Quotes about Moral Principles

principles have become more dangerous than passions. It's getting uncommonly easy to kill people in large numbers, and the first thing a principle does—if it really is a principle—is to kill somebody." "'The real tragedy is not the conflict of good with evil but of good with good'; that means a problem with no solution.

He was also firmly and utterly opposed to all and any forms of cruelty to any animals whatsoever except geese.

Can one build an honest house on dishonest foundation? I do not know. But I do know that I want to try. (Edward Ferrier)

I wasn't happy about it, but I respected their decision. Every now and then you had to break the rules to do the right thing, but a lot of times following the rules was the right thing.

The foundation of culture, as of character, is at last the moral sentiment.

So then, the striking thing about the laws of the Old Testament is not that some of them are beneath the modern conscience but that they are above the other law codes of the ancient world. As

I've never bet in a casino; it's just not something I do.

I have values I believe in and certain things I stand for.

I believe there is a certain way to do things.

Even in my most inflamed moment I never supported a racist mass murderer.

I do my research, and if I'm supporting something, then it's because it aligns with me morally and ethically.

The key to the future for blacks is a commitment to America and its ideals of freedom, personal responsibility, the free enterprise system, and moral principles.

Iris praecepta sunt haec: honest vvere, alterum nn laedere, suum cuique tribuere. (Justinian Inst. 1.1:

Remember, all I am trying to establish for the moment is that we do not, as a matter of fact, derive our morals from scripture. Or, if we do, we pick and choose among the scriptures for the nice bits and reject the nasty. But then we must have some independent criterion for deciding which are the moral bits: a criterion which, wherever it comes from, cannot come from scripture itself and is presumably available to all of us whether we are religious or not.

The moral ascendancy of equality has made it difficult to use concepts such as virtue, excellence, beauty and – above all – truth.

In James's comparatively simple set of values, a little toadying seldom went amiss.

It was an ethical choice between rules or lives, and rules didn't always translate into what was right.

There is a fine line between neutral and amoral. In fact, there may be no line there at all.

It is a world not of angels but of angles, where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles; a world where we are always moral and our enemies always immoral.

Hemingway shot himself. I don't like a man that takes the short way home.

There are no perfectly honorable men; but every true man has one main point of honor and a few minor ones.

Moral principles have lost their distinctiveness. For modern man, absolute right and absolute wrong are a matter of what the majority is doing.

Human values should predominate in men's thoughts. Human life has no meaning without these values.

The Master said, "The gentleman understands what is right, whereas the petty man understands profit." (Analects 4.16)