Quotes About Morality

Discontent is the seed of ethics.

Without man and his potential for moral progress, the whole of reality would be a mere wilderness, a thing in vain, and have no final purpose.

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.

It is not reason that gives us our moral orientation, it is sensitivity.

Remove severe restraint and what will become of virtue?

An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes.

The challenge is to resist circumstances. Any idiot can be happy in a happy place, but moral courage is required to be happy in a hellhole.

The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain stem imperative of self-interest.

I remember a time when things were a lot more fun around here, when good was good and evil was evil, before things got fuzzy.

Those who grant sympathy to guilt, grant none to innocence.

The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important aims of philosophy.

Injustice upon earth renders the justice of of heaven impossible.

A man must not be without shame, for the shame of being without shame is shamelessness indeed.

Never judge a philosophy by its abuse.

Happiness is not the end of life: character is.

The pretended physical philosophy of modern days strips Man of all his moral attributes, or holds them of no account in the estimate of his origin and place in the created world.

Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it: and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement.

How can you qualify the difference between a sin and a lie.

I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy.

Of the opinions of philosophy I most gladly embrace those that are most solid, that is to say, most human and most our own; my opinions, in conformity with my conduct, are low and humble.

There can be no progress-real, moral prgress-except in the individual and by the individual himself.

American life is builded ... upon that fundamental philosophy announced by the Savior nineteen centuries ago ... [It] can not survive with the defense of Cain, "Am I my brother's keeper?

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

Maybe we are both good people who've done some bad things.