Quotes About Morality

And is he honest who resists his genius or conscience only for the sake of present ease or gratification

The prince's robes and beggar's rags, Are toadstools on the miser's bags. A truth that's told with bad intent, Beats all the lies you can invent

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars: General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite & flatterer..

You cannot have Liberty in this world without what you call Moral Virtue, and you cannot have Moral Virtue without the slavery of that half of the human race who hate what you call Moral Virtue.

Active evil is better than passive good

I care not whether a man is Good or Evil; all that I care Is whether he is a Wise man or a Fool. Go! put off Holiness, And put on Intellect; or my thund'rous hammer shall drive thee To wrath, which thou condemnest, till thou obey my voice.

As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys

Hapishaneler Hukukun ta?lar?yla in?a edilir, Kerhaneler Dinin tu?lalar?yla

What can I know? Nothing for sure. What ought I to do? Try not to hurt anyone. What may I hope for? For the best (but it won't make any difference).

Is it possible to live reasonably without lying? Do lies form the natural foundation of all human relationships, the thread that stitches our individual selves together?

The idea of a priori moral judgements ('It is morally wrong to inflict gratuitous pain') is completely acceptable to the vast majority of human beings. Only a few philosophers would disagree.

But Raynor wondered, should evil go unpunished just because it's wielded by someone in power? Was

Remorse is a virtue in that it is a stirrer up of the emotions but it is a folly to accept it is a criticism of conduct.

For blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds, And though late, a sure reward succeeds.

What sets our species apart is not just what men will do to other men, but how tirelessly they justify it.

Good laws make it easier to do right and harder to do wrong.

To be engaged in opposing wrong affords, under the conditions of our mental constitution, but a slender guarantee for being right.

She [Ayn Rand] had to declare that....altruism was despicable, that only self-interest is good and noble. (About Ayn Rand)

Dr. King's flouting of the law does not justify the flouting by others of the law, but it is a terrifying thought that, most likely, the cretin who leveled his rifle on the head of Martin Luther King, may have absorbed the talk, so freely available, about the supremacy of the individual conscience, such talk as Martin Luther King, God rest his soul, had so widely, and so indiscriminately, made.

Unless you're ashamed of yourself now and then, you're not honest

And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.

And I reckon them that are good must suffer for it the same as them that are bad.

I mind how I said to you once that there is a price for being good the same as for being bad; a cost to pay. And it's the good men that cant deny the bill when it comes around. They cant deny it for the reason that there aint any way to make them pay it, like a honest man that gambles. The bad men can deny it; that's why dont anybody expect them to pay on sight or any other time. But the good cant. Maybe it takes longer to pay for being good than for being bad.

No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual's individual code of behavior by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only. Whatever its symbol - cross or crescent or whatever - that symbol is man's reminder of his duty inside the human race.