Quotes About Morality

The ethical is always more robust than the legal. Over time, it is the legal that should converge to the ethical, never the reverse. Laws come and go; ethics stay.

the highest form of virtue is unpopular.

Love without sacrifice is theft (Procrustes).

Everything in religious law comes down to the refinements, applications, and interpretations of the Golden Rule, "Don't do unto others what you don't want them to do to you." This we saw was the logic behind Hammurabi's rule.

And I will keep mentioning that I have no other definition of success than leading an honorable life.

A guilty conscience can be very troublesome, I've heard.

Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction.

The challenge for people today--and it is not and easy one--is to maintain high personal standards even while feeling that one is living in a moral sewer.

The idea of Original Sin—of guilt where there is no possibility of innocence, no freedom of choice, no alternatives available—is anti-self-esteem by its very nature. The very notion of guilt without volition or responsibility is an assault on reason as well as on morality.

The idea of original sin--of guilt with no possibility of innocence, no freedom of choice, no alternatives--inherently militates against self-esteem. The very notion of guilt without volition or responsibility is an assault on reason as well as on morality. Sin is not original, it is originated--like virtue.

At best, the responsible student may learn a new concept of human relationships that rejects the propriety of practicing human sacrifice.

When our behavior is congruent with our professed values, when ideals and practice match, we have integrity.

Most of the issues of integrity we face are not big issues but small ones, yet the accumulated weight of our choices has an impact on our sense of self.

we can be drawn not to the most logical explanation of our behavior but to the most damaging, to that which puts us in the worst light morally.

The higher the level of consciousness at which we operate, the more we live by explicit choice and the more naturally does integrity follow as a consequence.

We should not sacrifice self to others nor others to self; we should discard the idea of human sacrifice as a moral ideal. Relationships based on an exchange of values are superior to those based on the sacrifice of anyone to anyone.

If integrity is a source of self-esteem, then it is also, and never more so than today, an expression of self-esteem.

But this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose.

Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind.

such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin.

So, to their own unutterable torment, they go about among their fellow-creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow, while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid themselves.

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread.

Clergymen, judges, statesmen--the wisest, calmest, holiest persons of their day--stood in the inner circle round about the gallows, loudest to applaud the work of blood, latest to confess themselves miserably deceived.

It came to pass, not long after the scene above recorded, that the Reverend Mr Dimmesdale, at noonday, and entirely unawares, fell into a deep, deep slumber, sitting in his chair, with a large black-letter volume open before him on the table. It must have been a work of vast ability in the somniferous school of literature.