Quotes about Moral Principles

What subjectivism is in the realm of ethics, collectivism is in the realm of politics. Just as the notion that anything I do is right because I chose to do it, is not a moral principle, but a negation of morality--so the notion that anything society does is right because society chose to do it, is not a moral principle, but a negation of moral principles an the banishment of morality from social issues.

She thought of the world's code that worshipped white lies as an act of mercy—she felt a stab of revulsion against that code..

Values are the definition of our actions in life

Moral life, it can be said, is just too messy, and the situations we encounter differ from each other in subtle ways that no panoply of principles could ever manage to capture. Principles deal in samenesses, and there just aren't enough samenesses to go around. (page 2)

the second principle of moral psychology, which is that there's more to morality than harm and fairness. The central metaphor of these four chapters is that the righteous mind is like a tongue with six taste receptors.

the truth that there is not one single system that can do justice to the moral life. What we need is a combination of several. Attempt to reduce them to "one very simple principle," in John Stuart Mill's phrase, and you will fail to do justice to morality itself.

Reason is not measured by size or height, but by principle.

Montesquieu, who wrote that "bad examples can be worse than crimes." He continued: "More states have perished because of a violation of their mores than because of a violation of their Laws." What

You can speak of the ethical foundations of science, but you cannot speak of the scientific foundations of ethics.

Don't follow people. Follow principle.

I am not unconscious of the persuasive power exerted by these considerations to drag men along in the current but I am not at liberty to travel that road.

convinc'd that truth, sincerity and integrity in dealings between man and man were of the utmost importance to the felicity of life;

You may be more happy than princes if you will be more virtuous.

Thou shalt not receive any gift; for a gift bindeth the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous." (Exod. xxiii. 8.)

I refuse to be crude and selfish in any way.

I have no regrets because I did everything by the book.

Honor is like a match, you can only use it once.

Oh, 'twould be marvelous if the world and its moral questions were like some game board, with plain black players and white, and fixed rules, and nary a shade of grey.

My father really set the tone for us to be a more moral nation, to take a moral high ground in everything that we do.

America does not torture. We never have, and we never will.

No conditions justify torture.

We may be black-hearted men when our turn comes but there is a seam in men called justice that nothing burns off complete. Caught-His-Horse-First

The end justifies the means. Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing to get the right result.

He remembered his own code that he had made up when he was about twelve, a code of three points only: 'Never betray a friend. Never betray beauty. Never betray the sword.' By that last he had meant being brave when he was afraid.