Ethics Morality Quotes & Sayings

So let me put it thus: Hold on to your principles of morality and ethics, use your willpower to the limit, pay great heed to every noble, uplifting desire that is in you; but realize that these things alone are not enough, that they will never bring you to the desired place. We have to realize that all our best is totally inadequate, that a spiritual battle must be fought in a spiritual manner. — David Lloyd-Jones

I think moralistic science is bad for morals and bad for science. — Steven Pinker

The supposed "secular" values atheists hold dear are in fact borrowed Christian values. Our society is respectful of any creed, or lack thereof, not because it embraces an illusory, non-existent secular morality, but because it is rooted in Christian faith. Christopher Dawson noted that "we cannot understand the inner form of a society unless we understand its religion." Because moral values are always a religious product, and Western moral values are a product of Christianity. Our values, what we believe has a value beyond and above our self-interest, are grounded in religious faith or are not grounded at all. — Giorgio Roversi

Given our obsession with self, it is hardly surprising we think it is fine for us to live in a world with malleable moral markers, as long as we get our own way without being bullied by others into accepting their way of doing things. We want others to respect moral boundaries that we want to be free to ignore when it suits. — Stephen McAndrew

Right isn't always legal. — J.S.B. Morse

Morally it may be better to not kill any creature for their flesh, but biologically, meat was one of the greatest factors involved in the rise of the psychology of thinking humanity. — Abhijit Naskar

Good, then, is indefinable.... — G.E. Moore

Not only to myself or before the mirror or at the hour of my death, which I hope will be long in coming, but in the presence of my children and my wife and in the face of the peaceful life I'm building, I must acknowledge: (1) That under Stalin I wouldn't have wasted my youth in the gulag or ended up with a bullet in the back of my head. (2) That in the McCarthy era I wouldn't have lost my job or had to pump gas at a gas station. (3) That under Hitler, however, I would have been one of those who chose the path of exile, and that under Franco I wouldn't have composed sonnets to the caudillo or the Holy Virgin like so many lifelong democrats. One thing is as true as the other. My bravery has its limits, certainly, but so does what I'm willing to swallow. Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragicomedy. — Roberto Bolano

The sign of a good conscience is for a man to be in support of basically everything that Westboro Baptist isn't. — Luke Myer

Compulsion precedes morality, indeed morality itself is compulsion for a time, to which one submits for the avoidance of pain. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It's easy to forgive people who have never done anything to make us angry. People who do make us angry, however, are our most important teachers. They indicate the limits to our capacity for forgiveness. "Holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation." The decision to let go our grievances against other people is the decision to see ourselves as we truly are, because any darkness we let blind us to another's perfection also blinds us to our own. It can be very hard to let go of your perception of someone's guilt when you know that by every standard of ethics, morality, or integrity, you're right to find fault with them. But the Course asks, "Do you prefer that you be right or happy? — Marianne Williamson

What is law? Is it what is on the books, or what is actually enacted and obeyed in a society? Or is law what must be enacted and obeyed, whether or not it is on the books, if things are to go right? — Bernhard Schlink

Without morality and ethics there is no religion (dharma), the foundation of religion is morality and ethics. — Dada Bhagwan

It has been an obsession of human beings to create a hierarchy that places the human species on top and lumps all the "other animals" together beneath us. The resulting "speciesism" allows us to look upon animals as less deserving of all manner of rights and considerations than humans. To support this lower status, humans have argued that animals act instinctually; don't have souls; don't feel physical pain like we do; and lack self-consciousness, cognitive intelligence, emotional feelings, morality, and ethics. — Sharon Gannon

The fisherman of the Colombian coast must be learned doctors of ethics and morality, for they invented the word sentipensante, or 'feeling-thinking' to define language that speaks the truth. Eduardo Galeano — Rob Brezsny

Who you are in public is a test of your conviction; who you are in private, integrity. — Criss Jami

You're trying to be tricky. What's morality?"
"It's the difference between what's right and what you can rationalize."
"Must be a human thing."
"Exactly. — Christopher Moore

