySucceedVicesCoachesCharacteristicsHatsAncestorWickednessDepravityCensureMoralistScruplesPatronage
Author:Thomas B. Macaulay
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“Their usual mistaken premise is that they affirm some consensus among people, at least among tame peoples, concerning certain moral principles, and then conclude that these principles must be unconditionally binding also for you and me-or conversely, they see that among different peoples moral valuations are necessarily different and infer from this that no morality is binding-both of which are equally childish.”

PeopleDifferentCertainMoralPrinciplesMoralityUsualMistakenConsensusDifferent PeoplesPremisesBindingMoral PrinciplesValuationMoral Absolutism
Book:Nietzsche: The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs
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“Islam's basic principles of belief, worship, morality, and behavior are not affected by changing times. Islam does not propose a certain unchangeable form of government or attempt to shape it. Islam has never offered nor established a theocracy in its name. Instead, Islam establishes fundamental principles that orient a government's general character.”

DoeCharacterGovernmentFormCertainNamesBeliefPrinciplesMoralityShapesBehaviorWorshipFundamentalsIslamAffectedProposeForms Of GovernmentBasic PrinciplesFundamental PrinciplesUnchangeableTheocracy
Author:Fethullah Gulen
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“Morality is neither rational nor absolute nor natural. World has known many moral systems, each of which advances claims universality; all moral systems are therefore particular, serving a specific purpose for their propagators or creators, and enforcing a certain regime that disciplines human beings for social life by narrowing our perspectives and limiting our horizons.”

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Author:Friedrich Nietzsche
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“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.”

LittlesFactsRealityActionSpiritCertainIndividualUnderstandingDoubtInfluenceModernCreationMoralityCreaturesJudgmentHighestEthicsWeakImportanceHumbleSuperiorsSpiteAdmirationRelativityModern ScienceTransitoryCausalityGod And ScienceScience God
Author:Albert Einstein
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“For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.”

PhilosophyPoliticalCertainDoubtEconomicEvolutionMoralityInstrumentsLiberationNo DoubtEconomic SystemsMeaninglessnessCreationism
Book:Complete Essays: 1936-1938
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“How could politics be a science, if laws and forms of government had not a uniform influence upon society? Where would be the foundation of morals, if particular characters had no certain or determinate power to produce particular sentiments, and if these sentiments had no constant operation on actions?”

IfsCharacterGovernmentWould BeActionFormLawPoliticalCertainMoralInfluenceProduceParticularMoralityEthicsFoundationConstantOperationsSentimentsUniformsForms Of Government
Book:Essays Moral, Political, and Literary
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“It seems then, say I, that you leave politics entirely out of the question, and never suppose, that a wise magistrate can justly be jealous of certain tenets of philosophy, such as those of Epicurus, which, denying a divine existence, and consequently a providence and a future state, seem to loosen, in a great measure, the ties of morality, and may be supposed, for that reason, pernicious to the peace of civil society.”

MayStatesReasonPhilosophySeemsPoliticalCertainExistenceWiseDivineMoralityEthicsTiesJealousProvidenceCivil SocietyPerniciousMagistratesBeing Jealous
Book:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: A Critical Edition
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“I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption ... For myself, as no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneous liberation from a certain political and economic system, and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.”

WorldReasonPhilosophyAblePoliticalCertainDoubtEconomicMoralityDifficultyInstrumentsLiberationMotiveAssumptionNo DoubtSatisfyingEconomic SystemsMeaninglessnessSimultaneous
Author:Aldous Huxley
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