Quotes About Morality

The morality of the church is anachronistic. Will it ever develop a moral insight and courage sufficient to cope with the real problems of modern society? If it does it will require generations of effort and not a few martyrdoms. We ministers maintain our pride and self-respect and our sense of importance only through a vast and inclusive ignorance. If we knew the world in which we live a little better we would perish in shame or be overcome by a sense of futility.

civilization depends upon the vigorous pursuit of the highest values by people who are intelligent enough to know that their values are qualified by their interests and corrupted by their prejudices.

Even as rigorous a determinist as Karl Marx, who at times described the social behaviour of the bourgeoisie in terms which suggested a problem in social physics, could subject it at other times to a withering scorn which only the presupposition of moral responsibility could justify.

Religion is a good thing for good people and a bad thing for bad people.

It is fair, therefore, to assume that growing rationality is a guarantee of man's growing morality.

Teachers of morals who do not see the difference between the problem of charity within the limits of an accepted social system and the problem of justice between economic groups, holding uneven power within modern industrial society, have simply not faced the most obvious differences between the morals of groups and those of individuals.

Ultimately evil is done not so much by evil people, but by good people who do not know themselves and who do not probe deeply.

Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.

Waarom zou hij zich verzetten? Uit morele overwegingen? Kom nu; als je daaraan deed, kon je beter de rest van je leven thuis blijven zitten met dichtgespijkerde ramen en de deur op de grendel - dan had je een kleine kans dat je een fatsoenlijk mens bleef; alleen was er dan niemand die wist hoe fatsoenlijk je was.

Of all sexual aberrations perhaps the most curious is chastity.

It is well-nigh obvious that those who are in favor of the death penalty have more affinities with murderers than those who oppose it.

La civilisation chrétienne avait [...] perverti en condamnant les joies les plus belles que Dieu ait données à l'homme.

Voler une ombre, dépouiller un souvenir, est-ce vraiment voler ?

all that is necessary to right action is right judgment, and to the best action the most correct judgment

we ought not meanwhile to make use of doubt in the conduct of life.

Sixty years of virginity tried in vain to dam the waters of instinct as they burst through the granite of good intentions,the rock of irreproachablee conduct.

The children repeat the crimes of their fathers precisely because they believe they are morally superior to them. This false difference is already the mimetic illusion of modern individualism, which represents the greatest resistance to the mimetic truth that is re-enacted again and again in human relations. The paradox is that the resistance itself brings about the reenactment. PILATE

Like Jesus, Satan seeks to have others imitate him but not in the same fashion and not for the same reasons. He wants first of all to seduce. Satan as seducer is the only one of his roles that the modern world condescends to remember a bit, primarily to joke about it. Satan likewise presents himself as a model for our desires, and he is certainly easier to imitate than Christ, for he counsels us to abandon ourselves to all our inclinations in defiance of morality and its prohibitions.

People had a drive to immortalize their past, even the evil stuff, like Abu Ghraib or the Holocaust. They liked to take pictures, keep journals, because they believed in what they were doing. No one, Naomi had learned, did evil without believing it was right at the time. Maybe this was why it was nearly impossible to talk them out of it?

The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.

If a person fights, that's their own choice," Angel says. "But getting two roosters to fight or two dogs like pit bulls to fight, the animals don't have a choice there. They can't decide not to fight.

From cradle to grave, the Religious Right is concerned about every choice you make.

work by George Grant called Legislating Immorality, which called for the execution of all gay people, but was kind enough to qualify it in a footnote by saying that in our judicial system we would have to give them a trial first.

No man should tell a lie unless he is shrewd enough to recognize the time for renouncing it, if and when it comes, and knows how to renounce it gracefully.