People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad. — Stephen King

For women especially, virginity has become the easy answer- the morality quick fix. You can be vapid, stupid, and unethical, but so long as you've never had sex, you're a "good" (i.e. "moral) girl and therefore worthy of praise. — Jessica Valenti

In silence, an act is an act is an act. Verbalized and discussed, it becomes an ethical problem ... — Aldous Huxley

This is biblical ethics. It has little to do with the middle-class ethics of avoiding a few things which are supposed to be wrong and doing a few things which are supposed to be right. Biblical ethics means standing in ultimate decisions for or against God. — Paul Tillich

I gravitate toward the law, I think, certainly more times than not, because it's our best mechanism for legislating human behavior, and morality, and ethics. — David E. Kelley

There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules — Albert Camus

The essence of the spiritual process needs to be understood as a means to generate the necessary intensity to break the bubble, so that you are out of your individual nature. It is not about being good, it is not about being ethical, it is not about being moral. These things may all happen as a result, as a consequence. Once you have broken the bubble and known the freedom of experiencing everything as yourself, as a consequence you may function as a good person in society. But you have no particular intention of being good! — Jaggi Vasudev

Even the most rational approach to ethics is defenseless if there isn't the will to do what is right. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[The answer of Solon to the question 'Which is the most perfect popular government?']
That where the least injury done to the meanest individual, is considered as an insult on the whole constitution. — Solon

Christianity is the only system of faith which combines religious beliefs with corresponding principles of morality. It builds ethics on religion. — Austin Phelps

Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I'm bullshitting myself, morally speaking? — David Foster Wallace

With good morality first candidates you'll get bad candor, bad ethics, bad loyalty and bad morality - lastly bad odor will surface to save the day if you maintain good optimism like I do. — Brian Spellman

If we adopt the principle of universality: if an action is right (or wrong) for others, it is right (or wrong) for us. Those who do not rise to the minimal moral level of applying to themselves the standards they apply to others
more stringent ones, in fact
plainly cannot be taken seriously when they speak of appropriateness of response; or of right and wrong, good and evil — Noam Chomsky

Improving the world can be a nasty and ugly and difficult and dangerous business ... because when you improve the world, you threaten the entrenched interests of evil people. — Stefan Molyneux

Jesus was not content to derive his ethics from the scriptures of his upbringing. He explicitly departed from them. [ ... ] Since a principal thesis of this chapter is that we do not, and should not, derive our morals from scripture, Jesus has to be honoured as a model for that very thesis. — Richard Dawkins

Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess. — Thomas Paine

The market has no morality — Michael Heseltine

For the law is not jurisprudence, not a weighty tome full of articles, not philosophical treatises, not peevish nonsense about justice, not hackneyed platitudes about morality and ethics. The law means safe paths and highways. It means backstreets one can walk along even after sundown. It means inns and taverns one can leave to visit the privy, leaving one's purse on the table and one's wife beside it. The law is the sleep of people certain they'll be woken by the crowing of the rooster and not the crashing of burning roof timbers! And for those who break the law; the noose, the axe, the stake and the red-hot iron! Punishments which deter others. — Andrzej Sapkowski

I should say that there ought to be no war except religious war. If war is irreligious, it is immoral. No man ought ever to fight at all unless he is prepared to put his quarrel before that invisible Court of Arbitration with which all religion is concerned. Unless he thinks he is vitally, eternally, cosmically in the right, he is wrong to fire off a pocket-pistol. — G.K. Chesterton

Without man and his potential for moral progress, the whole of reality would be a mere wilderness, a thing in vain, and have no final purpose. — Immanuel Kant

An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy. If a man's mind is open on these things, let his mouth at least be shut. He can say nothing to the purpose. Outside the Tao there is no ground for criticizing either the Tao or anything else. — C.S. Lewis

A person who has a criminal mind and would be punished by the referees and they will remain in isolation from others as an opportunity for them to reform. When he or she get released from his or her referees' custody, he or she would have a better understanding about the ethical and moral values of his or her society and not make the same mistake again. — Saaif Alam

