Quotes About Morality

The Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg has put the point sharply: "With or without [religion], you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."120

Justice Scalia in Smith, citing Reynolds: If the law's authority were to vary based on the diverse moral and religious commitments of citizens, then all persons could become a law unto themselves.

integrity—in their specific sense of harmony between belief and action—may lack value when the underlying belief is badly wrong. And one way to determine when the belief is badly wrong is its tendency to cause harm to others.

There is no morality in war. Morality is the privilege of those judging from the distance. War is only death and destruction.

There are only two mortal sins in the world; one of these is to be cruel and the other is to possess , and they are both destructive of happiness.

Growth in moral virtue is a project of monumental proportions. "Disciplining and reforming desires" sounds so simple. But how many really succeed? The words of Our Lord come to mind here: "Narrow the way and few there are who find it" (see Mt 7:14). What we are suggesting here is that friendship is one of the most critical natural helps to walking the straight and narrow path.

Because the work that doctors do has moral urgency, doctors have a highly refined, professionally reinforced sense of right and wrong.

Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won't cheat, then you know he never will.

Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won't cheat, then you know he never will. Integrity is not a search for the rewards of integrity. Maybe all you ever get for it is the largest kick in the ass the world can provide. It is not supposed to be a productive asset.

The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class. It is not the realization of a political ideal; it is the discharge of a moral obligation.

We can't go far in morality before realizing that right is a relative thing and that those who disagree with us may be striving for it as earnestly as we are ourselves. It is the spirit that counts.

Most sins ... are only perverted virtues.

A man who could make so vile a pun would not scruple to pick a pocket.

Absence of social blame is the usual mark of goodness for it shows that evil has been avoided. Blame is most readily averted by being so much like everybody else that one passes unnoticed. Conventional morality is a drab morality, in which the only fatal thing is to be conspicuous. If there be flavor left in it, then some natural traits have somehow escaped being subdued.

The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better.

You should live by, what you claim to believe in. And if you choose to deviate, you should be ashamed of either defying your own beliefs, or believing those beliefs.

Chastity is not chastity in an old man, but a disability to be unchaste.

If I lose at play, I blaspheme; if my fellow loses, he blasphemes. So, God is always the loser.

Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.

Why, lies are like a sticky juice overspreading the world, a living, growing flypaper to catch and gum the wings of every human soul. . . And the little helpless buzzings of honest, liberal, kindly people, aren't they like the thin little noise flies make when they're caught?

My hands are guilty, but my heart is free.

In pious times, ere priestcraft did begin,Before polygamy was made a sin.

Successful crimes alone are justified.

Let grace and goodness be the principal loadstone of thy affections. For love which hath ends, will have an end whereas that which is founded on true virtue, will always continue.