Moral Clarity Quotes & Sayings

Unlike kitsch, moral clarity is hard to come by. It means working to make sense of things you do not even want to acknowledge. It often means not knowing if you ever get it right. — Susan Neiman

Winning the war on terrorism will also require a level of moral clarity that can provide a vision for struggling people and nations everywhere. — Adam Schiff

There is no incompatibility between moral clarity and intellectual firepower, between faith in God and humility
in fact, they're mutually dependent, between a strong conviction that we must go to war and an abundant compassion for any that may die as a result, and between political conservatism and personal decency. — David Limbaugh

Every so often, a painter has to destroy painting. Cezanne did it, Picasso did it with Cubism. Then Pollock did it. He busted our idea of a picture all to hell. Then there could be new paintings again. — Willem De Kooning

The simplified form of life is your Master, follow him without hesitation. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

For preachers, clarity is a moral matter. It is not merely a question of rhetoric, but a matter of life and death. — Haddon W. Robinson

In economic terms, global warming is not merely an externality that we have failed to price in. The free market can only get us so far. This makes it a truly wicked problem, but it also gives us a more perfect moral clarity. We are not simply borrowing against our own future. For the most part, we are not our own victims. To rely on empathy to shape our response to climate change is often considered naive - the victims of warming are distant in space, distant in time, and the bullets are invisible - but I believe it is more naive to hope that we in the north will significantly cut emissions or consumption or give needed adaptation funding to distant countries because we personally feel threatened. In — McKenzie Funk

One of the marvelous blessings of the Book of Mormon is that it contains, in clarity, revelations reserved to come forth in this dispensation of time. Much of the knowledge that we have relating to the principle of moral agency is found in these modern revelations. — L. Lionel Kendrick

Because of our failure to live out our beliefs, our own lack of moral clarity, and our meddling with partisan politics, Western culture no longer looks to Christianity as its moral source. — Philip Yancey

Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating. [ ... ] For Hamas, the only thing more prized than dead Jews are dead Palestinians. — Charles Krauthammer

When the CIA is the place you turn to for moral clarity, Nakamura thought, you might have a problem. — Ramez Naam

Reason is overrated. Many pundits have argued that a good heart and steadfast moral clarity are superior to triangulations of overeducated policy wonks, like the best and brightest and that dragged us into the quagmire of Vietnam. And wasn't it reason that gave us the means to despoil the planet and threaten our species with weapons of mass destruction? In this way of thinking, it's character and conscience, not cold-hearted calculation, that will save us. Besides, a human being is not a brain on a stick. My fellow psychologists have shown that we're led by our bodies and our emotions and use our puny powers of reason merely to rationalize our gut feelings after the fact — Steven Pinker

In my view, aiming at simplicity and lucidity is a moral duty of all intellectuals: lack of clarity is a sin, and pretentiousness is a crime. — Karl Popper

For me, an area of moral clarity is: you're in front of someone who's suffering and you have the tools at your disposal to alleviate that suffering or even eradicate it, and you act. — Paul Farmer

Some false representations contravene the law; some do not ... The sensibilities of no two men are the same. Some would refuse to sell property without carefully explaining all about its merits and defects, and putting themselves in the purchasers' place and inquiring if he himself would buy under the circumstances. But such men never would be prosperous merchants. — Clarence Darrow

One needs to continually make sense of a baffingly complex, constantly changing environment. Brief, succinct quotes can quickly produce clarity amid moral murkiness — V. Vale

You must take your chance. — William Shakespeare

Noir is where the clarity of moral divisions break down, the black and whites turn into grays. — Elliott Colla

Great fiction can often present moral messages with greater power and clarity than instructional writing - since literature, after all, penetrates not just the intellect, but the imagination. — Charles Colson

Teasing and a sense of humor, if you can develop that in your kids, and if you can exercise it with the kids, just makes for a pleasanter atmosphere. — P. J. O'Rourke

Anyone intent on moral clarity might want to find another book and, in fact, might not want to go anywhere near the enduring chasm of race in the United States. — Timothy B. Tyson

When I was young, I thought classical music was only the background noise for cartoons. — Ben Carson

The sad fact is that if you love education, revere the life of the mind, care about the pursuit of truth, think young people need to receive wisdom from their elders, and value moral clarity, the university is the last place you would want to send your 18-year-old. — Dennis Prager

For strict fundamentalists of the Bible, the theory and what follows from it seal them off from unwanted information, and in that way their actions are invested with meaning, clarity, and, they believe, moral authority. Those who reject the Bible's theory and who believe, let us say, in the theory of Science are also protected from unwanted information. Their theory, for example, instructs them to disregard information about astrology, dianetics, and creationism, which they usually label as medieval superstition or subjective opinion. Their theory fails to give any guidance about moral information and, by definition, gives little weight to information that falls outside the constraints of science. — Neil Postman

Today's television sitcoms ... the father is typically depicted as a clumsy buffoon, an inane and even unnecessary appendage. In creating that caricature, producers and directors have done irreparable damage to the God-ordained image of what may be one of the most significant roles and offices in eternity - that of a father, that of a real man. — Robert L. Millet

Naaaaaaayyyyy," said Pootie. "Milk comes out of goats?" I asked. "I thought milk came out of cows." "It comes out of goats, too, Arlo," said Andrea. Little Miss Know-It-All was proud of herself because she knew something I didn't know. I hate her. "See, we learned something already," said Mrs. Lizzy. "Goats — Dan Gutman

The power of prayer is a mighty force in our life". — Abdulazeez Henry Musa

In the Church he (Lincoln) saw people who, though they hated war as much as the editors did, saw with clarity what the moral alternative was. — Elton Trueblood

You are never too old to learn more than you already know and to become able to do more than you already can. — Isaac Asimov

Naturally, everything boils down to relationships in my books. — S.E. Hinton

The two most important things that can be done to promote democracy in the world is first, to bring moral clarity back to world affairs and second, to link international policies to the advance of democracy around the globe. — Natan Sharansky

Civil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play. — Al Gore

For such people the consummate act of moral clarity was a lynching or a suicide bombing, a fatwa or a pogrom. And they were ascendant now, rising like dark stars over a terminal landscape . — Robert Charles Wilson

Better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try. — Atul Gawande

Jesus wants to give you five things: extravagant compassion, moral clarity, sacrificial courage, persevering hope, and refreshing joy, — Gary Haugen

Suddenly we could all hear, we could all listen, and instead of being caught up in our finite little balls of bullshit, we could all become players in that great universal orchestra again. — Anthony Kiedis

A hostility to modernity is shared by ideologies that have nothing else in common - a nostalgia for moral clarity, small-town intimacy, family values, primitive communism, ecological sustainability, communitarian solidarity, or harmonies with the rhythms of nature. — Steven Pinker

For too long the pro-life movement has been shouting conclusions rather than establishing facts. Staying focused on the status of the unborn brings moral clarity to the abortion debate. — Scott Klusendorf

My work is based on the assumption that clarity and consistency in our moral thinking is likely, in the long run, to lead us to hold better views on ethical issues. — Peter Singer