It takes a Bigger Courage to take on Danger, where None can be Sighted. — Vineet Raj Kapoor

Capitalism has neither the capacity, nor the morality, nor the ethics to solve the problems of poverty. — Fidel Castro

[The Truth Seeker is] Devoted to: science, morals, free thought, free discussions, liberalism, sexual equality, labor reform, progression, free education and whatever tends to elevate and emancipate the human race.
Opposed to: priestcraft, ecclesiasticism, dogmas, creeds, false theology, superstition, bigotry, ignorance, monopolies, aristocracies, privileged classes, tyranny, oppression, and everything that degrades or burdens mankind mentally or physically. — De Robigne Mortimer Bennett

As long as human labor power, and, consequently, life itself, remain articles of sale and purchase, of exploitation and robbery, the principle of the "sacredness of human life" remains a shameful lie, uttered with the object of keeping the oppressed slaves in their chains. — Leon Trotsky

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. — Voltaire

Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour ... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? — Charlotte Bronte

What is more, we cannot do morality a worse service than by seeing to derive it from examples. Every example of it presented to me must first itself be judged by moral principles in order to decide if it is fit to serve as an original example...even the Holy One of the gospel must first be compared with our ideal of moral perfection before we can recognize him to be such. — Immanuel Kant

[It] is nevertheless better than the theological concept, of deriving morality from a divine, all-perfect will, not merely because we do not intuit this perfection, but can derive it solely from our concepts, of which morality is the foremost one, but because if we do not do this (which, if we did, would be a crude circle in explanation), the concept of his will that is left over to us, the attributes of the desire for glory and domination, bound up with frightful representations of power and vengeance, would have to make a foundation for a system of morals that is directly opposed to morality. — Immanuel Kant

Integrity is never a given. It is a quality that can only be proven over time. — Gary Hopkins

You think you're superior to the others, don't you? We'll you're not. In fact you're worse for mistaking basic human decency for moral superiority. — Nenia Campbell

Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God's will. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion. — Steven Weinberg

A spirit of license makes a man refuse to commit himself to any standards. The right time is the way he sets his watch. The yardstick has the number of inches that he wills it to have. Liberty becomes license, and unbounded license leads to unbounded tyranny. When society reaches this stage, and there is no standard of right and wrong outside of the individual himself, then the individual is defenseless against the onslaught of cruder and more violent men who proclaim their own subjective sense of values. Once my idea of morality is just as good as your idea of morality, then the morality that is going to prevail is the morality that is stronger. — Fulton J. Sheen

A nation's domestic and foreign policies and actions should be derived from the same standards of ethics, honesty and morality which are characteristic of the individual citizens of the nation. — Jimmy Carter

I would say I am very much more interested in ethics than in code/ morality. I think it's in this way that one avoids the conservatism inherent in "the moral". — Richard Marshall

Refusal to stand up for what you believe in weakens individual morality and ethics as well as those of the culture. — Bell Hooks

Morality must guide calculation, and calculation must guide politics. — Madame De Stael

Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics. — Henry David Thoreau

Through our scientific and technological genius we've made of this world a neighborhood. And now through our moral and ethical commitment we must make of it a brotherhood. We must all learn to live together as brothers - or we will all perish together as fools. — Martin Luther King Jr.

And again, though we cannot prove, we feel, that we are deathless. We perceive that life is not like those dramas so beloved by the people - in which every villain is punished, and every act of virtue meets with its reward; we learn anew every day that the wisdom of the serpent fares better here than the gentleness of the dove, and that any thief can triumph if he steals enough. If mere worldly utility and expediency were the justification of virtue, it would not be wise to be too good. And yet, knowing all this, having it flung into our faces with brutal repetition, we still feel the command to righteousness, we know that we ought to do the inexpedient good. — Will Durant

To me, God is Truth and Love; God is ethics and morality: God is fearlessness. God is the source of Light and Life and yet He is above and beyond all these. God is conscience ... He is a personal God to those who need His personal presence. He is embodied to those who need His touch. He is the purest essence. He simply is to those who have faith. He is all things to all men. — Mahatma Gandhi

