Quotes About Moral

Creative powers can just as easily turn out to be destructive. It rests solely with the moral personality whether they apply themselves to good things or to bad. And if this is lacking, no teacher can supply it or take its place

Man in the mass sinks unconsciously to an inferior moral and intellectual level, to that level which is always there, below the threshold of consciousness, ready to break forth as soon as it is activated by the formation of a mass. ... Since nobody is capable of recognizing just where and how much he himself is possessed and unconscious, he simply projects his own condition upon his neighbor, and thus it becomes a sacred duty to have the biggest guns and the most poisonous gas.

The law in the hands of Jesus becomes alive with God's own personality. Majestic and authoritative, he is present in every commandment, so absolute in his demands, so observant of our conduct, so intent upon the outcome, that the thought of giving him less than heart and soul and mind and strength in the product of our moral life ceases to be tolerable to ourselves.

Empathy is a special application of the imagination. The ability to imagine what it would be like to experience what someone else is experiencing can be crucial to moral sensitivity.

But what of the voice and judgment of conscience? The difficulty is that we have a conscience behind our conscience, an intellectual one behind the moral. We can see quite well that our opinions of what is noble and good, our moral valuations, are powerful levers where action is concerned; but we must begin by refining these opinions and independently creating for ourselves new tables of values.

Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights

Harmony is the characteristic of the intellectual system of the universe; and immutable laws of moral existence must pervade all time and all space, all ages and all worlds.

Cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral excuse, and pretense of reluctance.

Contemporary euro-american occupation of Indian land is an important continuing benefit of the conquest that must be accounted for in the euro-american moral and spiritual inventory. In euro-american legal discourse, a recipient of stolen property is just as liable as the actual thief.

widely prevailing view is that justification is the term designating the beginning of the Christian life, while sanctification designates development of that life through the internal work of the Spirit.35 This, however, is an oversimplification of the New Testament teaching, and it obscures an important truth. In fact, the idea of sanctification is soteriological before it is a moral concept.

In war the moral is to the material as three to one. Napoleon

The events we have passed through form a coherent pattern and the political actors who have shaped the world are rational--if not necessarily moral or decent--actors. Americans tend to think of its leaders as fools and knaves and of its enemies as psychotic. This seems to comfort us. While America's leaders might be knaves, they are not fools, and while our enemies might have utterly different moral values that are repugnant to us, they are far from insane.

Morality starts as a simple concept and becomes complicated.

Taking a life always hurt. It never went away, no matter how justified the kill was. It still cost you a piece of your soul and it hurt when that piece died.

Two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the reflection dwells on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more seriously reflection concentrates upon them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me.

You must, therefore you can. A free will and a will subject to moral laws are one and the same thing.

Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.

An action done from duty has its moral worth, not in the purpose to be attained by it, but in the maxim according with which it is decided upon; it depends therefore, not on the realization of the object of action, but solely on the principle of volition in accordance with which, irrespective of all objects of the faculty of desire, the action has been performed.

Conscience is an instinct to pass judgment upon ourselves in accordance with moral laws.

For with regard to nature, it is indeed experience which supplies us with the rule and is the source of truth; with regard to moral laws, however, experience is, alas!, but the mother of illusion; and it is altogether reprehensible either to derive or to try to limit the laws of what we ought to do from what is done.

There are, if I may so say, three powerful spirits, which have from time to time, moved on the face of the waters, and given a predominant impulse to the moral sentiments and energies of mankind. These are the spirits of liberty, of religion, and of honor. —HALLAM, Europe in the Middle Ages.

Of course this chattering diary is a facade, the literary equivalent of the everyday smiling face which hides the inward ravages of jealousy, remorse, fear and the consciousness of irretrievable moral failure. Yet such pretenses are not only consolations but may even be productive of a little ersatz courage.

Gwen went up to Cambridge and read Moral Sciences and started on a Ph.D. thesis on Frege.