Quotes About Ethics

religion notoriously claims that they invented morality, they didn't. Morality exists in animals, ya know.

Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?

One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.

No one has the right to tell me what to do because he has a divine warrant.

I respect humanity. That's my religion. I can't stand these religions that are really businesses. So much money everywhere that's going to buy a really nice house in heaven - or what? I don't get it.

There is no god higher than truth.

When religion and politics ride in the same cart, the whirlwind follows.

What I'm saying in my books boils down to this: Mine religion for what is good and avoid what is deleterious. Don't condemn people who need it. Be very careful when that need becomes fanatical.

Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.

Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.

What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives.

Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean Hell.

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists - that is why they invented hell.

Let us be done with the notion that religion is confined to petty pieties and small constraints. All too often people who have possessed these pieties have wrought great evil.

The term that best describes me now is 'secular humanist.'

The ruin of a State is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners and contempt of religion.

Religion which lays so many restraints upon us, is a troublesome companion to those who will lay no restraints upon themselves.

I am not advocating a morality based on evolution.

We must distinguish between spirituality in general terms, which aims to make us better people, and religion. Adopting a religion remains optional, but becoming a better human being is essential.

Hypocrisy and distortion are passing currents under the name of religion

The nice thing about citing god as an authority is that you can prove anything you set out to prove.

The Koran does not permit Mohammedans to drink. Their natural instincts do not permit them to be moral. They say the Sultan has eight hundred wives. This almost amounts to bigamy.

The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.

Churches come and go, but there has ever been but one religion. The only religion is conscience in action.