Morality Quotes

Besides, morality is not about whether the human race survives, but about what kind of survival it gets. We marry; guppies don't. We don't eat our young; they do. Yet neither species is in danger of extinction.

~ J. Budziszewski

Nowhere is moral shortcoming more prevalent than in the intersection between our espoused morality and the way we engage romantic and sexual partners. In truth, how we function sexually is a microcosm of the way that we are in the world. We might ask ourselves, Are we being selfish, considerate, or dismissive? Are we minimizing, compliant or controlling? Sex is the ultimate laboratory where we can actually try out new ways of relating to ourselves and our lover, being conscious and mindful of how we impact another person. It takes great humility to open a genuine exploration of our lived--not just stated--morality. But to live by the dictates of our own internal compass brings equally great joy, serenity, and self-respect.

~ Alexandra Katehakis

What was it about us, as humans, that drove us to make apologies for beautiful things?

~ Nenia Campbell

Morality is just a fiction used by the herd of inferior human beings to hold back the few superior men.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I know the difference between reality and fantasy. Those with sick fantasies who know and respect this difference are much less dangerous than those with no fantasies at all, but who can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality.

~ T.j. Dixon

The crimes the law can understand are not the worst crimes.

~ Larry Mcmurtry

Redemption precedes morality, and not the other way around.

~ Ravi Zacharias

If you notice, the moral law in the other legal codes separates people (the Laws of Manu, the caste system, the Code of Hammurabi with the slave/owner distinction). In Islam, the violator is inferior to the obedient one. By contrast, in the Hebrew-Christian tradition, the law unifies people. No one is made righteous before God by keeping the law. It is only following redemption that we can truly understand the moral law for what it is---a mirror that indicts and calls the heart to seek God's help. This makes moral reasoning the fruit of spiritual understanding and not the cause of it.

~ Ravi Zacharias

What decides whether a man will become immortal, is not his character but his vitality. Nothing save intensity confers immortality. A man manifests himself more vividly, in proportion as he is strong and unified, effective and unique. Immortality knows nothing of morality or immorality, of good or evil; it measures only work and strength; it demands from a man not purity but unity. Here, morality is nothing; intensity, all.

~ Stefan Zweig

If we were to suppose that mankind never can or will be in a better condition, it seems impossible to justify by any kind of theodicy the mere fact that such a race of corrupt beings could have been created on earth at all.

~ Immanuel Kant

Morality divorced from the doctrines of the gospel is not that holiness which the gospel requires.

~ John Owen

The reason most people are bad is because they do not try to be good. L. Frank Baum, The Emerald City of Oz, 1910

~ L. Frank Baum

A moral man is essentially dumbfounded when confronted by a man who is amoral—everything the latter does is met with a certain disbelief.

~ Andrew Holleran

He had been a demon for just two days, but the time when he knew what it was like to be loved seemed to exist in a hazily recalled past, to have been left behind long ago.

~ Joe Hill

So many times the debate of abortion turns to legality. The issue is not legality, the issue is morality. Have you not forgotten? It was legal for Adolf Hitler to place all of those men, women, and children in concentration camps and murder them. Abortion should never be an issue of legality, it is most definitely an issue of morality.

~ Derrick Sanderson

Morality is a subject to meddle in the affairs of other persons, guided by our preferences and convenience.

~ Aditya Ajmera

Morality doesn’t exist in space, only in the spaces between people.

~ Alex Latimer

Republics exist as long as the people adhere to principles and virtue.

~ Robert V. Remini

The victims of PTSD often feel morally tainted by their experiences, unable to recover confidence in their own goodness, trapped in a sort of spiritual solitary confinement, looking back at the rest of the world from beyond the barrier of what happened. They find themselves unable to communicate their condition to those who remained at home, resenting civilians for their blind innocence.The Moral Injury, New York Times. Feb 17, 2015

~ David Brooks

The moral sense in mortals is the dutyWe have to pay on mortal sense of beauty.

~ Vladimir Nabokov

People generally don’t suffer high rates of PTSD after natural disasters. Instead, people suffer from PTSD after moral atrocities. Soldiers who’ve endured the depraved world of combat experience their own symptoms. Trauma is an expulsive cataclysm of the soul.The Moral Injury, New York Times. Feb 17, 2015

~ David Brooks

One of the greatest of human follies is that we think we know ourselves so well, that we know how we would act under any conditions, that we would under any circumstance 'do the right thing.' Well, as many have discovered, you don't really know what you'll do in the dark till the lights go out.

