Moral Imperative Quotes & Sayings

We're all agreed that climate change is one of the greatest and most daunting challenges of our age. We have a moral imperative to act and act now. — David Cameron

The security of Israel is a moral imperative for all free peoples. — Henry A. Kissinger

I think a novelist must be more tender with living or 'real' people. The moral imperative of having been entrusted with their story looms before you every day, in every sentence. — Rick Bass

Proselytizing is a moral imperative and feeds the marketplace of ideas. I want to hear everyone tell the truth as they see it. I want to learn from everyone. — Penn Jillette

Neither god, nor angels, or just men, command you to suffer for a single moment. Therefore it is your solemn and imperative duty to use every means, both moral, intellectual, and physical that promises success. — Henry Highland Garnet

You're alive. Do something. The directive in life, the moral imperative was so uncomplicated. It could be expressed in single words, not complete sentences. It sounded like this: Look. Listen. Choose. Act. — Barbara Hall

Tackling deprivation around the world is a moral imperative and firmly in Britain's national interest. — Andrew Mitchell

Two presidents pursued human rights policies that were serious and effective: Reagan and George W. Bush. They understood that American support for human rights activists is a moral imperative for us and also makes the world safer for us. — Elliott Abrams

Laws that require equal protections reinforce the moral imperative of equality. — Hillary Clinton

The scientists are virtually screaming from the rooftops now. The debate is over! There's no longer any debate in the scientific community about this. But the political systems around the world have held this at arm's length because it's an inconvenient truth, because they don't want to accept that it's a moral imperative. — Al Gore

There is a moral imperative to seeing mental health through the same lens we use for other pathologies or illnesses. Being sad or overwhelmed is normal, much as being short of breath after a run is normal. Both become abnormal when they happen with no apparent cause and are hard to stop. Those situations need medical attention. — Matthew Goldfinger

Universal education is not only a moral imperative but an economic necessity, to pave the way toward making many more nations self-sufficient and self-sustaining. — Desmond Tutu

When it comes to animal agriculture, there is conventional, which is really hideous, and "compassionate" or "certified humane" or whatever, which *may* be *slightly* less hideous. But it's all torture. It's all wrong. These "happy" gimmicks are just designed to make the public feel better about exploiting animals. Don't buy the propaganda of "happy" exploitation. Go vegan and promote veganism. — Gary L. Francione

Much advice on writing has the tone of moral counsel, as if being a good writer will make you a better person. Unfortunately for cosmic justice, many gifted writers are scoundrels, and many inept ones are the salt of the earth. But the imperative to overcome the curse of knowledge may be the bit of writerly advice that comes closest to being sound moral advice: always try to lift yourself out of your parochial mindset and find out how other people think and feel. It may not make you a better person in all spheres of life, but it will be a source of continuing kindness to your readers. — Steven Pinker

Being rational is a moral Imperative. You should never be stupider than you need to be. — Charlie Munger

He ceased to be able to distinguish between personal preference and moral imperative, and he ceased to accept that such a distinction was possible. — Eleanor Catton

Darwinism undermined traditional morality and the value of human life. Then, evolutionary progress became the new moral imperative. This aided the advance of eugenics, which was overtly founded on Darwinian principles. Some eugenicists began advocating euthanasia and infanticide for the disabled. On a parallel track, some prominent Darwinists argued that human racial competition and war is part of the Darwinian struggle for existence. Hitler imbibed these social Darwinist ideas, blended in virulent anti-Semitism, and
there you have it: Holocaust — Richard Weikart

Our moral imperative is to work with all our powers for that day when the children of the world grow up without the fear of nuclear war. — Ronald Reagan

Science is fundamentally a moral enterprise, following the moral imperative to seek the truth. — George Lakoff

Early childhood education is an urgent educational, economic and moral imperative. Without it, we face a long-term national economic security crisis. — J. B. Pritzker

