Quotes About Morality

History is full of examples of people who clamp down after they began to enjoy too much freedom. Freedom can lead to instability, anarchy, and confusion. So there can be a moral counter-revolution.

Chinese people don't care about freedom, but they do care about justice.

Freedom means the freedom to behave coarsely, basely, foolishly.

It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are yourself the slave-driver.

Without integrity and conscience we lose our freedom.

Character is not the enemy of self-expression and personal freedom, it is their necessary precondition.

Freedom is entirely different from revolt. There is no such thing as doing right or wrong when there is freedom. You are free and from that centre you act.

What is the freedom of the most free? To do what is right!

Man's most sacred privilege is freedom of will, the ability to obey or disobey his Maker.

Homo-voluntatis cannot explain why some things that can be done should not be done.

Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this.

Liberty is freedom constrained only by our responsibility to respect the equal rights of others.

Government should never be able to do anything you can't do. If you can't steal from your neighbor, you can't send the government to steal for you.

Do not treat others as you would not like to be treated' frees one from hypocrisy. 'Treat others as you would like to be treated' enslaves one with insincerity.

Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right to do what we ought.

The fidelity of a dog is a precious gift demanding no less binding moral responsibilities than the friendship of a human being.

It is bitter to lose a friend to evil before one loses him to death.

When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.

Say what you mean to do...and take it for granted you mean to do right. Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or keep one...you will wrong him and wrong yourself by equivocation of any kind.

It is virtue, virtue, which both creates and preserves friendship. On it depends harmony of interest, permanence, fidelity.

Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.

He who looks for advantage out of friendship strips it all of its nobility.

Notice that all the traditional things philosophers do, looking for validity and soundness, promote civic friendship. That sounds pretty pie in the sky, yes, but I actually believe it.