Morality As A System Quotes & Sayings

If you put it as 'complex nervous systems' it sounds pretty deflationary. What's so special about a complex nervous system? But of course, that complex nervous system allows you to do calculus. It allows you to do astrophysics ... to write poetry ... to fall in love. Put under that description, when asked 'What's so special about humans ... ?', I'm at a loss to know how to answer that question. If you don't see why we'd be special ... because we can do poetry [and] think philosophical thoughts [and] we can think about the morality of our behavior, I'm not sure what kind of answer could possibly satisfy you at that point.
... I could pose the same kinds of questions of you ... So God says, 'You are guys are really, really special.' How does his saying it make us special? 'But you see, he gave us a soul.' How does our having a soul make us special? Whatever answer you give, you could always say ... 'What's so special about that? — Shelly Kagan

You have your way of life, we ours. In your system of life we are essentially without 'honor.' In our system of life you are essentially without morality. In your system of life we must forever appear graceless; to us you must forever appear godless. — Maurice Samuel

I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning - the Christian meaning, they insisted - of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt: we would deny that the world had any meaning whatever. — Aldous Huxley

The Ten Commandments are the most visible symbol because these commandments are recognized by Christians and Jews alike as being the foundation of our system of public morality. — Pat Robertson

What I have called the internal morality of law is in this sense a procedural version of natural law, though to avoid misunderstanding the word "procedural" should be assigned a special and expanded sense so that it would include, for example, a substantive accord between official action and enacted law. The term "procedural" is, however, broadly appropriate as indicating that we are concerned, not with the substantive aims of legal rules, but with the ways in which a system of rules for governing human conduct must be constructed and administered if it is to be efficacious and at the same time remain what it purports to be. — Lon L. Fuller

Nothing is more vital to him than prejudices. Let us not take this word in bad part. It does not necessarily signify false ideas, but only, in the strict sense of the word, any opinions adopted without examination. Now, these kinds of opinion are essential to man; they are the real basis of his happiness and the palladium of empires. Without them, there can be neither religion, morality, nor government. There should be a state religion just as there is a state political system; or rather, religion and political dogmas, mingled and merged together, should together form a general or national mind sufficiently strong to repress the aberrations of the individual reason which is, of its nature, the mortal enemy of any association whatever because it gives birth only to divergent opinions. — Joseph De Maistre

Modern society, the political body, the legal and judiciary system, the state of governance, capitalism and the very fabric of the society itself, including our religions and so-called morals and values, are institutions steeped in traditions of absolute and total violence. — Bryant McGill

Everyday morality is always a blend, variously proportioned, of perfect morality and other more ambiguous ideas, for the most part religious. The greater the proportion of pure morality in a particular system, the happier and more enduring the society. Ultimately, a society governed by the pure principles of universal morality could last until the end of the world. — Michel Houellebecq

Philosopher has given a rational, objectively demonstrable, scientific answer to the question of why man needs a code of values. So long as that question remained unanswered, no rational, scientific, objective code of ethics could be discovered or defined. The greatest of all philosophers, Aristotle, did not regard ethics as an exact science; he based his ethical system on observations of what the noble and wise men of his time chose to do, leaving unanswered the questions of: why they chose to do it and why he evaluated them as noble and wise. Most philosophers took the existence of ethics for granted, as the given, as a historical fact, and were not concerned with discovering its metaphysical cause or objective validation. Many of them attempted to break the traditional monopoly of mysticism in the field of ethics and, allegedly, to define a rational, scientific, nonreligious morality. But their attempts consisted of trying to justify them on social grounds, — Ayn Rand

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true. — Socrates

The relationship between nurturance and moral self-interest can be seen most clearly in nurturant forms of business practice. It involves the humane treatment of employees, the creation of a safe and humane workplace, social and ecological responsibility, fairness in hiring and promotion, the building of a work community, the development of excellent communication between employees and management and between the company and its customers, opportunities for employee self-development, a positive role in the larger community, scrupulous honesty, a regard for one's customers and for the public, and excellent customer service. Policies such as these have increased the productivity and success of many businesses. They are models of how Nurturant Parent morality can function to help businesses be successful and to allow owners, investors, and employees to seek their self-interest within this moral system. Moral — George Lakoff

Manda and Sara are annoying because their whole belief system is in opposition to my own. They live by a Grand Theft Auto morality, by which lying, whoring, and stealing scores innumerable points. — Megan McCafferty