There is a false moral imperative that seems to be all-around us that treatment of depression, the medications and so on, are an artifice, and that it's not natural. And I think that's very misguided. It would be natural for people's teeth to fall out, but there is nobody militating against toothpaste, at least not in my circles. — Andrew Solomon

The mark of the "Noble Minded Man" is that he does not do things simply because they are pleasing or profitable to himself, but because they flow from an unconditional moral imperative. They are things that he sees to be right and good in themselves. Hence, anyone who is guided by the profit motive, even though it be for the profit of the society to which he belongs, is not capable of living a genuinely moral life. Even when his acts do not conflict with the moral law, they remain amoral because they are motivated by the desire of profit and not for the love of good. — Thomas Merton

A tension has always existed between the capitalist imperative to maximize efficiency at any cost and the moral imperatives of culture, which historically have served as a counterweight to the moral blindness of the market. This is another example of the cultural contradictions of capitalism - the tendency over time for the economic impulse to erode the moral underpinnings of society. Mercy toward the animals in our care is one such casualty. — Michael Pollan

Caleb leaned forward in his seat. "So who's the meanest person you've ever arrested?"
"What are you doing?" Nick gasped.
Caleb cracked an evil grin. "You have things you can't resist doing. This is one that is a moral imperative to me." *Must rankle bullies.*
*You're going to get jack-slapped.* — Sherrilyn Kenyon

We who came here saw what was happening. This was far more than a war in a faraway place. This was a moral imperative, a terrible vision of the future. — Paddy Ashdown

The Nuffield report suggests that there is a moral imperative for investment into GM crop research in developing countries. But the moral imperative is in fact the opposite. The policy of drawing of funds away from low-cost sustainable agriculture research, towards hi-tech, exclusive, expensive and unsafe technology is itself ethically questionable. There is a strong moral argument that the funding of GM technology in agriculture is harming the long-term sustainability of agriculture in the developing world. — Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher

A basic moral imperative is in play here. If you can protect a child, you must. — Catherynne M Valente

I find the scientific mind horrendous. All those brains and not a moral imperative between them. — Lucille Kallen

But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It's called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral - it's a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy. — Aaron Swartz

I believe that we carry within us a divinely inspired moral imperative to love ... We have within us the ability to change for the better and to find dignity as individuals rather than as drones in one mass movement or another. We have the ability to love, the need to be loved, and the willingness to put our own lives on the line to protect those we love, and it is in these aspects of ourselves that we can glimpse the face of God; and through the exercise of these qualities, we come to a Godlike state. — Dean Koontz

Americans ought to be the best-traveled, most cosmopolitan people on earth, not only because experience of the world is desirable in its own right, but because as a people acquires a great concentration of power, worldliness becomes a moral imperative. — Shana Alexander

After the first establishment of identity there comes the imperative need to lose this new-found sense of separateness and to belong to something larger and more powerful than the weak, lonely self. The sense of moral isolation is intolerable to us. — Carson McCullers

Respect for women is essential," Jack tells him. "Women's rights and economic development within a country are highly correlated. Treating women properly is not just a moral position - which it is - or an American value - which it is. It's a strategic imperative, and you will always, always lead by example in this regard. — Gregg Hurwitz

It seemed to me truer to the experience to be simply astounded that a small bird floated out there in this century, as its forebears had done for thousands of years before either Jesus or any of the rest of us. Nature had no moral imperative: nothing helped the bird; there was no fellow love for it out there; the water didn't help it, save harboring its food source; the other birds wouldn't mourn its passing; the weather was just the weather. A man stood on the beach, watched it pass, and spoke out loud its name, in wonder and intense joy. — Luke Dempsey

Life is a planetary level phenomonon and the Earth has been alive for at least 3000 million years. To me the human move to take responsibility for the living Earth is laughable - the rhethoric of the powerless. The planet takes care of us, not we of it. Our self inflated moral imperative to guide a wayward Earth or heal a sick planet is evidence of our immense capacity for self-delusion. Rather, we need to protect us from ourselves. — Lynn Margulis

