Quotes About Morality

There are no good girls gone wrong - just bad girls found out.

Goodness had nothing to do with it.

To imply that religious believers have no right to engage moral questions in the public square or at the ballot is simply to establish a Reichian secularism as our state faith.

For Jane Austen, morality is not only a matter of personal responsibility between an individual and his conscience or his Maker; it is more social than that, it is a matter of how the conduct impinges on the lives of other people.

But really justice has no coordinates, no teleology.

So long as we exalt artists as beautiful liars or as the world's most profound truth-tellers, we remain locked in a moralistic paradigm that doesn't even begin to engage art's most exciting provinces.

Do not tell lies and do not do what you hate, for all things are manifest in the sight of heaven.

couldn't have my happiness made out of a wrong—an unfairness—to somebody else . . . What sort of a life could we build on such foundations? —EDITH WHARTON

I couldn't have my happiness made out of a wrong—an unfairness—to somebody else . . . What sort of a life could we build on such foundations? —EDITH WHARTON

My wife, I should tell you, is crazy. Not in a requiring-medication-and-wards-and-men-in-white-coats sense— although I sometimes wonder if there may have been times in her past—but in a subtle, more socially acceptable, less ostentatious way. She doesn't think like other people. She believes that to pull a gun on someone lurking, in all likelihood entirely innocently, at our perimeter fence is not only permissible but indeed the right thing to do.

Look, I'm not a demon here. I don't eat babies or kick puppies. I just tell the truth." She shrugged. "Can I help it if that makes the liars of the world angry?

People shouldn't have to earn kindness. They should have to earn cruelty.

To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay right or justice.

?Tis not for gain, for fame, from fear That righteous men injustice shun, And virtuous men hold virtue dear: An inward voice they seem to hear, Which tells them duty must be done.

A bad man is as much pleased as a good man is distressed to speak ill of others.

Do naught to others which, if done to thee, would cause thee pain: this is the sum of duty.*

Just as the track of birds that cleave the air Is not discovered, nor yet the path of fish That skim the water, so the course of those Who do good actions is not always seen.

Repeated sin destroys the understanding And he whose reason is impaired repeats His sins. The constant practising of virtue Strengthens the mental faculties, and he Whose judgment stronger grows acts always right.

Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty, when the state becomes lawless or corrupt

Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.

It is difficult, but not impossible, to conduct strictly honest business

Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having.

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.

To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body.