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Morality Quotes

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Morality Quotes

“Art is not and never has been subordinate to moral values. Moral values are social values; aesthetic values are human values. Morality seeks to restrain the feelings; art seeks to define them by externalizing them, by giving them significant form. Morality has only one aim - the ideal good; art has quite another aim - the objective truth... art never changes.”

GivingHumansHas BeensArtFeelingsFormValuesSocialMoralMoralityArt IsIdealsAimSignificantObjectivesAestheticNever ChangeSubordinatesGood ArtHuman ValuesMoral ValuesObjective TruthSocial Values
Author:Herbert Read
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“What, by a word lacking even in grammar, is called amorality, is a thing that does not exist. If you are unwilling to submit to any norm, you have, nolens volens , to submit to the norm of denying all morality, and this is not amoral, but immoral. It is a negative morality which preserves the empty form of the other.”

IfsDoeFormMoralityNegativeEmptyPreservesSubmitLackingNormImmoralGrammarUnwillingAmorality
Book:the Revolt of the Masses
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“The criminal law has, from the point of view of thwarted virtue, the merit of allowing an outlet for those impulses of aggression which cowardice, disguised as morality, restrains in their more spontaneous forms. War has the same merit. You must not kill you neighbor, whom perhaps you genuinely hate, but by a little propaganda this hate can be transferred to some foreign nation, against whom all your murderous impulses become patriotic heroism.”

LittlesWarFormLawHateNationsViewsVirtueMoralityPoint Of ViewNeighborCriminalsImpulsePropagandaMeritPatrioticAllowingCowardiceHeroismAggressionSpontaneousOutletsCriminal Law
Author:Bertrand Russell
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“Thus, if there exists a law which sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression or robbery, in any form whatever, it must not even be mentioned. For how can it be mentioned without damaging the respect which it inspires? Still further, morality and political economy must be taught from the point of view of this law; from the supposition that it must be a just law merely because it is a law. Another effect of this tragic perversion of the law is that it gives an exaggerated importance to political passions and conflicts, and to politics in general.”

IfsGivingStillsFormLawPoliticalPassionPoliticsViewsEconomyEffectsInspireTaughtMoralityConflictImportanceSlaveryPoint Of ViewOppressionTragicMonopolySanctionsExaggeratedPerversionRobberyPolitical EconomySupposition
Author:Frederic Bastiat
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“For as long as men and women have talked about war, they have talked about it in terms of right and wrong. And for almost as long, some among them have derided such talk, called it a charade, insisted that war lies beyond (or beneath) moral judgment. War is a world apart, where life itself is at stake, where human nature is reduced to its elemental forms, where self-interest and necessity prevail. Here men and women do what they must to save themselves and their communities, and morality and law have no place. Inter arma silent leges: in time of war the law is silent.”

MenWorldHumansLongWarSelfFormLawLyingTermInterestCommunityMoralHuman NatureMoralityJudgmentMen And WomenSilentStakesSelf InterestElementalsMoral JudgmentCharadesWorlds Apart
Book:Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations
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“There is one god, greatest among gods and men, who bears no similarity to humans either in shape or thought... but humans believe that the gods are born like themselves, and that the gods wear clothes and have bodies like humans and speak in the same way... but if cows and horses or lions had hands or could draw with the hands and manufacture the things humans can make, then horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, cows like cows, and they would make the gods' bodies resemble those which each kind of animal had itself.”

IfsMenWayBelieveHumansKindBodyHandsFormReligionSpeakBornAnimalBearsMoralityShapesClothesDrawsHorseLionsCowsSimilarity
Author:Xenophanes
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“I am humbly following in your footsteps and having a row with the Government over the iniquity of the Marriage Tax in the form of supertax ... our incomes being added together we are liable for supertax which we are refusing to pay on the grounds of morality as I consider in a Christian country it is an immoral and outrageous act to tax me because I am living in Holy matrimony instead of as my husband's mistress.”

CountryGovernmentChristianTogetherFormPayMoralityHolyHusbandTaxesFollowingIncomeMy HusbandImmoralMistressOutrageousFootstepsLiableMatrimonyIniquity
Author:Marie Stopes
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“Kids are told there are no differences between boys and girls. They are told there is no such thing ultimately as right and wrong. Values are relative. Truth is relative. Morality is defined by individual choice. If that isn't a recipe for sexual harassment and other forms of sexual and physical abuse, I don't know what it is.”

IfsKnowsKidsFormValuesChoicesGirlIndividualDifferencesBoysMoralityTruth IsAbuseDefinedRelativeRecipesHarassmentBoy And GirlPhysical AbuseRelative TruthIndividual Choice
Author:Rush Limbaugh
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“Superstitions, and especially the early cultivation of religion, with its "fear of the Lord" and of unknown mysterious agencies, are especially potent in the development of the instinct of fear. Even the early cultivation of morality and conscientiousness, with their fears of right and wrong, often causes psychoneurotic states in later life. Religious, social, and moral taboos and superstitions, associated with apprehension of threatening impending evil, based on the fear instinct, form the germs of psychopathic affections.”

StatesFormEvilSocialCausesReligiousMoralLordDevelopmentMoralityInstinctAffectionMysteriousAgencySuperstitionsThreateningTabooApprehensionGermsCultivationPsychopathicConscientiousness
Book:The Causation and Treatment of Psychopathic Diseases
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“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”

FormVirtueMoralityGoodnessJudgmentVicesExtremesSelfishGentlemanPrivacyRetiringModestConstructsDiscouragedAcquaintanceEarly Life
Book:Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life. By George Eliot ....
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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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“Empathy and fellow feeling form the very basis of morality. The capacities for empathy, for feeling responsibility toward others and for reaching out to help them can be stunted or undermined early on, depending on a child's experiences in the home and neighborhood. It becomes too easy to turn our backs on fellow human beings... to have 'compassion fatigue.' Technology, we are learning, is not neutral.”

