Quotes & Sayings About Moral Codes

Spontaneous order is self-contradictory. Spontaneity connotes the ebullition of surprises. It is highly entropic and disorderly. It is entrepreneurial and complex. Order connotes predictability and equilibrium. It is what is not spontaneous. It includes moral codes, constitutional restraints, personal disciplines, educational integrity, predictable laws, reliable courts, stable money, trustworthy finance, strong families, dependable defense, and police powers. Order requires political guidance, sovereignty, and leadership. It normally entails religious beliefs. The entire saga of the history of the West conveys the courage and sacrifice necessary to enforce and defend these values against their enemies. — George Gilder

The left tended to think people's private lives should be their own, even if they made choices traditional Christian society regarded as immoral; but that people's working lives, from how much they earned to where they worked, were fit for State interference. The right had a reverse view, that the State should uphold traditional moral codes with the full rigour of the law, but keep out of the economy as much as possible. — Andrew Marr

Strength, Courage, Mastery, and Honor are the alpha virtues of men all over the world. They are the fundamental virtues of men because without them, no 'higher' virtues can be entertained. You need to be alive to philosophize. You can add to these virtues and you can create rules and moral codes to govern them, but if you remove them from the equation altogether you aren't just leaving behind the virtues that are specific to men, you are abandoning the virtues that make civilization possible. — Jack Donovan

One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway ... We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking ... The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality. — Richard Rohr

But the ones who go posing as moralists are the worst. Cost-free morals. Full of great ways for others to improve without any expense to themselves. There's an ego thing in there, too. They use the morals to make someone else look inferior and that way look better themselves. It doesn't matter what the moral code is
religious morals, political morals, racist morals, capitalist morals, feminist morals, hippie morals
they're all the same. The moral codes change but the meanness and the egotism stay the same. — Robert M. Pirsig

Moral codes are like the ocean. Some people live by them, while others, such as myself, would rather live by a lake. — Jarod Kintz

We should remember what a rapper like Tupac Shakur was doing, to a certain degree, who came from an experience of politicization very close to being a "Panther Baby". He knew, he came from that experience of the Black Panthers, and accounting for all his contradictions and process of growth, he achieved politically through gangsta rap things that no conscious rapper has achieved, such as establishing political, ethical, and moral codes between Crips and Bloods in the United States. — Bocafloja

The [articles of the Genva Convention] adopted by The International Committee drew upon...the codes of a warrior's honour...these codes vary from culture to culture and their common features are the oldest artifacts of human morality: from Christian chivalry... to the Japanese Bushido or way of the warrior... The codes acknowledged the moral paradox of battle: that those who fight ...bravely are bound [by]...mutual respect... — Michael Ignatieff

Theology necessitates an image of God as a conscious, rational, supernatural being of unlimited power and scope who cares about humans and imposes moral codes and responsibilities upon them, thereby generating serious intellectual questions such as: 'Why does God allow us to sin?' 'Does the Sixth Commandment prohibit war?' — Rodney Stark

Bobos are uncomfortable with universal moral laws that purport to regulate pleasure. Bobos prefer more prosaic self-controlled regimes. The things that are forbidden are unhealthy or unsafe. The things that are encouraged are enriching or calorie burning. In other words, we regulate our carnal desires with health codes instead of moral codes. — David Brooks

The first two concepts - morality and immorality - are well understood in America: codes and boundaries of behavior are set by principles, doctrines, dictate, or convention. It's the third one - amorality - that is largely misunderstood but crucial to identify and comprehend. Amorality is a state of affairs where there are no moral principles or rules to follow or betray. None. Even though a culture may have rules regarding physical behavior, if there are no moral standards regarding truth, for example, then one cannot be right or wrong in such a societal vacuum because there is nothing to be right or wrong about. Therefore, even if lip service to the virtue of truth telling exists on one level or another, lying is firmly established in many cultures as an amoral practice. — Alexandra York

Social confusion has now reached a point at which the pursuit of immorality turns out to be more exhausting than compliance with the old moral codes. — Denis De Rougemont

The moral values, ethical codes and laws that guide our choices in normal times are, if anything, even more important to help us navigate the confusing and disorienting time of a disaster. — Sheri Fink

My mind didn't clear. It had been clear before. Instead it muddled, suddenly ablaze with rioting factions of insecurities and dreams, a cacophonous battleground of conflicting moral codes and dogma. I was, therefore, back to normal. — David Wong

If this is so, why should any man bother about moral rules and regulations? Why should any man conform to laws formulated by a people whose outlook on the universe probably differed diametrically from his own? Why should any man obey a regulation which is denounced, by his common-sense, as a hodge-podge of absurdities, and why should he model his whole life upon ideals invented to serve the temporary needs of a forgotten race of some past age? These questions Nietzsche asked himself. His conclusion was a complete rejection of all fixed codes of morality, and with them of all gods, messiahs, prophets, saints, popes, — H.L. Mencken

The five points of yama, together with the five points of niyama, remind us of the Ten Commandments of the Christtian and Jewish faiths, as well as of the ten virtues of Buddhism. In fact, there is no religion without these moral or ethical codes. All spiritual life should be based on these things. They are the foundation stones without which we can never build anything lasting. (127) — Swami Satchidananda

