Quotes About Morality

The most unbearable misfortune is when you yourself become unjust, malignant, vile; you realize it, you even reproach yourself—but you just can't help it.

Here Dostoevsky draws what seems to him the moral of the revolutions of 1848, and applies it to the Russian situation... "Every society can accommodate only that degree of progress that it has developed and begun to understand. Why reach further, why reach for the stars in the sky? This can destroy everything because it can frighten everyone.

The commitment to morality, or non-harming, is a source of tremendous strength, because it helps free the mind from the remorse of having done unwholesome actions. Freedom from remorse leads to happiness. Happiness leads to concentration. Concentration brings wisdom. And wisdom is the source of peace and freedom in our lives.

As Hobbes saw clearly, people don't have to be evil to get into collective action problems. They just have to be human.

The question is, if we already know what the right and the wrong answers are to moral questions, prior to the formulation of an abstract principle, what is the point of formulating the principle?

There are a variety of traits that set humans apart from our closest primate relatives. The "big four" are language, rationality, culture, and morality (or in more precise terms, "syntacticized language," "domain-general intelligence," "cumulative cultural inheritance," and "ultrasociality").

Here the rule-utilitarian believes that the only justifiable rules are ones that will promote the greatest happiness, when generally adhered to in a deontic fashion. Thus the rule-utilitarian rejects "deontology" as a theory of moral justification, but accepts deontic constraints as an essential element of moral action.

When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don't see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.

Justice is the truth in action.

Há pessoas que, da moral, só têm um pedaço. É um tecido de que nunca farão um fato.

It was agreed upon," Percy wrote, speaking in the passive voice of a decision that ought to have been his alone, "to put the children to death, the which was effected by throwing them overboard and shooting out their brains in the water." This

Changing the content of our memories or altering their emotional tonalities, however desirable to alleviate guilty or painful consciousness, could subtly reshape who we are, at least to ourselves. With altered memories we might feel better about ourselves, but it is not clear that the better-feeling 'we' remain the same as before." —PRESIDENT'S COUNCIL ON BIOETHICS

Mistakes may be made, he said, "but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principle." The

It is true that wealth buys power and influence, but it does not buy morality, or kindness, or compassion. The pursuit of wealth can blind us to the fact that all of us, rich or poor, can be generous with our time, love, kindness, and compassion. Those virtues, and many more, we can all have in unlimited supply.

In the absence of virtue and wisdom, intelligence becomes a servant of evil.

tity of her priesthood; 20 but she has never condi tioned the validity of a Sacrament on the moral worthiness of the minister. Her early teaching on the subject is clearly apparent from the writ ings of St. Optatus of Mileve and St. Augustine against the Donatists.

I, too, believe there are natural rights that predate any written political or legal documents; we have these rights merely because we're children of God.

A moral vision must be balanced by the realist dimension of prudence to have a reasonable prospect of success.

You can't always do the right thing. No matter how much you want to.

Power is neither good nor evil, but its user makes it so.

Mi abuelo es un hombre de bien. Me pregunto si yo seré un hombre de bien. Me pregunto si habrá hombres de bien en mi generación.

Sex is only a three-letter word so how can it be dirty?

Beauty is a symbol of goodness; the admiration we feel for it is a symbol of the reverence inspired by the moral law.

The essence of morality must be found in a careful attention to, and an attentive care for, others.