The time has come for all evangelists to practice full financial disclosure. The world is watching how we walk and how we talk. We must have the highest standards of morality, ethics and integrity if we are to continue to have influence. — Billy Graham

When you go to the polls, ethics and morality should be part of the evaluation. — John Shimkus

If 10 percent of the population were to take a consciously ethical outlook on life and act accordingly, the resulting change would be more significant than any change of government, — Peter Singer

Integrity, a standard of personal morality and ethics, is not relative to the situation you happen to find yourself in and doesn't sell out to expediency. Its short supply is getting shorter - but without it, leadership is a facade. — Denis Waitley

And now they were weary and frightened because they had gone against a system they did not understand and it had beaten them. They knew that the team and the wagon were worth much more. They knew the buyer man would get much more, but they didn't know how to do it. Merchandising was a secret to them. — John Steinbeck

How is it possible that suffering that is neither my own nor of my concern should immediately affect me as though it were my own, and with such force that is moves me to action? — Arthur Schopenhauer

In struggling for human dignity the oppressed people of the world must not allow themselves to become bitter or indulge in hate campaigns. To retaliate with hate and bitterness would do nothing but intensify the hate in the world. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can be done only by projecting the ethics of love to the center of our lives. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Egoism holds, therefore, is that each man's happiness is the sole good--that a number of different things are each of them the only good thing there is--an absolute contradiction! No more complete and thorough refutation of any theory could be desired. — G.E. Moore

Purpose, or mission, is determined by the development of values, balance, ethics, humor, morality, and sensitivities. It manifests itself in the way we look at life. — Luci Swindoll

The difference between the old and the new education being) in a word, the old was a kind of propagation - men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda. — C.S. Lewis

You. What is the moral difference, if
any, between the soldier and the civilian?"
"The difference," I answered carefully, "lies in the field of civic
virtue. A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body
politic of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life.
The civilian does not. — Heinlein Robert A.

Morality is always derivative. It stems from one's worldview. — Nancy Pearcey

May we think of freedom not as the right to do as we please but as the opportunity to do what is right. — Peter Marshall

SEN. McCARTHY: You will teach morality, ethics, and good house-keeping to these 48 states, and to the world. By order of this committee, June Cleaver, you will be a beacon! You will sire the future and teach it what we tell you to teach it! Echo effect, echo effect, echo effect ... — Benjamin R. Smith

We ought always to deal justly, not only with those who are just to us, but likewise to those who endeavor to injure us; and this, for fear lest by rendering them evil for evil, we should fall into the same vice. — Hierocles

It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it. That is beyond their will; and, however little they acknowledge it, one later discovers that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Enough of medical ethics. Let Uncle
Hippocrates rest in peace. It's time to send an S.O.S to Uncle Omar Khayyam instead. — Anurag Shourie

We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid. — Christopher Hitchens

My ethics, my sense of morality, my work ethic, my sense of compassion for suffering humanity, all of that comes directly out of the practice of poetry, as does my Buddhist practice. Poetry is a very important element in the history of Buddhism in general and in Zen in particular. It was really Zen that motivated me to change the way I perceive the world. — Sam Hamill

Stand for something. Don't quest for popularity at the expense of morality and ethics and honesty. — Howard Cosell

Unnatural, unorthodox, amoral: those pretensions crumble when confronted by true happiness. You shouldn't give another the authority to draw a line defining the boundaries of acceptable joy. — Darrell Drake

[W]e must start from somewhere in current folk morality, otherwise we start from somewhere unintuitive, and that can hardly be a good place to start — Frank Jackson

We must not fall into the trap of projecting our own morality onto the Soviet leaders. They do not share our aspirations, they are not constrained by our ethics, they always consider themselves exempt from the rules that bind other states. — Margaret Thatcher

