Quotes About Morality

The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure virtue.

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. Adams

One knows what is right, but holds it at arm's length for a time, neither throwing it out, nor embracing it.

If you take God and faith and morality out of the equation, everything inevitably falls apart.

Strange that the most generous men and religious, do not see that their duties increase with their fortune, and that they will be punished for spending it" on themselves in eating and drinking.

while the law permits the Americans to do what they please, religion prevents them from conceiving, and forbids them to commit, what is rash or unjust." He

So Franklin, without feeling the need to explain himself much, is bluntly saying that "freedom requires virtue." And that less virtue inevitably begets less freedom.

He understood that the law could not force people to do what was right. In fact, the laws of America didn't try to do this. They provided freedom, and what the citizens did with that freedom was something else altogether. "Thus," Tocqueville writes, "while the law permits the Americans to do what they please, religion prevents them from conceiving, and forbids them to commit, what is rash or unjust." He

Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles. According

Paula Bonhoeffer's faith was most evident in the values that she and her husband taught their children. Exhibiting selflessness, expressing generosity, and helping others were central to the family culture.

Tocqueville put it as bluntly as Franklin or Adams had, writing: "Liberty cannot be established without morality.

Adams understood that the secret to self-government is that the people must themselves be self-governing, which is to say they must be motivated by something beyond the law. Each individual must govern himself, and for this morality was plainly necessary.

What Wilberforce vanquished was something even worse than slavery, something that was much more fundamental and can hardly be seen from where we stand today: he vanquished the very mind-set that made slavery acceptable and allowed it to survive and thrive for millennia.

human being's moral integrity begins when he is prepared to sacrifice his life for his convictions.

Montesquieu, who wrote that "bad examples can be worse than crimes." He continued: "More states have perished because of a violation of their mores than because of a violation of their Laws." What

what it was that made one virtuous, whether religion or simple cultural habit, or a

You can speak of the ethical foundations of science, but you cannot speak of the scientific foundations of ethics.

No sooner is a playhouse opened in any part of the Kingdom than it at once becomes surrounded by a halo of brothels.

Anyone on the side of truth, wherever it led, was a compatriot to be lauded.

The Bonhoeffers raised their children to do the right thing, so when they behaved selflessly and bravely, it was difficult to argue.

During this period, he did some things that challenge our modern sensibilities.

They understood that freedom was not merely the freedom to be left alone; it was the freedom to do what was right.

the suppression of the Slave Trade and the reformation of manners.

Of the many societal problems Wilberforce might have thought needed his attention, slavery would have been the least visible of all, and by a wide margin.