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Sacrifice Quotes

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Sacrifice Quotes

“It would seem to me that If this physical life, of which we are now aware, does indeed comprise the entirety of human experience, then what we seem to intuitively know to be true is entirely backwards. For if this is the case, then it must be the despicable tyrant, free of any moral values, and not the selfless compassionate who sacrifices himself for the good of mankind that is truly the one most deserving of our reverence and emulation.”

“The prevailing legal and moral views of a time are held not only by those whom they benefit but by those, too, who appear to suffer from them. Their domination is expressed in that fact- that the people from whom they claim sacrifice accept them.”

People Facts Suffering Views Accepting Moral Sacrifice Benefits Claims Domination Prevailing

Book:Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist

Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist

“It turns out that the men who ultimately, who unpretentiously value peace are willing to sacrifice their own peace of mind in order to render it. The question is, 'Who, between opposing forces, would do such a thing?' It seems only theoretical albeit true that men who accept an objective rather than subjective moral standard are, in a general sense, more capable of making such sacrifices for the sake of peace.”

Men Mind Seems Values Order Turns Force Accepting Moral Sacrifice Willing He Man Capable Standards Sake Objectives Peace Of Mind Subjective Theoretical Opposing

Book:Killosophy

Source: Killosophy

“The moral nature of man is more sacred in my eyes than his intellectual nature. I know they cannot be divorced - that without intelligence we should be brutes - but it is the tendency of our gaping, wondering dispositions to give pre-eminence to those faculties which most astonish us. Strength of character seldom, if ever, astonishes; goodness, lovingness, and quiet self-sacrifice, are worth all the talents in the world.”

“If a state should pass laws forbidding its citizens to become wise and holy, it would be made a byword for all time. But this, in effect, is what our commercial, social, and political systems do. They compel the sacrifice of mental and moral power to money and dissipation.”

Ifs Should Made States Would Be Law Political Social Moral Wise Sacrifice Effects Citizens Holy All Time Political Systems Dissipation

Book:Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion

“Is it stupidity or is it moral cowardice which leads men to continue professing a creed that makes self-sacrifice a cardinal principle, while they urge the sacrificing of others, even to the death, when they trespass against us? Is it blindness, or is it an insance inconsistency, which makes them regard as most admirable the bearing of evil for the benefit of others, while they lavish admiration on those who, out of revenge, inflict great evils in return for small ones suffered? Surely our barbarian code of right needs revision, and our barbarian standard of honour should be somewhat changed.”

Source: Works: The study of sociology

“We must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors. As for the enemies of freedom, those who are potential adversaries, they will be reminded that peace is the highest aspiration of the American people. We will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it; We will not surrender for it, now or ever. We are Americans.”

“Complaisance, though in itself it be scarce reckoned in the number of moral virtues, is that which gives a lustre to every talent a man can be possessed of. It was Plato's advice to an unpolished writer that he should sacrifice to the graces. In the same manner I would advise every man of learning, who would not appear in the world a mere scholar or philosopher, to make himself master of the social virtue which I have here mentioned.”

Source: The Tatler and the Guardian: Complete in One Volume, with Notes, and a General Index

“It's odd how a person always arouses admiration for his moral qualities among the relatives of another with whom he has sexual relations. Physical love, so unjustifiably decried, makes everyone show, down to the least detail, all he has of goodness and self-sacrifice, so that he shines even in the eyes of those nearest to him.”

Love Persons Self Shows Eye Quality Moral Sacrifice Goodness Relation Shining Details Odd Admiration Self Sacrifice

Author:Marcel Proust

“There is no hope for the world unless and until we formulate, accept and state publicly a true moral code of individualism, based on man's inalienable right to live for himself. Neither to hurt nor to serve his brothers, but to be independent of them in his function and in his motive. Neither to sacrifice them for himself nor to sacrifice himself for them.”

Men World States Hurt Accepting Moral Sacrifice Brother Function Independent Individuality Code Motive Individualism No Hope Moral Code

Book:Letters of Ayn Rand

Source: Letters of Ayn Rand

“Men who have sacrifice their well-being, and even their lives, for the cause of truth or the public good, are, from an empirical point of view - which scorn ("fait fi", Fr.) virtue and altruism - regarded as insane or fools; but, from a moral standpoint, they are heros who do honour ("qui honorent", Fr.) humanity.”

