Universal Morality Quotes & Sayings

Books of the sages of the ages reflect upon in stages; like honey their words on the tongue give due savour."
{Source: A Green Desert Father} — Richard Mc Sweeney

Must love be ever treated with profaneness as a mere illusion? or with coarseness as a mere impulse? or with fear as a mere disease? or with shame as a mere weakness? or with levity as a mere accident? whereas it is a great mystery and a great necessity, lying at the foundation of human existence, morality, and happiness,
mysterious, universal, inevitable as death. — Harriet Martineau

Universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality. — Arthur Schopenhauer

I am convinced that human nature is basically affectionate and good. If our behavior follows our kind and loving nature, immense benefits will result, not only for ourselves, but also for the society to which we belong. I generally refer to this sort of love and affection as a universal religion. Everyone needs it, believers as much as non-believers. This attitude constitutes the very basis of morality. — Dalai Lama

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

Even though there is neither much altruism nor equality in the world, there is almost universal endorsement of the values of altruism and equality - even, notoriously (and as Nietzsche seemed well aware), by those who are is worst enemies in practice. So Nietzsche's critique is that a culture in the grips of MPS [Morality in the Pejorative Sense], even without acting on MPS, poses the real obstacle to flourishing, because it teaches potential higher types to disvalue what would be most conductive to their creativity and value what is irrelevant or perhaps even hostile to it. — Brian Leiter

It's simply untrue that religion provides the only framework for a universal morality. — Sam Harris

The moral landscape is the framework I use for thinking about questions of morality and human values in universal terms. — Sam Harris

I found that the very people who said that mankind was one church from Plato to Emerson were the very people who said that morality had changed altogether, and that what was right in one age was wrong in another. If I asked, say, for an altar, I was told that we needed none, for men our brothers gave us clear oracles and one creed in their universal customs and ideals. But if I mildly pointed out that one of men's universal customs was to have an altar, then my agnostic teachers turned clean round and told me that men had always been in darkness and the superstitions of savages. — G.K. Chesterton

Conservatives take the opposite approach. They start from the idea that self-discipline is fundamental. A lack of property to conservatives indicates a lack of discipline, and hence a lack of morality. Therefore, giving people things they haven't earned creates dependency, which traps people in welfare programs and poverty and thus robs them of their freedom. Not only that, but the taxes that pay for programs like Social Security and universal health care infringe on the freedom of the taxpayer, since taking his money is imposing on his freedom. What — George Lakoff

The more abstractly correct and hence powerful this idea will be, the more impossible remains its complete fulfillment as long as it continues to depend on human beings ... If this were not so, the founders of religion could not be counted among the greatest men of this earth ... In its workings, even the religion of love is only the weak reflection of the will of its exalted founder; its significance, however, lies in the direction which it attempted to give to a universal human development of culture, ethics, and morality. — Adolf Hitler

An imperfect human heart, perfectly shattered, was her conclusion. A condition so common as to be virtually universal, rendering issues of right and wrong almost incidental. — Richard Russo

My thesis is that morality exists outside the human mind in the sense of being not just a trait of individual humans, but a human trait; that is, a human universal. — Michael Shermer

Growing up I often wondered how the world would be today if, since the beginning of human life, every person acted as I did. — Criss Jami

We're trying to win business by doing a good job for the clients, as opposed to, "We think being big and universal is just a great, wonderful thing." It's not a morality thing. It's a "Does it work for the client?" thing. Everything we do is because a client uses us. Everything we do is because a client chose to use us of his own free volition. — Jamie Dimon

Morality is societal, but kindness is universal. Be kind even if it not always ethical. — Debasish Mridha

Since religion has proved itself uniquely delinquent on the one subject where moral and ethical authority might be counted as universal and absolute, I think we are entitled to at least three provisional conclusions. The first is that religion and the churches are manufactured, and that this salient fact is too obvious to ignore. The second is that ethics and morality are quite independent of faith, and cannot be derived from it. The third is that religion is - because it claims a special divine exemption for its practices and beliefs - not just amoral but immoral. — Christopher Hitchens

All decisions we've come to accept as right or wrong are ingrained in us from the society in which we abide. Rights and wrongs are not universally known or transferable. — John-Talmage Mathis

In comparison, young unmarried women in America were fortunate: They had a certain measure of sexual freedom. Eighteenth-century parents allowed their daughters to spend tie with suitors unsupervised, and courting couples openly engaged in "bundling," the practice of sleeping together without undressing, in the girls' homes. (Theoretically, that is, they were sleeping together without undressing: in fact, premarital pregnancy boomed during the period of 1750 to 1780, when bundling was nearly universal.) But by the turn of the century, in a complete reversal of previous beliefs about women's sexuality, the idea took hold that only men were carnal creatures; women were thought to be passionless and therefore morally superior. — Leora Tanenbaum

All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly which can - and must - be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a "perfect society" on any foundation other than "Women and children first!" is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly - and no doubt will keep trying. — Robert A. Heinlein

As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop that an apothecary wouldn't let it go for less than half-a-crown ... — Georg C. Lichtenberg

What is the purpose of Masonry? One of its most basic purposes is to make good men even better. We try to place emphasis on the individual man by strengthening his character, improving his moral and spiritual outlook, and broadening his mental horizons. We try to impress upon the minds of our members the principles of personal responsibility and morality, encouraging each member to practice in his daily life the lessons taught through symbolic ceremonies in the lodge. One of the universal doctrines of Freemasonry is the belief in the "Brotherhood of Man and the Fatherhood of God". The importance of this belief is established by each Mason as he practices the three principle tenets of Masonry: Brotherly Love, Relief and Truth. — A. Keith Jones

For us, universal values such as justice, morality and peace cannot be disputed and it is for this reason that we pursue the restoration of historical truth. — Robert Kocharian

That which renders morality an active principle and constitutes virtue our happiness, and vice our misery: it is probable, I say, that this final sentence depends on some internal sense or feeling, which nature has made universal in the whole species. — David Hume

We all love animals. Why do we call some "pets" and others "dinner? — K.d. Lang

If we adopt the principle of universality: if an action is right (or wrong) for others, it is right (or wrong) for us. Those who do not rise to the minimal moral level of applying to themselves the standards they apply to others
more stringent ones, in fact
plainly cannot be taken seriously when they speak of appropriateness of response; or of right and wrong, good and evil — Noam Chomsky

Shall I not render a service to men in speaking to them only of morality? This morality is so pure, so holy, so universal, so clear, so ancient, that it seems to come from God himself, like the light which we regard as the first of his works. Has he not given men self-love to secure their preservation; benevolence, beneficence, and virtue to control their self-love; the natural need to form a society; pleasure to enjoy, pain to warn us to enjoy in moderation, passions to spur us to great deeds, and wisdom to curb our passions? — Voltaire

In theory, multiculturalism is something we should all celebrate; unfortunately, in practice, multiculturalism means multi-morality ... The only antidote to such nihilistic thinking is ethical monotheism, the belief in one universal code of ethics. Differing cultures glorify humanity, but differing moralities destroy it. We must teach what Professor Viktor Frankl concluded after surviving Auschwitz: There are only two races of human beings, the decent and the indecent. That is how the world is divided: not between rich and poor, men and women, North and South, black and white, the powerful and the powerless, or any other nonmoral division that too many contemporary liberals have been advocating. — Dennis Prager

To live in a state of liberty is not to live apart from law. It is, on the contrary, to live under the highest law, the only law that can really profit a man, the law which is consciously and deliberately imposed by himself on himself. — Auberon Herbert