Science is morally neutral, but social science shows us that some moral codes are better than others. — Mario Bunge

And I don't think that government has a role in telling people how to live their lives. Maybe a minister does, maybe your belief in God does, maybe there's another set of moral codes, but I don't think government has a role. — Clarence Thomas

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

Maxims in times of danger are useless, experience is incommunicable. The knotted strands of life, desire, assumptions, and moral codes cannot be unsnarled; they can only be cut, which is what happens when an air raid occurs, with a silencing fortissimo like the finale of a Beethoven symphony. — Jacques Barzun

Every institution of our day, the family, the State, our moral codes, sees in every strong, beautiful, uncompromising personality a deadly enemy; therefore every effort is being made to cramp human emotion and originality of thought in the individual into a straight-jacket from its earliest infancy; or to shape every human being according to one pattern; not into a well-rounded individuality, but into a patient work slave, professional automaton, tax-paying citizen, or righteous moralist. — Various

You may never know what type of person someone is unless they are given opportunities to violate moral or ethical codes. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A middle ground might be to fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely, to demand the right to marry not as a way of adhering to society's moral codes but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution. [Legalizing "same-sex marriage"] is also a chance to wholly transform the definition of family in American culture. — Michelangelo Signorile

The words of musicals were the moral codes that I lived by. I found meaning and messages in musicals that I didn't find in churches or school books and it really made me come alive in a way. — Rosie O'Donnell

I think all villains have something in common: they have something that they need or want very, very badly. The stakes are very high and they are not bound by moral codes or being ethical, so they can do anything and will do anything to get what they want. — Donna Murphy

Eroticism is mystique; that is, the aura of emotion and imagination around sex. It cannot be 'fixed' by codes of social or moral convenience, whether from the political left or right. For nature's fascism is greater than that of any society. There is a daemonic instability in sexual relations that we may have to accept. — Camille Paglia

There is nothing inherently sacred about moral codes. Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are the work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy! — Anton Szandor LaVey

Every Christian church has tried to impose a code of morals of some kind for which it has claimed divine sanction. As these codes have always been opposed to those of the gospels a loophole has been left for moral progress such as hardly exists in other religions. — John B. S. Haldane

Three; - and this would be sufficient reason by itself - what are we supposed to be about, Sma? What is the Culture? What do we believe in, even if it hardly ever is expressed, even if we are embarrassed about talking about it? Surely in freedom, more than anything else. A relativistic, changing sort of freedom, unbounded by laws or laid-down moral codes, but - in the end - just because it is so hard to pin down and express, a freedom of a far higher quality than anything to be found on any relevant scale on the planet beneath us at the moment. — Iain M. Banks

Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions. — Will Durant

Originality is dangerous. It challenges, questions, overturns assumptions, unsettles moral codes. — Salman Rushdie

Moral codes and standards in our societies very rarely apply to all people equally. This is the most damning proof of how immoral such codes and standards really are. — Nawal El Saadawi

You can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its context (Exodus 21). The second is from the Gospels and says that only those without sin should cast the first stone. The first is a moral basis for capital punishment and other barbarities; the second is so relativistic and "nonjudgmental" that it would not allow the prosecution of Charles Manson. Our few notions of justice have had to evolve despite these absurd codes of ultra vindictiveness and ultracompassion. — Christopher Hitchens

Let's state it clearly: One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway. — Richard Rohr

Beauty is a living abiding presence completely untouchable by all the devices of man, such as moral codes, creeds, intellectual analysis, games and cliches, the acquisitive instinct, or lust for anything whatsoever. — Lawren Harris

If laws were real they wouldn't need to be enforced, because if they were real they couldn't be broken. Try breaking the law of gravity. Now that's a law. Laws made by man are rules reflecting the current status of his moral codes. As he alters and whittles away his morality, casting bits and pieces aside, his codes change to reflect it. — Boyd Rice

I was also beginning to learn about social psychology and the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures, which made me think about how malleable our supposedly strict moral codes become in the right conditions. Something that DIVERGENT grapples with. — Veronica Roth

Here is Menard's own intimate forest: 'Now I am traversed by bridle paths, under the seal of sun and shade ... I live in great density ... Shelter lures me. I slump down into the thick foliage ... In the forest, I am my entire self. Everything is possible in my heart just as it is in the hiding places in ravines. Thickly wooded distance separates me from moral codes and cities. — Gaston Bachelard

Our great civilizations are nothing more than social machines to create the ideal female setting, where a woman can count on stability; our legal and moral codes that try to abolish violence and promote permanence of ownership and enforce contracts
those represent the primary female strategy, the taming of the male. — Orson Scott Card

I try not to think in terms of good and bad but more in terms of helpful or unhelpful in regards to specific moral codes and goals. — Richard Brancatisano

Moral codes were not designed to be selective, nor indeed were they designed to be questioned. You could not say that you would observe this prohibition but not that. I shall not commit theft
certainly not
but adultery is another matter: wrong for other people, but not for me. — Alexander McCall Smith