Men Wells Humanity Causes Views Moral Virtue Sacrifice Fool Hero Point Of View Insane Well Being Honour Altruism Scorn Standpoint Public Good

Author:African Spir

“To sacrifice the moral to the physical, as is done in these days, is to sacrifice reality for a shadow.”

Done Reality Moral Sacrifice Shadow These Days

Author:African Spir

“Our national fondness for celebrating the physical heroism of soldiers - the apparent readiness with which they sacrifice their lives to larger causes - eclipses the far less romantic displays of moral and intellectual fortitude that also distinguish so many of them. In turning them all into heroes, we have lost a sense of the individuality they also fight to preserve.”

War Fighting Lost Causes Moral Sacrifice Hero Intellectual Soldier Individuality Celebrate Preserves Display Heroism Fortitude Readiness Eclipse Fondness

Author:Elizabeth Samet

“Wherever the State touches the personal life of the infant, the child, the youth, or the aged, helpless, defective in mind, body or moral nature, there the State enters "woman's peculiar sphere," her sphere of motherly succor and training, her sphere of sympathetic and self-sacrificing ministration to individual lives.”

“Do you suppose that sacrifice is the hallmark of moral action?--Just stop to consider whether sacrifice is not involved in every action that is done with deliberation, the worst as well as the best.”

Wells Done Action Moral Sacrifice Worst Involved Morality Hallmark Deliberation Moral Action

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche

“I regard the state of which I am a citizen as a public utility, like the organization that supplies me with water, gas, and electricity. I feel that it is my civic duty to pay my taxes as well as my other bills, and that it is my moral duty to make an honest declaration of my income to the income tax authorities. But I do not feel that I and my fellow citizens have a religious duty to sacrifice our lives in war on behalf of our own state, and, a fortiori, I do not feel that we have an obligation or a right to kill and maim citizens of other states or to devastate their land.”

“The Law was given by Moses; the moral law, to discover the extent and abounding sin; the ceremonial law, to point out, by typical sacrifices and ablutions, the way in which forgiveness was to be sought and obtained. But grace, to relieve us from the condemnation of the one, and truth answerable to the types and shadows of the other, came by Jesus Christ.”

Way Christian Law Jesus Given Christ Sin Moral Grace Sacrifice Type Shadow Jesus Christ Typical Moses Condemnation Moral Law

Book:The Works of the Rev. John Newton ... to which are Prefixed Memoirs of His Life, &c

Source: The Works of the Rev. John Newton ... to which are Prefixed Memoirs of His Life, &c

“There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, and, of its many rungs, three are the most important. People used to make human sacrifices to their god, perhaps even sacrificing those they loved the best ... Then, during the moral epoch of humanity, people sacrificed the strongest instincts they had, their 'nature,' to their god... Finally: what was left to be sacrificed? ... Didn't people have to sacrifice God himself and worship rocks, stupidity, gravity, fate, or nothingness out of sheer cruelty to themselves?”

People Humans Important Used Humanity Three Left Religious Moral Fate Sacrifice Rocks Worship Instinct Stupidity Cruelty Strongest Gravity Sheer Nothingness Ladders Epoch

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche

“I believe that a religious conversion is the only way to stimulate the peoples of the industrialized nations to be willing to make sacrifices for the sake of esho funi (the oneness of self and environment). ... I wish the entire world would accept as an item of religious faith the concept of esho funi and its moral obligations.”

World Way Believe Self I Believe Nations Wish Religious Accepting Moral Environment Sacrifice Willing Concepts Sake Conversion Obligation Oneness Items Religious Faith Moral Obligation

Author:Arnold J. Toynbee

“The stupidity of the average man will permit the oligarch, whether economic or political, to hide his real purposes from the scrutiny of his fellows and to withdraw his activities from effective control. Since it is impossible to count on enough moral goodwill among those who possess irresponsible power to sacrifice it for the good of the whole, it must be destroyed by coercive methods and these will always run the peril of introducing new forms of injustice in place of those abolished.”