I think optimism is a moral imperative. — Marianne Williamson

Only conservatives believe that subversion is still being carried on in the arts and that society is being shaken by it. Advanced art today is no longer a cause -it contains no moral imperative. There is no virtue in clinging to principles and standards, no vice in selling or in selling out. — Harold Rosenberg

All sentient beings should have at least one right - the right not to be treated as property — Gary L. Francione

Taking responsible steps to reduce poverty is not merely a moral imperative but an economic one. — John Yarmuth

The earth has enough knowledge and resources to eradicate this ancient scourge. Hunger has plagued the world for thousands of years. But ending it is a greater moral imperative now than ever before, because for the first time humanity has the instruments at hand to defeat this cruel enemy at a very reasonable cost. We have the ability to provide food for all within the next three decades. — George McGovern

There are good people, who are in politics - in both parties - who hold this at arm's length, because if they acknowledge it and recognize it, then the moral imperative to make big changes is inescapable. — Al Gore

Jews refuse to apply Kant's categorical imperative and be limited by universal rules. We might attempt a definition of a Jew as someone unable to make an objective moral judgement. His arguments will forever vary according to whether the subject is good for Jews or bad for Jews. WMD are bad in gentile hands but good in Jewish ones. Gentile nationalism is bad, devotion to the Jewish cause is good. Equal rights for Jews and non-Jews is good in Europe but bad in Palestine. — Israel Shamir

There's a real moral imperative in being an organization that takes the time to sit and listen to the customers and the people they're serving. — Jacqueline Novogratz

When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something ... but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, that is when we join the fashionable madmen. — Joan Didion

Just as everyone in a tribe praying to a volcano god would reinforce the idea that there is a volcano god, so begging politicians for favors reinforces the idea that there is a rightful ruling class, that their commands are "law," and that obedience to such "laws" is a moral imperative. — Larken Rose

Love is not an intellectual concept or a moral imperative or anything else. It is the background emotion that exists when one is connected to the energy available in the universe, which of course, is the energy of God. — James Redfield

In truth, the belief in "government" is a religion, made up of a set of dogmatic teachings, irrational doctrines which fly in the face of both evidence and logic, and which are methodically memorized and repeated by the faithful. Like other religions, the gospel of "government" describes a superhuman, supernatural entity, above mere mortals, which issues commandments to the peasantry, for whom unquestioning obedience is a moral imperative. — Larken Rose

You'll notice that for many progressives, taking from the rich is not simply a necessity of budgeting but a moral imperative and a tool to institute fairness that capitalism supposedly hasn't. — David Harsanyi

The moral imperative to make big changes is inescapable ... that what we take for granted may not be here for our children — Al Gore

Our planet's lands and oceans are already stretched to meet the demands of 7 billion people. The human population continues to grow. The search for sustainable solutions is an economic and a moral imperative if we are to create the future we want. — Ban Ki-moon

The necessity of political struggle especially means confronting and contradicting those on the left who say that resistance is futile. Such people have no place in a movement for justice. For actionists who choose to work aboveground, this confrontation with detractors - and some of these detractors reject the idea of resistance of any kind - is one of the small, constant actions you can take. Defend the possibility of resistance, insist on a moral imperative of fighting for this planet, and argue for direct action against perpetrators. Despite what much of the left has now embraced, we are not all equally responsible. There are a few corporations that have turned the planet into a dead commodity for their private wealth, destroying human cultures along with it. — Lierre Keith

Information is not synonymous with knowledge. Information is only data, parts of the whole. Knowledge has a moral imperative to enhance intellectual and spiritual unity. — Ruth Nanda Anshen

In pure Capitalism (never fully achieved even in America), the government's only role is to protect individual rights, property, and transactions from force or fraud by others via the police and/or courts and to protect the nation and its citizens against foreign aggression via the military. Period. As imperative as it is to understand morality, immorality, and amorality it is vital to understand that capitalism is the only social-political-economic-moral system that protects the individual from all force and fraud, including force or fraud from the government itself. — Alexandra York

