Quotes About Morality

individual selection promoted sin, while group selection promoted virtue.

True character arises from a deeper well than religion. It is the internalization of moral principles of a society, augmented by those tenets personally chosen by the individual, strong enough to endure through trials of solitude and adversity. The principles are fitted together into what we call integrity, literally the integrated self, wherein personal decisions feel good and true. Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others.

Science and technology are what we can do; morality is what we agree we should or should not do.

God is in his heaven and he don't care most of the time. The trick of life is to know when God does care and do all you need to do behind his back.

Most crimes and misdemeanors by slaves were dealt with by their masters; they could even hang a slave if he killed another slave, but that would have been like throwing money down a well after the slave had already thrown the first load of money down, as William Robbins once told Skiffington.

But he was a free and clear man, and the law said so. Augustus never hurt me, never said bad to me. What Harvey done was wrong. But tellin you don't put me on the nigger side. I'm still on the white man side, John. I'm still standin with the white. God help me if you believe somethin else about me.

A satellite has no conscience.

Thinking that you are good can make you bad. Talking about positive behavior can encourage negative behavior. Laozi is clearly on to something when he warns us that consciously trying to be righteous will, in fact, turn us into insufferable hypocrites and that anyone striving to attain virtue is destined to fail.

There is so much good in the worst of us, And so much bad in the best of us, That it hardly becomes any of us To talk about the rest of us.

There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it hardly behooves any of us to talk about the rest of us.

The person of God walks the edge; one side virtue, the other, vice.

Virtue is God over the world. Vice is the world over God

No, no guns, they won't get us anywhere. I tried that when I was young and it's a useless interim game. Use guns and you're no better than the Black and Tans and that's not good enough.

'Tis impious in a good man to be sad.

The man that blushes is not quite a brute.

Neutral men are the devil's allies.

Goodness consists not in the outward things we do, but in the inward thing we are. To be is the great thing.

When private virtue is hazarded on the perilous cast of expediency, the pillars of the republic, however apparent their stability, are infected with decay at the very centre.

Whatever touches the nerves of motive, whatever shifts man's moral position, is mightier than steam, or calorie, or lightening.

The beauty of doing business with a crook is that he always forgives you for catching him, so long as you don't stop doing business with him.

The beauty of doing business with a crook is that he always forgives you for catching him, so long as you don't stop doing business with him.

The Ten Commandments have never been replaced as the moral basis upon which society rests.

The wise men of old have sent most of their morality down the stream of time in the light skiff of apothegm or epigram; and the proverbs of nations, which embody the commonsense of nations, have the brisk concussion of the most sparkling wit.

You can have malice towards other life forms other than humans. This, though somewhat contentious, could be said to be involved when eating animal products. Why? Anyone eating them is only doing so out of desire rather than need and this desire involves the doing of harm.