~ James Carlos Blake

In addition to shaming sexual-assault victims, positioning abstinence as women's domain further promotes the notion that it's women's morality that's on the line when it comes to sex, men just can't help themselves, so their ethics are safe from criticism.

~ Jessica Valenti

All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at. Nay, so far are they from doing anything to control the desires and passions of men that, on the contrary, they direct and incite men's thoughts the more toward those very objects, for we always strive toward what is forbidden and desire the things we are not allowed to have. And men of leisure are never deficient in the ingenuity needed to enable them to outwit laws framed to regulate things which cannot be entirely forbidden... He who tries to determine everything by law will foment crime rather than lessen it.

~ Baruch Spinoza

We'd do well to remember that at the end of the day, the law doesn't defend us; we defend the law. And when it becomes contrary to our morals, we have both the right and the responsibility to rebalance it toward just ends.

~ Edward Snowden

Even the false accusations of a person of dubious morality can taint the reputation of an upright servant.

~ Hock G. Tjoa

All lines are gray in the dark.

~ Nenia Campbell

Sometimes it's difficult to tell what side of the moral compass we are all on. There are so many things to factor in.

~ Sarah Addison Allen

Don't change your morality for the people around you, change the people around you with your morality.

~ Donald L. Hicks

Nature teaches us to devour each other and gives us the example of all the crimes and all the vices which the social state corrects or conceals. We should love virtue; but it is well to know that this is simply and solely a convenient expedient invented by men in order to live comfortably together. What we call morality is merely a desperate enterprise, a forlorn hope, on the part of our fellow creatures to reverse the order of the universe, which is strife and murder, the blind interplay of hostile forces. She destroys herself, and the more I think of things, the more convinced I am that the universe is mad. Theologians and philosophers, who make God the author of Nature and the architect of the universe, show Him to us as illogical and ill-conditioned. They declare Him benevolent, because they are afraid of Him, but they are forced to admit that His acts are atrocious. They attribute a malignity to him seldom to be found even in mankind. And that is how they get human beings to adore Him. For our miserable race would never lavish worship on just and benevolent deities from which they would have nothing to fear; they would feel only a barren gratitude for their benefits. Without purgatory and hell, your good God would be a mighty poor creature.

~ Anatole France

Seriously, if you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else; it'll spread over into the rest of your life. It'll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being... There are NO limits. There are plateus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.

~ Bruce Lee

Every day we make our way through a moral forest, along pathways ever branching. Often we get lost.When the array of paths before us is so perplexing that we can't make a choice, or won't, we can hope that we will be given a sign to guide us. A reliance on sighs, however, can lead to the evasion of all moral obligations, and thus earn a terrible judgment.

~ Dean Koontz

there is a widespread notion in some of the most energetic contemporary Christian movements that the biblical call to reconciliation is solely about reconciling God and humanity, with no reference to social realities. In this view, preaching, teaching, church life and mission are only about a personal relationship between people and God. Christian energy is focused on winning converts, planting and growing churches, and evangelistic efforts. We have heard pastors say, “We appreciate the work you’re doing, but as the leader of my church I’m called to stay focused on the gospel and not get distracted by other ministries.” For them, Christianity is exclusively about personal piety and morals.

~ Chris Rice

Your conscience is your morality, expressed.

~ Donald L. Hicks

From the moment that man submits God to moral judgment, he kills Him his own heart.

~ Albert Camus

Day and NightThe night is long: do not shorten it by sleep. The day is fair: do not darken it with wrongdoing.

~ Idries Shah

If God creates morality, then morality is nothing more than the whimsy of a divine being blindly followed by humans.

~ Armin Navabi

To dispense knowledge without moral guidance would be grossly irresponsible.

~ Wayne Gerard Trotman

It's not enough, and so limiting, to teach the simplistic value of a designer's material wear. Give children the gift of values that will last far beyond [a] fad's temporal popularity.

~ T.f. Hodge

Three things at least they [good politicians] must require, the first is back-bone, the second is back-bone, and the third is back-bone.

~ Charles Sumner