Morality Quotes

[T]he infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

~ Bertrand Russell

All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right, and not what is established.

~ Aristotle

As hatred is defined as intense dislike, what is wrong with inciting intense dislike of a religion, if the activities or teachings of that religion are so outrageous, irrational or abusive of human rights that they deserve to be intensely disliked?

~ Rowan Atkinson

Ethics and I had crossed paths recently, and I’m not sure that I fell on the right side of the morality line.

~ S.c. Stephens

I have a different idea of elegance. I don't dress like a fop, it's true, but my moral grooming is impeccable. I never appear in public with a soiled conscience, a tarnished honor, threadbare scruples, or an insult that I haven't washed away. I'm always immaculately clean, adorned with independence and frankness. I may not cut a stylish figure, but I hold my soul erect. I wear my deeds as ribbons, my wit is sharper then the finest mustache, and when I walk among men I make truths ring like spurs.

~ Edmond Rostand

Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.

~ Mark Twain

Now here's somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he's caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is that proper? I think it's absolutely disgraceful that our government, supposed to be our government, should be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail. That's the issue to me. The economic issue comes in only for explaining why it has those effects. But the economic reasons are not the reasons

~ Milton Friedman

We all love animals. Why do we call some pets and others dinner?

~ K.d. Lang

Sex: In America an obsession. In other parts of the world a fact.

~ Marlene Dietrich

She had wandered, without rule or guidance, into a moral wilderness... Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods... The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers—stern and wild ones—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.

~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

A moral system valid for all is basically immoral.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

One must conform to the baseness of an age or become neurotic.

~ Robert Musil

Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:The horror! The horror!

~ Joseph Conrad

Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

~ Oscar Wilde

What is morality, she asked.Judgement to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, and courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price.

~ Ayn Rand

I don't know what London's coming to — the higher the buildings the lower the morals.

~ Noël Coward

Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine.

~ Sigmund Freud

Well, I'm not here to impinge on anybody else's lifestyle. If I'm in a place where I know I'm going to harm somebody's health or somebody asks me to please not smoke, I just go outside and smoke. But I do resent the way the nonsmoking mentality has been imposed on the smoking minority. Because, first of all, in a democracy, minorities do have rights. And, second, the whole pitch about smoking has gone from being a health issue to a moral issue, and when they reduce something to a moral issue, it has no place in any kind of legislation, as far as I'm concerned.

~ Frank Zappa

I need a watchman to tell me this is what a man says but this is what he means, to draw a line down the middle and say here is this justice and there is that justice and make me understand the difference.

~ Harper Lee

If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilised morality to savage morality.

~ C.s. Lewis

When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary; when mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.

~ Émile Durkheim

Suppose you were the last one left? Suppose you did that to yourself?

~ Cormac Mccarthy

I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures; and if such a creature can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go .

~ John Stuart Mill

Mithorden: 'We become what we do, Zalos.

~ Robert Fanney

Therefore, let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you.

~ Doreen Valiente

Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds? Socialite: My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose... we would have to discuss terms, of course... Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?Socialite: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?! Churchill: Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price

~ Winston S. Churchill

Some people's blameless lives are to blame for a good deal.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

The eternal difference between right and wrong does not fluctuate, it is immutable.

~ Patrick Henry

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than action; innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) 'thou shalt not' predominates unduly over 'thou shalt.

~ John Stuart Mill

Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error.

~ George Bernard Shaw

She wanted him to tell her that when you love someone so hard and so fierce, it was all right to do things that you knew were wrong.

~ Jodi Picoult

Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.

~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions.

~ Alexander Pushkin

There is nothing wrong with revenge. The wrong has already been done, or there would be no need to even the score.

~ Ashly Lorenzana

Such is life. It is no cleaner than a kitchen; it reeks like a kitchen; and if you mean to cook your dinner, you must expect to soil your hands; the real art is in getting them clean again, and therein lies the whole morality of our epoch.

~ Honoré De Balzac

If history shows anything, it is that there's no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by reframing them in the language of debt—above all, because it immediately makes it seem that it's the victim who's doing something wrong.

~ David Graeber

We should challenge the relativism that tells us there is no right or wrong, when every instinct of our mind knows it is not so, and is a mere excuse to allow us to indulge in what we believe we can get away with. A world without values quickly becomes a world without value.

~ Jonathan Sacks

I tell Allah I love Him immensely, immensely. But I tell Him I cannot be better, because of how the world is.

~ Katherine Boo

‎It isn't enough to stand up and fight darkness. You've got to stand apart from it, too. You've got to be different from it.

~ Jim Butcher