Truth without enthusiasm, morality without emotion, ritual without soul, are things Christ unsparingly condemned. Destitute of fire, they are nothing more than a godless philosophy, an ethical system, and a superstition. — Samuel Chadwick

A system of morality tells us what to do and what not to do, but it cannot tell us what we should feel. Genuine feelings cannot be produced, nor can they be eradicated. — Alice Miller

The fact is, the great intellectuals of the western religious tradition from Augustine to Aquinas and Peter Abelard became philosophically dominant. The intellectual tradition was preserved. The great intellectuals of the Islamic tradition like Averroes and Avicenna became heretics whose influence disappeared under the weight of rote preaching and practice. Islam as a result has a moral code, a legalistic system of right and wrong, but no evolved ethical tradition. — R. Joseph Hoffmann

As for me, you wonder why I am a socialist. I'll tell you. It is because socialism is inevitable; because the present rotten and irrational system cannot endure; because the day is past for your man on horseback. The slaves won't stand for it. They are too many, and willy-nilly they'll drag down the would-be equestrian before he gets astride. You can't get away from them, and you'll have to swallow the whole slave-morality. It's not a nice mess, I'll allow. But it's been a-brewing and swallow it you must. — Jack London

If we suffer ourselves to be frightened from our post by mere lying, surely the enemy will use that weapon; for what one so cheap to those of whose system of politics morality makes no part? — Thomas Jefferson

For him morality was neither conformism nor philosophic wisdom, but living the infinite fullness of possibilities. He believed in morality's capacity for intensification, in stages of moral experience, and not merely, as most people do, in stages of moral understanding, as if it were something cut-and-dried for which people were just not pure enough. He believed in morality without believing in any specific moral system. Morality is generally understood to be a sort of police regulations for keeping life in order, and since life does not obey even these, they come to look as if they were really impossible to live up to and accordingly, in this sorry way, not really an ideal either. But morality must not be reduced to this level. Morality is imagination. This was what he wanted to make Agathe see. And his second point was: Imagination is not arbitrary. Once imagination is left to caprice, there is a price to pay. — Robert Musil

The problem isn't who is in charge. It's what is in charge. The problem is that people are encouraged to function as machines. Or, actually, as mechanisms. Human emotion and sympathy are unprofessional. They are inappropriate to the exercise of reason. Everything which makes people good - makes them human - is ruled out. The system doesn't care about people, but we treat it as if it were one of us, as if it were the sum of our goods and not the product of our least admirable compromises. — Nick Harkaway

To protest in the name of morality against 'excesses' or 'abuses' is an error which hints on active complicity. There are no 'abuses' or 'excesses' here, simpily an all-pervasive system. — Simone De Beauvoir

Any moral ethic worth examining must be universal. That is if something is right or wrong for me, it must also be right or wrong for you. This is a system of ethics that applies universally to all individuals regardless of culture, nationality, race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, wealth, or any other distinguishing feature. Otherwise, we would have difficulty judging human action. — Daniel Alexander Brackins

In Confucian thought, individuals practice moral virtue both by restraining themselves and pursuing their own interests. This is a dual push-and-pull process. In today's China, the latter is taken care of by capitalism and commerce. The former, however, needs to be taken care of by the rule of law. Otherwise, the system of governance is corrupted by unrestrained individual desires and selective enforcement of 'virtue' or law. — Patrick Mendis

A moral system valid for all is basically immoral. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The cash register did more for human morality than the Congregational Church. It was a really powerful phenomenon to make an economic system work better, just as, in reverse, a system that can be easily defrauded ruins a civilization. A system that's very hard to defraud, like a cash register, helped the economic performance of a civilization by reducing vice, but very few people within economics talk about it in those terms. — Charlie Munger

Auguste Comte, in particular, whose social system, as unfolded in his Systeme de Politique Positive, aims at establishing (though by moral more than by legal appliances) a despotism of society over the individual, surpassing anything contemplated in the political ideal of the most rigid disciplinarian among the ancient philosophers. — John Stuart Mill

I don't care what your excuse is, I don't care what you think God told you to do, if you are in the business of closing children's minds and obliterating their capacity to imagine, and depriving them of a capacity to laugh, then you are a criminal. Maybe not under the law, but under any decent system of morality.
Shame on anyone who brainwashes a child and attacks their individual liberty and deprives them of the freedom that is the very definition of a human being. Shame. — Michael Grant

The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel. — Jonathan Swift

The Tao, which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgments. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgment of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or ... ideologies ... all consist of fragments from the Tao itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they posses. — C.S. Lewis