It's lawmakers know better than anyone that laws are more a matter of practical compromise than any kind of moral imperative. — Kim Stanley Robinson

If I feel sure of one thing, it is that this kind of "health" imperative is not moral. It is grooming. — Mark Greif

He is an unsuccessful scapegoat whose heroic willingness to die for the truth will ultimately make the entire cycle of satanic violence visible to all people and therefore inoperative. The "kingdom of Satan" will give way to the "kingdom of God." Thanks to Jesus' death, the Spirit of God, alias the Paraclete (a word that signifies "the lawyer for the defense"), wins a foothold in the kingdom of Satan. He reveals the innocence of Jesus to the disciples first and then to all of us. The defense of victims is both a moral imperative and the source of our increasing power to demystify scapegoating. The Passion accounts reveal a phenomenon that unbeknownst to us generates all human cultures and still warps our human vision in favor of all sorts of exclusions and scapegoating. If this analysis is true, the explanatory power of Jesus' death is much greater than we realize, and Paul's exalted idea of the Cross as the source of all knowledge is anthropologically sound. The — Rene Girard

It is imperative that the entire Christian community in the United States come to realize the grave threats to the Church's public moral witness presented by a militant atheism which finds increasing expression in the political and cultural spheres. The seriousness of these threats needs to be clearly appreciated at every level of ecclesial life. — Pope Benedict XVI

I believe that the imperative need of the day is not simply revival, but a radical reformation that will go to the root of our moral and spiritual maladies and deal with causes rather than with consequences, with the disease rather than with symptoms. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

There is probably nothing more menacing or dangerous than an individual who is devoid of compassion or empathy. When this individual is permitted by community apathy and bias to successfully cloak himself in the attire of one who claims allegiance to his or her Creator, it becomes the moral imperative of those who lay witness to the peril to step up before it is too late. Until such a time when domestic violence and sexual assault are eradicated for good, the perpetrators of these deplorable acts will continue to cause unspeakable harm as Evil's welcomed ambassadors and Tyranny's strongest ally. — Sahar Abdulaziz

I believe the free enterprise system is not an economic alternative. It's a moral imperative. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

Whether you believe it a moral imperative or in the rich world's enlightened self-interest, securing the conditions that will lead to a healthy, prosperous future for everyone is a goal I believe we all share. — Bill Gates

To me, hope is a moral imperative. I have hope and faith in forces unseen. — Marianne Williamson

As once-colonized nations seek to stand on their own, the countries once denuded of their past seek to assert their independent identities through the objects that tie them to it. The demand for restitution is a way to reclaim history, to assert a moral imperative over those who were once overlords. Those countries still in the shadow of more powerful empires seek to claim the symbols of antiquity and colonialism to burnish their own national mythmaking. — Sharon Waxman

We've got the science, we've had the debate. The moral imperative is on the table. Great creativity is needed to take it all, make it simple and sharp. To make it connect. To make it make people want to act. — Andy Hobsbawm

Golden Rule has been rediscovered many times: by the authors of Leviticus and the Mahabharata; by Hillel, Jesus, and Confucius; by the Stoic philosophers of the Roman Empire; by social contract theorists such as Hobbes, Rousseau, and Locke; and by moral philosophers such as Kant in his categorical imperative. — Steven Pinker

When people think the issue can be solved, it becomes a moral imperative to be part of the solution. We can do a lot more within our school districts to recruit aggressively, select people according to high standards, invest in their training and development, and foster and reward their leadership. Once we invest more in attracting, developing and retaining teachers, potential recruits will begin to see it as a profession worth considering. — Wendy Kopp

Our search for such [moral] principles can start with ... the unconditional imperative to acknowledge every person as a person. If we ask for the contents given by this absolute, we find, first, something negative-the command not to treat a person as a thing. This seems little, but it is much. It is the core of the principle of justice. — Paul Tillich

