Quotes About Virtue

The attacks by this movement on the rights and beliefs of Muslims, Jews, immigrants, gays, lesbians, women, scholars, scientists, those they dismiss as nominal Christians, and those they brand with the curse of secular humanist, are an attack on all of us, on our values, our freedoms and ultimately our democracy. Tolerance is a virtue, but tolerance coupled with passivity is a vice.

He was well aware, like Hugo, that good people were usually relentlessly persecuted, were rarely rewarded for virtue, and that those who held fast to truth and justice often found the way to their own cross.

Paine posited that the self-professed virtuous people would smash the windows of the actual Christian God if God ever lived on earth.42

I like who I am, trying to handle myself with integrity, character, honesty, treat people well and how I would like to be treated. And as long as I do those things, I can look at myself in the mirror and be proud of who I am at the end of each day.

I would rather miss the mark acting well than win the day acting basely.

One who imitates what is bad always goes beyond his model; while one who imitates what is good always comes up short of it.

The modest person is usually admired, if people ever hear of them.

On their own merits modest men are dumb.

Modesty is good. But not when it comes at the cost of honesty.

His modesty amounts to deformity.

What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

Intelligence is a moral category.

I've got a moral center.

The problem is we need much more moral content.

Moral authority is never retained by any attempt to hold on to it. It comes without seeking and is retained without effort.

High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.

Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.

The fundamental issue is the moral issue.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

Irony, I feel, is a very high form of morality.

There's no such thing as morality.

He was as great as a man can be without morality.

Rigour is to the mathematician what morality is to men.

He was a crystal of morality among our scientists.