Quotes About Morality

As a result of my philosophy, I wasn't even upset about Hitler. I was willing to go to war to knock him off, but I didn't hate him. I hated what he was doing.

The concept of deservingness for one's "sins" implies that certain acts are unquestionably under all conditions "sinful." And this is impossible to prove.

The State, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.

The most important extra-curricular lesson we learned,—and we learned it properly,—was summed up in Chief Justice Jay's dictum that "justice is always the same, whether it be due from one man to a million, or from a million to one man." We learned this, not by precept, but by example, which is the best way to learn such lessons. In

White Christians often explained the disaster in a time-honored way: it was God's punishment of humanity for its sings. To the seven deadly sins--anger, greed, lust, envy, pride, laziness, gluttony--they added an eighth sin: 'worshiping science.

I believe in the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence. I think they both mean the same thing."3

God has given us a conscience superior to all law," said Wendell Phillips. The individual's conscience and the Golden Rule top any written law. There is such a thing as righteous lawbreaking.

The time will come when public opinion will no longer tolerate amusements based on the mistreatment and killing of animals. The time will come, but when? When will we reach the point that hunting, the pleasure in killing animals for sport, will be regarded as a mental aberration?

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics

By respect for life we become religious in a way that is elementary, profound and alive.

A man does not have to be an angel in order to be saint.

Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality.

Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.

The quiet conscience is an invention of the devil

Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.

In order to make the Kingdom of God a practical reality, it was necessary for Him to dissociate it from all the forces of this world, and to bring morality and religion into the closest connexion. "The law of love was the indissoluble bond by which Jesus for ever united morality with religion." "Moral instruction was the principal content and the very essence of all His discourses." His efforts "were directed to the establishment of a purely ethical organisation.

was important, therefore, to overthrow superstition and to bring religion within the domain of reason. First of all the priesthood must be deprived for ever of its influence. Then an improvement of the social condition of mankind must be introduced, since the level of morality depends upon social conditions. Jesus was a social reformer. Through the attainment of "the highest perfection of which Society is capable, universal peace" was "gradually to be brought about.

Ethik ist ins Grenzenlose erweiterte Verantwortung gegen alles, was lebt.

Die Ethik ist nur vollständig und echt und lebendig, wenn sie alle lebenden Wesen mit einschliesst.

Vernunft und Herz müssen miteinander wirken, wenn eine wahre Sittlichkeit zustande kommen soll.

A man does not have to be an angel to be a saint.

The thinking (person) must oppose all cruel customs, no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another.