Source: Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics

“Here was the rub: one must be more zealous to please God than to avoid sin. One must sacrifice oneself utterly to God's purposes, even to the point of possibly making moral mistakes. One's obedience to God must be forward-oriented and zealous and free, and to be a mere moralist or pietist would make such a life impossible.”

Purpose Sin Mistake Moral Impossible Sacrifice Please Mere Oneself Obedience Moralist Zealous Obedience To God

Author:Eric Metaxas

“Theologians will protest that the story of Abraham sacrificing Issac should not be taken as literal fact. And the appropriate response is twofold: first, many, many people even to this day, do take the whole of their Scripture to be literal fact, and they have a great deal of political power over the rest of us, especially in the United States and in the Islamic world. Second, if not of literal fact, how should we take the story? As an alagory? Then an alagory for what? Surely, nothing praiseworthy. As a moral lesson? But what kind of morals could one derive from this appalling story?”

“Namely, if I am challenging the base of all these institutions, I'm challenging the moral code of altruism. The precept that man's moral duty is to live for others. That man must sacrifice himself to others. Which is the present day morality.”

Ifs Men Challenges Moral Sacrifice Duty Morality Institutions Code Altruism Present Day Moral Code Moral Duty Live For Others

Author:Ayn Rand

“I also think we need unconventional political action, and I increasingly think that there is a need for people of faith to be able to do the kind of things that people of faith did 40 years ago in the heat of the civil rights revolution. This is a moral issue of every bit as much importance requiring every bit as much sacrifice, courage, and energy as that crisis did.”

“The singularity of Islam is its universality. As American citizens and as Muslims, you need to show there is something specific, namely our moral singularity. We believe there is one God and this one God is pushing us to reach universal values by liberating ourselves from our ego and by serving humanity. We must be involved in this by all means necessary, in a nonviolent way, through the legal, media, economic and cultural systems. We cannot achieve this if there is no courage, if we are not ready to sacrifice.”

“Man—every man—is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life.”

Men Inspirational Mean Ends Self Purpose Religion Interest Liberty Moral Sacrifice Morality Achievement Highest Sake Every Man Rational Self Interest

Book:Ayn Rand Novel Collection

Source: Ayn Rand Novel Collection

“If there is one tendency of the day which more than any other is unhealthy and undesirable, it is the tendency to deify mere "smartness," unaccompanied by a sense of moral accountability. We shall never make our republic what it should be until as a people we thoroughly understand and put in practice the doctrine that success is abhorrent if attained by the sacrifice of the fundamental principles of morality.”

Source: The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses

“Very much indeed of what we call moral education is such an artificial modification and perversion of instinct; pugnacity is trained into courageous self-sacrifice, and suppressed sexuality into religious emotion.”

Self Religious Emotion Moral Sacrifice Instinct Sexuality Courageous Artificial Self Sacrifice Perversion Modification Moral Education

Book:H. G. WELLS Ultimate Collection: 120+ Science Fiction Classics, Novels & Stories; Including Scientific, Political and Historical Works: The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, Modern Utopia, A Short History of the World, What Is Coming, The Story of the Last Trump…

Source: H. G. WELLS Ultimate Collection: 120+ Science Fiction Classics, Novels & Stories; Including Scientific, Political and Historical Works: The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, Modern Utopia, A Short History of the World, What Is Coming, The Story of the Last Trump…

“If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.”

Ifs Moral Sacrifice Ought Happenings Importance

Book:Famine, Affluence, and Morality

Source: Famine, Affluence, and Morality

“There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.”

Moral Sacrifice Authority Moral Authority

Book:Telling Times: Writing and Living, 1950-2008

Source: Telling Times: Writing and Living, 1950-2008

“Man is not equally moral at all hours, this is well known. If his morality is judged to be the capability for great self-sacrificing resolutions and self-denial (which, when continuous and grown habitual, are called holiness)”

Ifs Men Wells Self Hours Known Moral Sacrifice Morality Denial Holiness Resolution Judged Capability Well Known Chastity Habitual Self-denial

Book:Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

Source: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits