Secular Ethics Quotes & Sayings

The man who denounces life merely defines himself as the man who is unequal to it. — Aleister Crowley

When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, 'Oh yes - I already have everything that I really need.' — Dalai Lama

the Golden Triangle of Freedom is, when reduced to its most basic form, that freedom requires virtue; virtue requires faith; and faith requires freedom. — Eric Metaxas

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

Secular humanism is avowedly non-religious. It is a eupraxsophy (good practical wisdom), which draws its basic principles and ethical values from science, ethics, and philosophy. — Paul Kurtz

As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.
[Letter to William Short, 31 October 1819] — Thomas Jefferson

A self-assured woman who is in control of her life draws like a magnet. She is so filled with positive energy that people want to be around her. — Susan Jeffers

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis argues that human beings cannot be truly good or moral without faith in God and without submis- sion to the will of Christ. Unfortunately, Lewis does not provide any actual data for his assertions. They are nothing more than the mild musings of a wealthy British man, pondering the state of humanity's soul between his sips of tea. Had Lewis actually famil- iarized himself with real human beings of the secular sort, per- haps sat and talked with them, he would have had to reconsider this notion. As so many apostates explained to me, morality is most certainly possible beyond the confines of faith. Can people be good without God? Can a moral orientation be sustained and developed outside of a religious context? The answer to both of these questions is a resounding yes. — Phil Zuckerman

I've worked in television long enough to know that when you stop enjoying that type of thing you go home and do something else. — Mark Haddon

We need to employ a secular approach to ethics, secular in the Indian sense of respecting all religious traditions and even the views of non-believers in an unbiased way. Secular ethics rooted in scientific findings, common experience and common sense can easily be introduced into the secular education system. If we can do that there is a real prospect of making this 21st century an era of peace and compassion. — Dalai Lama

Faith must recognize the autonomy of reason and its ability to produce a rational, secular ethics. By the same criterion, reason must accept that it is legitimate for the heart, consciousness and faith to believe in an order and ends thar exist prior to its observation, discoveries and hypotheses. Once the distinction between the realms of faith and reason, and religion and science, has been accepted, it is therefore futile to debate, and still less to dispute, the hierarchy of first truths or the nature of the authority granted to their methods and their references. — Tariq Ramadan

We ought so to behave to one another as to avoid making enemies of our friends, and at the same time to make friends of our enemies. — Pythagoras

But for all its benefits in offering moral guidance and meaning in life, in today's secular world religion alone is no longer adequate as a basis for ethics. — Dalai Lama XIV

God never gave man a thing to do concerning which it were irreverent to ponder how the Son of God would have done it. — George MacDonald

What we need today is an approach to ethics which makes no recourse to religion and can be equally acceptable to those with faith and those without: a secular ethics. — Dalai Lama XIV

I am civilised. My feelings are not. — Jeanette Winterson

On some days I think it would be better if there were no religions. All religions and all scriptures conceal the potential for violence. That is why we need secular ethics beyond all religions. It is more important for schools to have classes on ethics than religion. Why? Because it's more important for humanity's survival to be aware of our commonalities than to constantly emphasize what divides us. — Dalai Lama XIV

Islam, however inadequate, was the only source of ethics and stimulus for political mobilization. And al-Afghani also presciently saw that a totally secular society- the dream of nineteenth-century rationalism- was doomed to remain a fantasy in the West as well as in the Muslim world. As he concluded in his response to Renan:
The masses do not like reason, the teachings of which are understood only by a few select minds. Science, however fine it may be, cannot completely satisfy humanity's thirst for the ideal, or the desire to soar in dark and distant regions that philosophers and scholars can neither see nor explore. — Pankaj Mishra

I have gained this by philosophy ... I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law. — Aristotle.

In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow men, not knowing what they do. — John Quincy Adams

Make not, when you work a deed of shame, The scoundrel's plea, 'My forbears did the same. — Al-Ma'arri

Admittedly, I do have several bones, whole war fields full of bones, in fact to pick with organised religion of whatever stripe. This should be seen as a critique of purely temporal agencies who have, to my mind, erected more obstacles between whatever notion of spirituality and Godhead one subscribes to than they have opened doors. To me, the difference between Godhead and the Church is the difference between Elvis and Colonel Parker ... although that conjures images of God dying on the toilet, which is not what I meant at all. — Alan Moore

If you can find one thing a day to smile about (even a remembrance), or one thing to laugh about (not at someone else's expense) then you are the type of person I admire. — Karen Wallen

Golf is a hard game to figure. One day you will go out and slice it and shank it, hit into all the traps and miss every green. The next day you go out and, for no reason at all, you really stink. — Bob Hope

[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

If you have religious faith, very good, you can add on secular ethics, then religious belief, add on it, very good. But even those people who have no interest about religion, okay, it's not religion, but you can train through education. — Dalai Lama

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

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

Through the "Strength" of one and his simple existence, there will be a transformation affecting many because of just one life. — J.D. Stark