Quotes About Morality

Most American citizens do not think of themselves as living in an empire but instead in a great nation that mostly does good things. The occasional failing, like the toppling of a government in a violent coup or the murder of civilians in an air strike, is "not who we are.

The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.

The end of culture is right living.

You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.

My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.

There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.

Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practiced at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.

You know that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.

The Bible says that man lying with another man as with a woman is an abomination. I have never lain with a man as if he were a woman. I have no interest in such a thing. If I lie with a woman, it is because she is a woman and I want to treat her as one. If I lie with a man, it is because he is a man and I want to treat him as one.

So the platonic Year Whirls out new right and wrong, Whirls in the old instead; All men are dancers and their tread Goes to the barbarous clangour of a gong.

A learned theologian has laid down That starving men may take what's necessary, And yet be sinless.

The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.

Moreover, if great men are the only hope of the Evolutionary Process, they are morally bound to rule over the masses for their own good -- we are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don't know -- and the masses have no right whatsoever to resist them.

The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient: I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive, which is why, perhaps, all totalitarian theories of the State, from Plato's downwards, have deeply mistrusted the arts. They notice and say too much, and the neighbors start talking.

If I were asked to name people whom I considered true Christians, the name 'George Orwell' is one of the first that would come to my mind.

I'm really very sorry for you all, but it's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances.

Everyone behaves badly--given the chance.

Public opinion is a second conscience.

The only morality in a cruel world is chance.

Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.

We're not given the chance to choose absolute truth. Truth's always two-faced. The only thing we have is the right to reject the lie we find most repugnant.

I could not possibly improve on the sentiment, but I don't think it ought to depend on the current austerities. Isn't Christmas a moral and aesthetic nightmare whether or not the days are prosperous?

Pride is concerned with who is right. Humility is concerned with what is right.

Whenever two good people argue over principles, they are both right.