The moral imperative of life is to live a life that detracts not at all from the lives available to those who will follow us into this world. — Don Richardson

Never having been betrayed sets up poor preconditions for remaining faithful. Evolving into genuinely more loyal people requires us to suffer through some properly innoculative episodes, in which we feel for a time limitlessly panicked, violated and on the edge of collapse. Only then can the injunction not to betray our spouses evolve from a bland bromide into a permanently vivid moral imperative. — Alain De Botton

The solution to racism lies in our ability to see its ubiquity but not to concede its inevitability. It lies in the collective and institutional power to make change, at least as much as with the individual will to change. It also lies in the absolute moral imperative to break the childish, deadly circularity of centuries of blindness to the shimmering brilliance of our common, ordinary humanity. — Patricia J. Williams

When I composed those verses I was preoccupied less with music than with an experience - an experience in which that beautiful musical allegory had shown its moral side, had become an awakening and a summons to a life vocation. The imperative form of the poem which specially displeases you is not the expression of a command and a will to teach but a command and warning directed towards myself. Even if you were not fully aware of this, my friend, you could have read it in the closing lines. I experienced an insight, you see, a realization and an inner vision, and wished to impress and hammer the moral of this vision into myself. That is the reason why this poem has remained in my memory. Whether the verses are good or bad they have achieved their aim, for the warning has lived on within me and has not been forgotten. It rings anew for me again to-day, and that is a wonderful little experience which your scorn cannot take away from me. — Hermann Hesse

Renunciation isn't a moral imperative or a form of self-denial. It's simply cooperation with the way things are: for moments do pass away, one after the other. Resisting this natural unfolding doesn't change it; resistance only makes it painful. So we renounce our resistance, our noncooperation, our stubborn refusal to enter life as it is. We renounce our fantasy of a beautiful past and an exciting future we can cherish and hold on to. Life just isn't like this. Life, time, is letting go, moment after moment. Life and time redeem themselves constantly, heal themselves constantly, only we don't know this, and much as we long to be healed and redeemed, we refuse to recognize this truth. This is why the sirens' songs are so attractive and so deadly. They propose a world of indulgence and wishful thinking, an unreal world that is seductive and destructive. (142) — Norman Fischer

How dominating is appetite, how enveloping immediate experience! Even the philosophically minded among us capitulate, ultimately, to the narrowest sense of personal need. Political time moves at a snail's pace because it is only with nearly insurmountable difficulty that moral discomfort takes root in the best of people, forcing an imperative out of a complaint; so viscerally repugnant is it for a critical mass to find the prevailing system unbearable, much less prepare to take up arms against it. — Vivian Gornick

Inexperienced in the course of world affairs and incapable of being prepared for all the chances that happen in it, I ask myself only 'Can you also will that your maxim should become a universal law?' Where you cannot it is to be rejected... — Immanuel Kant

You always say oh, that's so unprofessional as though there's some definition of professional that's also a moral imperative for how to behave. — Miriam Toews

The scientific method," Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, "is nothing but the normal working of the human mind." That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in corrrecting its mistakes.
Taking this point of view, we may conclude that science is not physics, biology, or chemistry
is not even a "subject"
but a moral imperative drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give perspective, balance, and humility to learning. — Neil Postman

The Spanish and Portuguese empires proclaimed that it was not riches they sought in the Indies and America, but converts to the true faith. The sun never set on the British mission to spread the twin gospels of liberalism and free trade. The Soviets felt duty-bound to facilitate the inexorable historical march from capitalism towards the utopian dictatorship of the proletariat. Many Americans nowadays maintain that their government has a moral imperative to bring Third World countries the benefits of democracy and human rights, even if these goods are delivered by cruise missiles and F-16s. — Yuval Noah Harari