Morality and freedom are as certainly the only bases of the happiness and dignity of the human race as the system of Galileo is the true theory of the celestial motions. — Germaine De Stael

Lawyers, before any other group, must continue to point out how the system is really working-how it actually affects real people. They must constantly demonstrate to courts and legislatures alike the tragic results of legal nonintervention. They must highlight how legal doctrines no longer bear any relation to reality, whether in landlord and tenant law, holder in due course law, or any other law. In sum, lawyers must bring real morality into the legal consciousness — William J. Brennan

The Society or Fraternity of Freemasons is more in the nature of a system of Philosophy or of moral and social virtues taught by symbols, allegories, and lectures based upon fundamental truths, the observance of which tends to promote stability of character, conservatism, morality and good citizenship. — William Howard Taft

Both capitalism and Marxism promised to point out the path for the creation of just structures, and they declared that these, once established, would function by themselves; they declared that not only would they have no need of any prior individual morality, but that they would promote a communal morality. And this ideological promise has been proved false. The facts have clearly demonstrated it. The Marxist system, where it found its way into government, not only left a sad heritage of economic and ecological destruction, but also a painful oppression of souls. And we can also see the same thing happening in the West, where the distance between rich and poor is growing constantly, and giving rise to a worrying degradation of personal dignity through drugs, alcohol and deceptive illusions of happiness. — Pope Benedict XVI

There's nothing of any importance in life - except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It's the only measure of human value. All the codes of ethics they'll try to ram down your throat are just so much paper money put out by swindlers to fleece people of their virtues. The code of competence is the only system of morality that's on a gold standard. — Ayn Rand

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

Since Aureliano at that time had very confused notions about the difference between Conservatives and Liberals, his father in law gave him some schematic lessons. The Liberals, he said, were Freemasons, bad people, wanting to hang priests, to institute civil marriage and divorce, to recognize the rights of illegitimate children as equal to those of legitimate ones, and to cut the country up into a federal system that would take power away from the supereme authority. The Conservatives, on the other hand, who had received their power directly from God, proposed the establishment of public order and family morality. They were the defenders of the faith of Christ, of the principle of authority, and were not prepared to permit the country to be broken down into autonomous entities. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Dagny, there's nothing of any importance in life - except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It's the only measure of human value. All the codes of ethics they'll try to ram down your throat are just so much paper money put out by swindlers to fleece people of their virtues. The code of competence is the only system of morality that's on a gold standard. When you grow up, you'll know what I mean. — Ayn Rand

Change is always subjective. All through evolution you find that the conquest of nature comes by change in the subject. Apply this to religion and morality, and you will find that the conquest of evil comes by the change in the subjective alone. That is how the Advaitic system gets its whole force, on the subjective side of man. — Swami Vivekananda

When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole. It stands or falls with faith in God. — Friedrich Nietzsche

If moral truths do not exist as a foundation for law, then law itself becomes merely a system of raw political power accountable to no one. — Scott Klusendorf

When we assume God to be a guiding principle well, sure enough, a god is usually characteristic of a certain system of thought or morality. For instance, take the Christian God, the summum bonum : God is love, love being the highest moral principle; and God is spirit, the spirit being the supreme idea of meaning. All our Christian moral concepts derive from such assumptions, and the supreme essence of all of them is what we call God. — Carl Jung

A preacher must have some intelligence to charm the people by his florid style, by his exhilarating system of morality, by the repetition of his figures of speech, his brilliant remarks and vivid descriptions ; but, after all, he has not too much of it, for if he possessed some of the right quality he would neglect these extraneous ornaments, unworthy of the Gospel, and preach naturally, forcibly, and like a Christian. — Jean De La Bruyere

What a difference it would be if our system of morality were based on the Bible instead of the standards devised by cultural Christians. — William Wilberforce

The Gospel always refers to a pre-existing morality, and confines its precepts to the particulars in which that morality was to be corrected, or superseded by a wider and higher; expressing itself, moreover, in terms most general, often impossible to be interpreted literally, and possessing rather the impressiveness of poetry or eloquence than the precision of legislation. To extract from it a body of ethical doctrine, has never been possible without eking it out from the Old Testament, that is, from a system elaborate indeed, but in many respects barbarous, and intended only for a barbarous people. — John Stuart Mill

This is someone who has a very stringent morality, and believes the system works, and has been deeply, deeply disappointed, and hurt, by it. You know, so she's in a very different place in life. — Julianne Moore

