Quotes About Moral

Every stylistic excess and moral defect which critics conspired to ignore in the author's first books, LANARK and UNLIKELY STORIES, MOSTLY, is to be found here in concentrated form.

If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us.

unless there is a telos which transcends the limited goods of practices by constituting the good of a whole human life, the good of a human life conceived as a unity, it will both be the case that a certain subversive arbitrariness will invade the moral life and that we shall be unable to specify the context of certain virtues adequately.

Only the Catholic Church protested against the Hitlerian onslaught on liberty. Up till then I had not been interested in the Church, but today I feel a great admiration for the Church, which alone has had the courage to struggle for spiritual truth and moral liberty

Although I have been prevented by outward circumstances from observing a strictly vegetarian diet, I have long been an adherent to the cause in principle. Besides agreeing with the aims of vegetarianism for aesthetic and moral reasons, it is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.

Knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy, dignified life. Humanity has every reason to place proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth.

The development from a religion of fear to moral religion is a great step in peoples' lives.

The desire for guidance, love, and support prompts men to form the social or moral conception of God.

Las gentes me cortejan en la medida que no las moleste. Pero cuando pretendo servir a objetivos que no les convienen pasan immediatamente al insulto, mientras que los indiferentes se esconden detras de su cobardía

This is the God of Providence who protects, disposes, rewards, and punishes, the God who, according to the width of the believer's outlook, loves and cherishes the life of the tribe or of the human race, or even life as such, the comforter in sorrow and unsatisfied longing, who preserves the souls of the dead. This is the social or moral conception of God.

Only the individual can think, and thereby create new values for society, nay, even set up new moral standards to which the life of the community conforms. Without creative personalities able to think and judge independently, the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community.

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'Try to be a little kinder.

The Humanity of men and women is inversely proportional to their Numbers. A Crowd is no more human than an Avalanche or a Whirlwind. A rabble of men and women stands lower in the scale of moral and intellectual being than a herd of Swine or of Jackals.

It's a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and to find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than try to be a little kinder.

His intellectual eminence carries with it corresponding moral responsibilities. The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray.

Cuanto mayores son los talentos de un hombre más grande es su poder de corromper a los demás. Y es mejor que sufra uno solo a que se corrompan muchos. (...) El asesino sólo mata al individuo, y, al fin y al cabo, ¿qué es un individuo? Podemos fabricar otro nuevo con la mayor facilidad; tantos como queramos.

His intellectual eminence carries with it corresponding moral responsibilities. The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted. . . Murder kills only the individual - and, after all, what is an individual?

I know. But that is all the more reason for severity. His intellectual eminence carries with it corresponding moral responsibilities. The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted. Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offence is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behaviour. Murder kills only the individual-- and, after all, what is an individual?

No se debe discutir con los adversarios; hay que atacarlos, callarlos a gritos o, si molestan demasiado, liquidarlos. El intelectual, moralmente remilgado, tal vez se escandalice de una cosa así. Pero las masas siempre están convencidas de que "el derecho está de parte del agresor activo".

There's always soma to give you a holiday form the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training.

If you want nature to treat you well, you must treat nature well. If you start destroying nature, nature will destroy you, and this basic moral precept is fundamental in our present knowledge of ecology and conservation. What we know now about ecology points to the fact that nature exists in the most delicate balance, and that anything which tends to upset the balance will produce consequences of the most unexpected character and often of the most disastrous character.

She's sociopathic. She will have no moral compunction in doing whatever is in her interests. It's as simple as that.

Distant wrongs, she thought: an interesting issue in moral philosophy. Do past wrongs seem less wrong to us simply because they are less vivid?

He seemed genuinely astonished. You admire me? Yes, she said gravely. All of us do things we regret--that's part of being human. And sometimes, I think, moral quality reveals itself not so much in what we do, but in what we later say about what we have done....