HumansChildrenHelpingFeelingsHomeFormTurnsLanguageEasyHuman BeingsResponsibilityCompassionTechnologySocietyCommunicationMoralityEmpathyCapacityBasesFellowsReachingNeighborhoodReach OutFatigueFellow Feeling
Author:Sissela Bok
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“The form of government which you admire, when its principles are pure is admirable indeed. It is productive of every Thing which is great and excellent among men. But its principles are as easily destroyed as human nature is corrupted. Such a government is only to be supported by pure religion or Austere morals.”

MenHumansGovernmentFormReligionMoralPrinciplesHuman NatureMoralityPureAdmireDestroyedExcellentProductiveAdmirableForms Of Government
Book:Warren-Adams Letters: Being Chiefly a Correspondence Among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren ... 1743-1814
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“The whole notion of sanity may be an attempt to medicalize morality - to speak of the good in the language of health: to make us more accurate, more scientific in our wanting - but by the same token it becomes a form of moral blackmail. It is as if to say: if these are not valued - if these forms of wanting and feeling and speaking and doing - are not cultivated and encouraged and rewarded in the child, then the child will be mad.”

IfsMayChildrenWholeFeelingsFormSpeakLanguageMoralMoralityMadNotionSanityAccurateTokensBlackmail
Book:Going sane
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“A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves out to achieve instead - often not recognizing fully what they were doing - was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming age of barbarism and darkness.”

MenMightAgeFormCommunityMoralDarknessAchieveMoralityMen And WomenTasksCrucialConstructionRecognizingGood WillCivilityMaintenanceTurning PointsBarbarismContinuationMoral Life
Author:Alasdair MacIntyre
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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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“Reverence for Life affords me my fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, assisting, and enhancing life and that to destroy, harm, or to hinder life is evil. Affirmation of the world - that is affirmation of the will to live, which appears in phenomenal forms all around me - is only possible for me in that I give myself out for other life.”

WorldLifeGivingFormLife IsEvilPrinciplesMoralityFundamentalsHarmInsightfulReverenceAffirmationMaintainingServing OthersPhenomenalHinderFundamental PrinciplesReverence For LifeWill To LiveAssisting
Author:Albert Schweitzer
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“Consider the Koran... this wretched book was sufficient to start a world-religion, to satisfy the metaphysical need of countless millions for twelve hundred years, to become the basis of their morality and of a remarkable contempt for death, and also to inspire them to bloody wars and the most extensive conquests. In this book we find the saddest and poorest form of theism. Much may be lost in translation, but I have not been able to discover in it one single idea of value.”

WorldNeedsYearsMayBookIdeasWarAbleFormValuesLostMillionsExampleInspireMoralityHundredBasesIslamSufficientRemarkableContemptTwelveBloodyMetaphysicalConquestWretchedTranslationsPoorestSaddestTheismWorld ReligionsLost In Translation
Author:Arthur Schopenhauer
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“There is no society known where a more or less developed criminality is not found under different forms. No people exists whose morality is not daily infringed upon. We must therefore call crime necessary and declare that it cannot be non-existent, that the fundamental conditions of social organization, as they are understood, logically imply it.”

PeopleDifferentFormFoundSocialKnownConditionsCrimeMoralityUnderstoodOrganizationFundamentalsCriminalitySocial Organization
Book:Suicide
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“Your ideas about right and wrong are just that-ideas. They are the thoughts which form the shape and create the substance of Who You Are. There would be only one reason to change any of these; only one purpose in making an alteration: if you are not happy with Who You Are.”

IfsInspirationalIdeasReasonWould BeFormPurposeReligiousMoralityShapesWho You AreSubstanceNot HappyAlterations
Book:Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue
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“Humans suffer from self-centred notions as to the nature of life. Humans assume that alien life forms should conform to standards that match our own, including logic and morality. Even among humans, morality is ignored when expedient. Why should we expect more from an alien life form than we demand from ourselves?”

LifeShouldHumansSelfFormSufferingNatureMoralityDemandStandardsLogicAssumingNotionIncludingAliensAssumptionIgnoredConformAlien Life
Author:Steve Perry
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“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.”

IfsThinkingMenTryingMayTruthFormProcessEffortResponsibilityMoralStepsGreaterMoralityTruth IsProtectEvidenceAssumingErrorsDevotionRationalFakeAssumptionCheatingHeroicQuestsCheatHallmarkProtect YouSeverity
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“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.”

MenFirstsHumansMaySoulStatesGovernmentFormLawReligionThreeBeliefExistenceWiseMoralityConscienceThirdsFoundationRewardsPunishmentDoctrineChainsImmortalityArticlesVirtuousTigersHuman SoulSharksExistence Of GodReward And Punishment
Book:Letters of Mrs. Adams: the wife of John Adams
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“Comics, which are really best described as an arrangement of images in a sequence that tell a story - an idea - is a very old form of graphic communication. It began with the hieroglyphics in Egypt, it first appeared in a recognizable form in the Medieval times as copper plates produced by the Catholic church to tell morality stories.”

FirstsIdeasStoriesFormChurchCommunicationMoralityCatholicPlatesArrangementsEgyptSequenceMedievalGraphicCatholic ChurchCopperHieroglyphicsMedieval Times
Author:Will Eisner
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“The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be rooted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle. The very corner-stone of an education intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of truth.”

MindPhilosophyFormPrinciplesObjectsInspireParticularMoralityIntellectualStonesCornersRecognitionManifestationQuantityRootedDogmaticGreat Minds
Book:Dissertations and Discussions
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