The social system based on and consonant with the altruist morality-with the code of self-sacrifice- is socialism, in all or any of its variants: fascism, Nazism, communism. All of them treat man as a sacrificial animal to be immolated for the benefit of the group, the tribe, the society, the state. — Ayn Rand

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light. — Jeremy Bentham

It was the task of industrial society to destroy all of that. All that "community" implies -- self-sufficiency, mutual aid, morality in the marketplace, stubborn tradition, regulation by custom, organic knowledge instead of mechanistic science -- had to be steadily and systematically disrupted and displaced. All of the practices that kept the individual from being a consumer had to be done away with so that the cogs and wheels of an unfettered machine called "the economy" could operate without interference, influenced merely by invisible hands and inevitable balances and all the rest of that benevolent free-market system guided by what Cobbett called, his lip curled toward Hume and James Steuart and Adam Smith, "Scotch Feelosophy. — Kirkpatrick Sale

The world is shocked, or amused, by the sight of saintly old people hindering in the name of morality the removal of obvious brutalities from a legal system. — Alfred North Whitehead

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

The morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed. — Garrett Hardin

Money is the measure of morality, and the success or failure of slavery as a money-making system, determines with many whether ... it should be maintained or abolished. — Frederick Douglass

The hypothesis of value realism is superfluous - a wheel that spins without being attached to anything. From a Darwinian perspective our impressions of value, if construed realistically, are completely groundless. And if that is true for our most basic responses, it is also true for the entire elaborate structure of value and morality that is built up from them by practical reflection and cultural development - just as scientific realism would be undermined if we abandoned a realistic interpretation of the perceptual experiences on which science is based. Even a system based on the maintenance of coherence or consistency among one's responses does not need the idea of mind-independent truth about value (as opposed to logic), — Thomas Nagel

[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

All morality consists in a system of rules, and the essence of all morality is to be sought for in the respect which the individual acquires for these rules. — Jean Piaget

Golden Rule lies at the heart of every religious and of every ethical system of morality, it what makes us look at one another. The religions have all adopted it independently, Chinese, Indian, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, because they find it works and because it says something very deep about the structure of our humanity. — Karen Armstrong

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

I cannot forbear adding to these reasonings an observation, which may, perhaps, be found of some importance. In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark'd, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. — David Hume

Bourgeois morality is largely a system of making cheap virtues a cloak for expensive vices. — George Bernard Shaw

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

His system of morality was the most benevolent and sublime probably that has been ever taught, and consequently more perfect than those of any of the ancient philosophers ... He was the most innocent, the most benevolent, the most eloquent and sublime character that ever has been exhibited to man. — Thomas Jefferson

In the strict father model, the "free market" plays a significant, implicit role. The market is a competitive system where the disciplined are rewarded through profit, and the undisciplined (and hence immoral) are punished through poverty. The market is an instrument of morality. — George Lakoff

It is these conditions that form the grounding for our system of moral metaphors. Since it is better to be rich than to be poor, morality is conceptualized in terms of wealth. Since it is better to be strong than to be weak, we expect to see morality conceptualized as strength. Because it is better to be healthy than sick, it is no surprise to see morality conceptualized in terms of health and attendant concepts like cleanliness and purity. Since it is better to be cared for than uncared for, it seems natural to find morality conceptualized as nurturance. And because, in normal cases, children tend to be better off if they obey rather than disobey their parents, we expect to see morality conceptualized as obedience. What — George Lakoff

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

A person's sense of morality and responsibility to other human beings, must not come from a professed faith or belief system. Because when it does - it is merely a projection and not an internalization. A person must be able to say "I believe this, I do this, I say this, because this is who I am; not because I see myself as a member of so and so belief system." Adam and Eve walked with God every day in the garden of Eden and yet, they still chose their own way. This only means that their own way had nothing to do with God's way. Even if they walked with God physically, daily, in a garden! This is witness to the fact that your sense of morality and responsibility must be incarnated within you. In fact, this is the beauty of God - to unfold your own spirit within you - and then you see your own spirit and say that it is indeed beautiful. — C. JoyBell C.

