Quotes About Morality

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

Some say knowledge is power, but that is not true. Character is power.

Oh! how amazing it is that people can talk so much about men's power and goodness, when if God did not hold us back every moment, we should be devils incarnate!

Money, it has been said, is the cause of good things to a good man, of evil things to a bad man.

Why wouldn't I help? What good reason do I have as a human being with power and a sense of empathy and morality, why wouldn't I do something?

Great fiction can often present moral messages with greater power and clarity than instructional writing - since literature, after all, penetrates not just the intellect, but the imagination.

Money and power are not your true rewards. Your name, your principles, your impeccable standards, your virtuous conduct, and remains an influence with others long after you are gone.

You know, kid, ethics isn't about choosing between right and wrong; it's about choosing between grey and grey. It's about choosing between two equally desirable but mutually exclusive courses of action. Freedom or security? Courage or comfort? Self-examination or blissful happiness? Column A or Column B?

Live so that you wouldn't be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.

People are getting smarter nowadays; they are letting lawyers, instead of their conscience, be their guide.

Lead your life so you wouldn't be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.

So live that you wouldn't be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.

You need to learn to recognize these things right from the start. Evil almost always starts with small cruelties.

How could it ever be to our purpose to rob another living being of his or her purpose?

Cruelty to animals is as if man did not love God . . . there is something so dreadful, so satanic, in tormenting those who have never harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power." —Cardinal John Henry Newman

Waarom zal ik mij moreel gedragen, als ik toch in ieder geval de doodstraf krijg? Iedereen krijgt nou eenmaal de doodstraf en iedereen weet het.

humanity is the gatekeeper through which evil passes into the world. In this metaphor, the Fall becomes the failure of the gatekeeper to maintain proper control of the gate.

He writes of the Garman ethics that "there is a standard of righteousness that might does not make right, that the end does not justify the means, and that expediency as a working principle is bound to fail. The only hope of perfecting human relationships is in accordance with the law of service under which men are not so solicitous about what they shall get as they are about what they shall give.

Virtue is an habit whereby the will is inclined to do well.

We are social creatures; we will be miserable if we try to cut off contact with other people. Therefore, if what we seek is tranquility, we should form and maintain relations with others. In doing so, though, we should be careful about whom we befriend. We should also, to the extent possible, avoid people whose values are corrupt, for fear that their values will contaminate ours. •

The pursuit of virtue results in a degree of tranquility, which in turn makes it easier for us to pursue virtue.

we have complete control over our character. We are, he says, the only ones who can stop ourselves from attaining goodness and integrity.

Epictetus agrees that we should avoid having sex before marriage, but adds that if we succeed in doing this, we shouldn't boast about our chastity and belittle those who aren't likewise chaste.14

The concept behind personal integrity is wholeness. When a person is the same without as within, when what others know about him is the same truth he knows about himself, he has integrity.