Quotes About Morality

Sir William Haley, one of my predecessors as editor of the Times, said, "There are things which are bad and false and ugly and no amount of specious casuistry will make them good or true or beautiful.

civilization means, above all, an unwillingness to inflict unnecessary pain... those of us who heedlessly accept the commands of authority cannot yet claim to be civilized men.

The church is not a religious club for the morally superior, but a community of sinners saved by grace.

Christianity is not primarily a religion of morality, but a religion of grace.

Every man has his price. For some it's money, for some it's women, for others glory. But the honest man you don't have to buy - he winds up costing you nothing.

Only conservatives believe that subversion is still being carried on in the arts and that society is being shaken by it. Advanced art today is no longer a cause --it contains no moral imperative. There is no virtue in clinging to principles and standards, no vice in selling or in selling out.

This is what it means to be human "in the image of God." It means being free to make choices instead of doing whatever our instincts would tell us to do. It means knowing that some choices are good, and others are bad, and it is our job to know the difference.

If a human artist or employer made children suffer so that something immensely impressive or valuable could come to pass, we would put him in prison. Why then should we excuse God for causing such undeserved pain, no matter how wonderful the ultimate result may be?

find God in the willingness of so many people to do the right thing, even when the right thing is difficult, expensive, or unappreciated, and to reject the wrong thing no matter how tempting or profitable.

Until I die, I will maintain my integrity. (27:2–5) This

Tell the righteous it shall be well with them, for they shall eat the fruit of their deeds. Woe to the wicked, it shall be ill with him, for what his hands have done shall be done to him. (Isaiah 3:10–11)

My list of the worst offenses against God would begin with hurting another person, cheating another person, shaming another person.

Good people will do good things, lots of them, because they are good people. They will do bad things because they are human.

There is no right way to do a wrong thing.

When facing a dilemma, choose the more morally demanding alternative.

The wayward morality of the country's "flaming youth" was blamed, at least in part, on their easy access to enclosed automobiles, which one outraged critic described as "bordellos on wheels.

Why do so many—not all, but many—run to see a crashed plane, or a train, or two autos with numerous dead about? Why? What is it? Weariness of humdrum and commonplace? Love of change? Horror of the same thing happening to themselves? Or is it something evil in them? In us? Do we like to see other people suffer when we ourselves are safe and don't suffer? Are we really just evil or a mixture of good and evil, whether we want to be or not?

To one outraged commentator, the mad "scramble of 15,000 people" to the site of such "appalling and atrocious" crimes was a sad commentary on the moral state of supposedly civilized man—"galling, incontrovertible proof that the race is still but a little removed from a stage of actual savagery."[

Technically, psychopaths aren't legally insane. They know the difference between right and wrong. They are rational, often highly intelligent people. Some are capable of great charm. Indeed, the scariest thing about them is that they seem so normal.

The virtuous man is contempt to dream what the wicked man really does.

In my psychological studies," Jones explained, "I have observed that religion is not restraining in a moral see. Religion is not the same as ethics. Religion in its fanatic state may be a passion devoid of morality that will take any means to an end.

Plato made this point several thousand years ago when he wrote: "The virtuous man is content to dream what the wicked man really does.

Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.

As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, he is trash.