I think, actually, any morality system that rewards only the extremes is a flawed system. Players don't approach life that way, they don't approach games that way, and they shouldn't be trained to approach games that way. They shouldn't be in the 'Star Wars' mode where, 'I've got to choose every good option.' — Chris Avellone

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

When there is no way in which men can believe in the fundamental morality of a social system, even one then profit by, that system begins to die because the masters lose their ability to defend it. — George P. Rawick

There are great truths at the foundation of Freemasonry, truths which it is its mission to teach and which is constituting the very essence of, that sublime system which gives the venerable institution its peculiar identity as a science of morality, and it behooves every disciple diligently to ponder and inwardly digest. — Albert Pike

Honor, More charged, 'is the religion of tragedy.' Emotions such as love, hate, ambition, pride, and jealousy, 'form a dazzling system of worldly morality,' which contradicts 'the spirit of that religion whose characteristics are charity, meekness, peaceableness, longsuffering, gentleness, forgiveness. — Karen Swallow Prior

Christianity is neither a system of ideas nor of morality but a way, a way of life. — Kevin Vanhoozer

There is nothing inherently metaphoric about such claims of basic experiential morality as "Health is good," "It is better to be cared for than uncared for," "Everyone ought to be protected from physical harm," and "It is good to be loved."
However, as soon as we develop such claims into a full-fledged human morality, we find that virtually all of our abstract moral concepts-justice, rights, empathy, nurturance, strength, uprightness, and so forth-are defined by metaphors. That is why there is no ethical system that is not metaphorical. We understand our experience via these conceptual metaphors, we reason according to their metaphorical logic, and we make judgments on the basis of the metaphors. This is what we mean when we say that morality is metaphoric. — George Lakoff

No moral system can rest solely on authority. — A.J. Ayer

Perhaps the most that can be said is that HCM had become a prisoner of his own creation, a fly in amber, unable in his state of declining influence to escape the inexorable logic of a system that sacrificed the fate of individuals to the "higher morality" of the master plan. — William J. Duiker

Formerly, leaders of states practiced realism, but did not honor it ... With them morality was violated, but moral notions remained intact ... The modern governor, owing to the fact that he addresses crowds, is compelled to be a moralist, and to present his acts as bound up with a system of morality. — Julien Benda

Any virtue systematically applied becomes a vice. Morality is attention, not system. — James Richardson

Our morality system has become a mechanical device for protecting us against ourselves; it is the handiwork of terror. — Harold Edmund Stearns

Christian religion defines morality by a belief system based on a master-slave relationship, and rooted in resentment of the raw beauty and power of the life force. — John Lamb Lash

Even what may have seemed, in retrospect, like minor quibbles - over the particular wording of sharia clauses, for example - reflected fundamental divides over the boundaries, limits, and purpose of the nation-state. For liberals, certain rights and freedoms are, by definition, nonnegotiable. They envision the state as a neutral arbiter. Meanwhile, even those Islamists who have little interest in legislating morality see the state as a promoter of a certain set of religious and moral values, through the soft power of the state machinery, the educational system, and the media. For them, these conservative values are not ideologically driven but represent a self-evident popular consensus around the role of religion in public life. The will of the people, particularly when it coincides with the will of God, takes precedence over any presumed international human rights norms. — Shadi Hamid

The greater the proportion of pure morality in a particular system, the happier and more enduring the society. — Michel Houellebecq

Given the central position that the Morality of Reward and Punishment has in the conservative moral system, it is no surprise that conservatives in most cases prefer retribution over restitution as a form of justice, as a way of balancing the moral books. It is therefore no surprise that conservatives are in favor of the death penalty. It is a form of retribution, a life for a life. Liberals, — George Lakoff

Government is a system of morality developed by philosophers and refined by mercenaries. — Alex Stein

It is for the reader to see in the book the nature of the motives of human actions and perhaps learn something too of the motives behind the social forces which judge those actions and which, I take it, we call a system of morality. — Anthony Burgess

When numbers are substituted for morality, and no individual can claim a right, but any gang can assert any desire whatever, when compromise is the only policy expected of those in power, and the preservation of the moment's "stability," of peace at any price, is their only goal - the winner, necessarily, is whoever presents the most unjust and irrational demands; the system serves as an open invitation to do so. — Ayn Rand

At the heart of our public morality is the idea that he who gives generously is most virtuous and morally praiseworthy; that there is no greater citizen than she who sacrifices; and that there is no greater measure of worth than contribution. These are values we can be proud of. After all, there is no moral system or religion on earth where the guiding ethic is grab more for yourself. — Eric Liu

A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality. — William Winwood Reade

Now, because men of our contemporary age are caught up in the ascetic view of a life-denying religious system, but in spite of this cannot deny the primal laws of nature, a distorted morality had to be developed, which spreads hypocritical appearances over hidden actions. This has brought to a head all those outward forms of modern life, whose vacuousness and corruption are now beginning to disgust us. — Guido Von List