Quotes About Morality

In the past goodness was always a collective experience. Then goodness became privatised.

I know the good from the bad, also the in-between, but I was never political.

I felt that I was fooling myself eating meat considering my inability to kill an animal, so I just thought I'd better be honest to myself and stop eating meat.

On the issue of abortion, I'm ever on the fence, or, at most, an inch or two to either side.

No characters in 'Stay Close,' including the leads, are black and white. I want them to be grey. I think that makes for a much more interesting reading experience, something that will stay with you a little bit longer.

There's an ethical dimension to my life and all of our lives, from the time we get up in the morning to the time we sleep, including what we sleep on. So I don't separate my choices from ethical choices at any time.

Conscience - the only incorruptible thing about us.

I was raised Catholic, and I can get incredibly guilty about mistakes.

If you don't believe in God, all you have to believe in is decency. Decency is very good. Better decent than indecent. But I don't think it's enough.

People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don't know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.

No writer has a right to make that much money. Indeed, without diabolical assistance, no writer can.

Virtue is the effort, the conquest of a difficulty, leaving, as its results, a balance of happiness. There may be, there is much good in the world, which no virtue has been concerned in producing. But there is no virtue where there is no balance of happiness.

The day has been, I grieve to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still.

An absolute and unlimited right over any object of property would be the right to commit nearly every crime. If I had such a right over the stick I am about to cut, I might employ it as a mace to knock down the passengers, or I might convert it into a sceptre as an emblem of royalty, or into an idol to offend the national religion.

Everyone today is so fragmented. This isn't a country anymore. It's a collection of tribes, all competing with each other for jobs, money, media attention. When I was young, we were all Americans. Back then, we did what we had to, or what we could, to make this a better nation. We did what was right, what was moral.

Withersoever the wheel of Fortune turns, Virtue stands firm upon her feet.

Nothing in the nature around us is evil. This needs to be repeated since one of the human ways of talking oneself into inhuman acts is to cite the supposed cruelty of nature.

All those who write either explicitly or by insinuation against the dignity, freedom, and immortality of the human soul, may so far forth be justly said to unhinge the principles of morality, and destroy the means of making men reasonably virtuous.

What the bad man most fears is certain to come to him--that is death. It is just as certain to the good man, but to him it is welcome.

The discreet slaughter of fifteen or twenty wretched people per day will not prevent tramways from running to schedule, cafés from being full, or churches resounding with the Te Deum.

The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.

historians should be doing, according to some, is condemning them and focusing on the immorality of slavery and the Founders' moral blinders.

he sincerely loathed slavery; he called it "an abominable crime" and a blot on civilization.

why did he not free his slaves?