Men who scorn the idea of submission to the divine Will and are outraged by the notion of a God who requires submission are among the first to demand total submission to the process in which we are involved and seem to attach a kind of moral imperative to willing participation in it. Any other attitude, so they say, is reactionary or escapist or anti-social. Perhaps, after all, they have found a divinity to worship; and, if they have, the only charitable comment must be: God help them! — Charles Le Gai Eaton

As an old creative industry full of cruelty and moral sense, British journalism once flourished on the imperative that people required the truth in order to survive. But people don't require that now. They want sensation and they want it for nothing. — Andrew O'Hagan

Whoever fails in the consideration generally due to the interests and feelings of others, not being compelled by some more imperative duty, or justified by allowable self-preference, is a subject of moral disapprobation for that failure, but not for the cause of it, nor for the errors, merely personal to himself, which may have remotely led to it. In like manner, when a person disables himself, by conduct purely self-regarding, from the performance of some definite duty incumbent on him to the public, he is guilty of a social offence. No person ought to be punished simply for being drunk; but a soldier or a policeman should be punished for being drunk on duty. — John Stuart Mill

What? It's not my fault I stab all the fanged people. They shouldn't look like Daimons. (Tabitha)
I didn't look like a Daimon, but you stabbed me. (Valerius)
Yeah, well, you looked like a lawyer so I had to kill you. It was a moral imperative. (Tabitha) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

The necessary consequence of man's right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.
If some "pacifist" society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it. — Ayn Rand

Like probably a lot of people, I came away from watching films like 'Miss Representation' and 'Half the Sky' with the realization that the battle for women's rights is not over, especially not globally, and that the moral imperative of our century is to achieve full rights for everyone regardless of gender. — Adora Svitak

Action isn't a burden to be hoisted up and lugged around on our shoulders. It is something we are. The work we have to do can be seen as a kind of coming alive. More than some moral imperative, it's an awakening to our true nature, a releasing of our gifts. — Joanna Macy

All the reasons which made the initiation of physical force evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative. — Ayn Rand

War is Man's greatest fall from grace, of course, especially perhaps when we feel a moral imperative to fight it and find ourselves twisted into ethical knots. We can never doubt (ever) the courage of those men in the Halifaxes and Stirlings and Lancasters but the bombing war was undoubtedly a brutish affair, a crude method employing a blunt weapon, continually hampered by the weather and lack of technology (despite massive advances that war always precipitates). The large gap between what was claimed for the results of the bombing campaign and what was actually achieved was never fully understood at the time, and certainly not, I suspect, by those men flying the bombers. — Kate Atkinson

If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable. — E. O. Wilson

I should never have allowed the gates of the town to be opened to people who assert that there are higher considerations than those of decency. — J.M. Coetzee

If the war had a noble purpose, it was this - to end the inhumanity those photographs showed. While India rarely spoke about its imperative as the moral one, and few people steeped in realpolitik can shed their cynicism when a politician speaks in moral terms, and the intervention certainly suited India's strategic interests, the fact remains that in the annals of humanitarian interventions, few were as swift, successful, purpose-driven and with humanitarian goals as the Indian intervention to liberate Bangladesh. India went in when it was attacked, and left before its troops became unpopular. — Salil Tripathi

Thinking carries a moral imperative. The searcher for truth must be ready to obey truth without reservation or it will elude him. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

Liberal gardeners are people who feel that, through gardening, we can alleviate our sense of alienation from nature; and that, through good gardening, we can repair some of the damage we have done to our environment. The most extreme liberals believe that there is an original or a natural state in which the environment would be if we hadn't shown up on the scene, and that we have not only the ability but also a moral imperative to help nature return to this state. — Deborah Needleman

There are moments in Life when keeping silent becomes a fault, and speaking an obligation. A civic duty, a moral challenge, a categorical imperative from which we cannot escape. — Oriana Fallaci

Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative. — Robert A. Heinlein

Environmental policies are not just about good publicity; they are about responding to the moral imperative to address both climate change and resource depletion ... A company culture that is based on measuring everything in purely financial terms will be crippled by a high turnover of staff, customers and suppliers — Toby Robins