As I see it the world is undoubtedly in need of a new religion, and that religion must be founded on humanist principles. When I say religion, I do not mean merely a theology involving belief in a supernatural god or gods; nor do I mean merely a system of ethics, however exalted; nor only scientific knowledge, however extensive; nor just a practical social morality, however admirable or efficient. I mean an organized system of ideas and emotions which relate man to his destiny, beyond and above the practical affairs of every day, transcending the present and the existing systems of law and social structure. The prerequisite today is that any such religion shall appeal potentially to all mankind; and that its intellectual and rational sides shall not be incompatible with scientific knowledge but on the contrary based on it. — Julian Huxley

In theory, multiculturalism is something we should all celebrate; unfortunately, in practice, multiculturalism means multi-morality ... The only antidote to such nihilistic thinking is ethical monotheism, the belief in one universal code of ethics. Differing cultures glorify humanity, but differing moralities destroy it. We must teach what Professor Viktor Frankl concluded after surviving Auschwitz: There are only two races of human beings, the decent and the indecent. That is how the world is divided: not between rich and poor, men and women, North and South, black and white, the powerful and the powerless, or any other nonmoral division that too many contemporary liberals have been advocating. — Dennis Prager

The terrible error in the course of human civilization is undoubtedly the defective judgment that allowed religious authorities usurp the foundation of societal morality, in which all collective ethics of humankind must take a cause. This appalling blunder is comparable only to assigning the leper exclusive franchise to run beauty clinics in the society; this can only lead to cycles upon cycles of common infection syndrome. — Adebowale Ojowuro

Morality and ethics are nothing but footballs, wherewith people, strong people play to win points. — Theodore Dreiser

A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom. I am oppressed if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am kept from throwing my neighbor into prison. — Simone De Beauvoir

We Humanists behave as well as we can, without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an Afterlife. We serve as best we can the only abstraction with which we have any real familiarity, which is our community. — Kurt Vonnegut

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

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

Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you,
will invite you to add something to the pleasure of others,
or to diminish something of their pains. — Jeremy Bentham

To live in a state of liberty is not to live apart from law. It is, on the contrary, to live under the highest law, the only law that can really profit a man, the law which is consciously and deliberately imposed by himself on himself. — Auberon Herbert

Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation. — W. Somerset Maugham

The garden [of Eden] is the realm of pure beauty from which man is expelled when he becomes interested in ethics, in the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The return into paradise, the homecoming, depends on him penetrating the veils of morality to glimpse again the lineaments of lost beauty. — John Carroll

We hear a lot of talk these days about teaching values in higher education. Frankly, I am not sure this can be accomplished through a separate course in morality or ethics. I am convinced, however, that values are sustained on campus by the honesty of our words, and by the confidence we have in the words of others. — Ernest L. Boyer

What our species needs, above all else, is a generally accepted ethical system that is compatible with the scientific knowledge we now possess. — Derek Freeman

Over a billion people believe in Allah without truly knowing what Allah supposedly stands for or what he really demands of them. And the minority that do understand continue to be Moslems because they have redefined their morality and ethics to fit within the teachings of Islam, which are floridly lacking in morality. They therefore redefine what is good and evil in order to fit their lives into what is preached by Islam, instead of examining Islam to see if it fits within the good life. Backwards thinking, imposed by a backward religion. — Bertrand Russell

Too many people get credit for being good, when they are only being passive. They are too often praised for being broadminded when they are so broadminded they can never make up their minds about anything. — Fulton J. Sheen

The argument about ethics and morality will have to go on in a post-religious society, just as it had to go on when religion was regnant and was often ordering good people to agree to evil things such as torture, slavery, or cruelty to children. — Christopher Hitchens

On a lighter but serious side I believe that homework was meant for parents to take a keen interest in the studies of children rather than leave it completely for the teacher. This way the parent child communication also developed. However with the passage of time the world become more mechanical and commercial. Quality time suffixed for quantity time and homework became a means of earning for many an educated unemployed teachers. How sad we sure have progressed but yet in many ways have lost our basic values, ethics and morality. It's time to wake up and DO OUR HOMEWORK. — Amit Abraham