Quotes About Moral

I felt bad, but I did it anyway, because I'm only human. I was ashamed of myself and depressed afterward, though, which is human, too, I guess. Being human is an excuse for just about everything, but it also kind of sucks in a way.

Evangelicals are experts at adopting heroes, since their community produces so few with both moral standing and intellectual firepower.

God as preached and lived by Jesus, the Enlightenment writers put human non-exclusionary justice ahead of the law. This rational philosophy did not condemn according to a set of rules but demanded moral consistency and compassion from those who would judge. Enlightenment thinkers jettisoned the ugly, exclusionary and magical parts of the religion that grew up bearing Christ's name. Their goal was what Ellul called on the Church to do in Jesus and Marx:

We have here a human as well as an economic problem. When humane considerations are concerned, Americans give them precedence. The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.

The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America.

Being both more systematically brutal than chimps and more empathetic than bonobos, we are by far the most bipolar ape. Our societies are never completely peaceful, never completely competitive, never ruled by sheer selfishness, and never perfectly moral.

Instead of being a surface phenomenon in our expanded neocortex, moral decision-making apparently taps into millions of years of social evolution.

A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

President Bush,' he said, 'and all the people around him, will act according to their upbringing. Which is based on the Judeo-Christian moral philosophy supported by the Graeco-Roman concept of logic.

Si l'humanité a été stupide pendant des millénaires, on ne s'explique pas comment elle a pu cesser de l'être, d'autant que ce fut dans un laps de temps relativement très court : et on se l'explique d'autant moins quand on observe avec quelle intelligence et quel héroisme elle a été stupide pendant si longtemps et avec quelle myopie philosophique et quelle décadence morale elle est devenue enfin "lucide" et "adulte".

Toute erreur doctrinale s'accompagne d'une erreur psychologique à l'égard de ceux qui en sont indemnes : l'athéisme par exemple se prend volontiers pour un héroïsme moral; il ne peut concevoir de théisme libre de toute faiblesse, de tout désir sentimental. Suspicion injuste, car on peut tout admettre par sentimentalité, l'inexistence de Dieu aussi bien que le contraire.

Being good or evil is a choice.

Do not look to the executioner for the reason his blade falls. And

it is for a larger, homelier, less self-conscious caste of people who understand they are sinners because they have experienced the yaw and pitch of moral struggle.

There was, I think, a prevailing impression common to the provincial mind, that his misfortune was the result of the defective moral quality of his being a stranger.

Who killed this man [Patrick Sonnier]? Nobody. Everybody can argue that he or she was just doing a job - the governor, the warden, the head of the Department of Corrections, the district attorney, the judge, the jury, the Pardon Board, the witnesses to the execution. Nobody feels personally responsible for the death of this man. (p. 101)

From cradle to grave this problem of running order through chaos, direction through space, discipline through freedom, unity through multiplicity, has always been, and must always be, the task of education, as it is the moral of religion, philosophy, science, art, politics, and economy; but a boy's will is his life, and he dies when it is broken, as the colt dies in harness, taking a new nature in becoming tame.

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.

Notwithstanding much cant and hypocrisy—chaff which I find it difficult to separate from my wheat, but for which I am as sorry as any man—I will breathe freely and stretch myself in this respect, it is such a relief to both the moral and physical system; and I am resolved that I will not through humility become the devil's attorney. I will endeavor to speak a good word for the truth.

I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again.

What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom? Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast?