A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives - of approving of some and disapproving of others. — Charles Darwin
Morality may consist solely in the courage of making a choice. — Leon Blum
The most powerful moral influence is example. — Huston Smith
For me, an area of moral clarity is: you're in front of someone who's suffering and you have the tools at your disposal to alleviate that suffering or even eradicate it, and you act. — Paul Farmer
The moral law commands us to make the highest possible good in a world the final object of all our conduct. — Paul Ricoeur
Right action tends to be defined in terms of general individual rights and standards that have been critically examined and agreed upon by the whole society. — Lawrence Kohlberg
The moral man is he who is opposed to injustice per se, opposed to injustice wherever he finds it; the moral man looks for injustice first of all in himself. — Bayard Rustin
What is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after. — Ernest Hemingway
Moral principle is the foundation of law. — Ronald Dworkin
Every moral act of love, of mercy, and of sacrifice brings to pass the end of the world where hatred, cruelty, and selfishness reign supreme. — Nikolai Berdyaev
Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons. — Thomas Hardy
Short Moral Action Quotes
It's motive alone which gives character to the actions of men. — Jean De La Bruyere
Morality and ethics automatically emerge when we realize the long term consequences of our actions. — Naval Ravikant
Maturity is learning to walk away from people and situation that threaten your peace of mind, self respect, values, morals and self worth.
Moral Behavior Quotes
If ethics are poor at the top, that behavior is copied down through the organization. — Robert Noyce
Aspire to decency. Practice civility toward one another. Admire and emulate ethical behavior wherever you find it. Apply a rigid standard of morality to your lives; and if, periodically, you fail as you surely will adjust your lives, not the standards. — Ted Koppel
In my mind of course natural disaster like tsunami, and these things, also I think indirectly may relate to human behavior. But then major sort of problems actually they're due to a lack of moral principle. — Dalai Lama
Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
The test, surely, of a creed is not the ability of those who accept it to announce their faith; its test is its ability to change their behavior in the ordinary round of daily life. Judged by that test, I know no religion that has a moral claim upon the allegiance of men. — Harold Laski
Our disregard of civic and moral virtue as an educational priority is having a tangible effect on the attitudes, understanding and behavior of large portions of the youth population in the United States today. — William Damon
There's a gigantic gray area between good moral behavior and outright felonious activities. I call that the Weasel Zone and it's where most of life happens. — Scott Adams
There is also purpose in life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. — Viktor E. Frankl
Knowing about the neurobiological and evolutionary basis for social behavior can soften the arrogance and self-righteousness that often attends discussions of morality. It may help us all to think a little more carefully and rationally. — Patricia Churchland
I don't believe there is any such definition, there is no such thing as evil, only moral judgments based on what society believes to be wrong behavior. — Nikolas Schreck
Moral relativism has a reputation for being compassionate, caring and humane, but it is an extremely useful philosophy for tyrants. — Peter Kreeft
Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived. — Isaac Asimov
Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever the right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established. — Ludwig Feuerbach
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning. — Bill Watterson
Freemasonry embraces the highest moral laws and will bear the test of
any system of ethics or philosophy ever promulgated for the uplift of man. — Douglas MacArthur
Literature ceases to be literature when it commits itself to moral uplift; it becomes moral philosophy or some such dull thing. — Anthony Burgess
Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion - several of them. — Mark Twain
God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. — Douglas Adams
Philosophy as practice does not mean its restriction to utility or applicability, that is, to what serves morality or produces serenity of soul. — Karl Jaspers
Moral Life Quotes
The most important thing in life is to dare. The most complicated thing in life is to be afraid. The smartest thing in the world is to try to be a moral person. — Shimon Peres
Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything. Improve the World Through Music. — Plato
Females in our generation morals are just out the window. Materialistic things aren't life. I'd rather walk in the rain with a man who treats me like a queen than to ride in a Benz with a man who treats me like crap. — Jhene Aiko
When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. — Frederic Bastiat
Do not try to fix whatever comes in your life. Fix yourself in such a way that whatever comes, you will be fine. — Jaggi Vasudev
Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching. — C. S. Lewis
Man is a moral being, only because he lives in society. Let all social life disappear and morality will disappear with it. — Emile Durkheim
One must speak for a struggle for a new culture, that is, for a new moral life that cannot but be intimately connected to a new intuition of life, until it becomes a new way of feeling and seeing reality — Antonio Gramsci
We have to build a better man before we can build a better society. — Paul Tillich
Man is only a moral being because he lives in society, since morality consists in solidarity with the group, and varies according to that solidarity. Cause all social life to vanish, and moral life would vanish at the same time, having no object to cling to. — Emile Durkheim
Moral Ethics Quotes
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. — Immanuel Kant
Do the right thing because it is right. — Immanuel Kant
How sweet to be a Cloud. Floating in the Blue! — A. A. Milne
Solidarity is based on the principle that we are willing to put ourselves at risk to protect each other. — Starhawk
The meaning of life is pretty clear: Living things strive to pass their genes into the future. The claim that we would not have morals or ethics without religion is extraordinary. Animals in nature seem to behave in moral ways without organized religion. — Bill Nye
My selective memory of what drinking was like told me that standing at the bar in a pub, on a summer's evening with a long, tall glass of lager and lime was heaven, and I chose not to remember the nights on which I had sat with a bottle of vodka, a gram of coke and a shotgun, contemplating suicide. — Eric Clapton
Stand for something. Don't quest for popularity at the expense of morality and ethics and honesty. — Howard Cosell
People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad. — Stephen King
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
You can’t have a moral society without sound money. — Robert Breedlove
Moral Responsibility Quotes
The fidelity of a dog is a precious gift demanding no less binding moral responsibilities than the friendship of a human being. — Konrad Lorenz
...morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible. — Abraham Joshua Heschel
The most valuable "currency" of any organization is the initiative and creativity of its members. Every leader has the solemn moral responsibility to develop these to the maximum in all his people. This is the leader's highest priority. — W. Edwards Deming
Our moral responsibility is not to stop future, but to shape it...to channel our destiny in humane directions and to ease the trauma of transition. — Alvin Toffler
I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. — Robert A. Heinlein
I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. — Robert A. Heinlein
Someone ought to do it, but why should I? Someone ought to do it, so why not I? Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution. — Annie Besant
Anarchism, to me, means not only the denial of authority, not only a new economy, but a revision of the principles of morality. It means the development of the individual as well as the assertion of the individual. It means self-responsibility, and not leader worship. — Voltairine de Cleyre
Sound morals, religious liberty, and a just sense of religious responsibility are essentially connected with all true and lasting happiness. — William Henry Harrison
Social Action Quotes
No person among us desires any other reward for performing a brave and worthy action, but the consciousness of having served his nation. — Joseph Brant
The poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order. — Gustavo Gutiérrez
If one rejects laissez faire on account of mans fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action. — Ludwig von Mises
Our brains don’t just process and understand the actions and words of others but their feelings and intentions too, the social meaning of their behavior and their emotions. — Chris Voss
Heroes are Ordinary People whose social action is Extra-Ordinary/ who ACT when others are passive, who give up EGO-centrism for SOCIO-centrism. — Philip Zimbardo
Reconciliation requires changes of heart and spirit, as well as social and economic change. It requires symbolic as well as practical action. — Malcolm Fraser
The gospel is not about... pie-in-the-sky when they die. ... It is imperative that the up and coming generation recognize that the biblical Jesus was committed to the realization of a new social order in this world.... Becoming a Christian, therefore, is a call to social action. — Tony Campolo
No one is moved to act, or resolves to speak a single word, who does not hope by means of this action or word to release anxiety from his spirit. — Ibn Hazm
Social conditions that spur large numbers of people into action are ignored in favor of a Hollywood version of history focusing on one conquering hero. Since a movement for social change is embodied in its leader, death of the leader means death of the movement. — Patricia Hill Collins
Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Moral Education Quotes
Thought breeds thought; children familiar with great thoughts take as naturally to thinking for themselves as the well-nourished body takes to growing; and we must bear in mind that growth, physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual, is the sole end of education. — Charlotte Mason
There is no god and there is no soul. Hence, there is no need for the props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, then immutable truth is dead and buried. There is no room for fixed and natural law or permanent moral absolutes. — John Dewey
His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy. — Woody Allen
We must have moral education in the schools, anti-bullying programs, but this does not mean programs to feminize boys. — Christina Hoff Sommers
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
Whoever wants to be a leader should educate himself before educating others. Before preaching to others he should first practice himself. Whoever educates himself and improves his own morals is superior to the man who tries to teach and train others. — Ali ibn Abi Talib
The object of basic education is the physical, intellectual and moral development of children through the medium of handicraft. — Mahatma Gandhi
It is a mistake to try to impose Christian beliefs on children and to make them the basis of moral training. The moral education of children is much too important a matter to be built on such foundations. — Margaret E. Knight
It is our moral obligation to give every child the very best education possible. — Desmond Tutu
Moral Judgment Quotes
To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment. — H. L. Mencken
We need to go back to the way it was 30 years ago, when everybody had Grandma and Grandpa, and we were willing to pass moral judgments about right and wrong. — Steven Tyler
I never make moral judgments; I'm not qualified to do so. I am not a censor, a priest, or a politician. — Federico Fellini
If there is no absolute beyond man's ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions. — Francis Schaeffer
The atheist is cheating whenever he makes a moral judgment, acting as though it has an objective reference, when his philosophy in fact precludes it. — William A. Dembski
The problem I see with utilitarianism, or any form of consequentialism, is not that it gets the wrong answers to moral questions. I think just about any moral theory, worked out intelligently, and applied with good judgment, would get just about the same results as any other. — Allen W. Wood
Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments. — Reinhold Niebuhr
The greatest moral failing is to condemn something as a moral failing: no vice is worse than being judgmental. — Julian Baggini
I have confronted theoretical positions whose protagonists claim that what I take to be historically produced characteristics of what is specifically modern are in fact the timelessly necessary characteristics of all and any moral judgment, of all and any selfhood. — Alasdair MacIntyre
You can't escape moral judgment through a legal loop hole. — Michael Josephson
Moral Obligation Quotes
If you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something about it. — John Lewis
Gays are beginning to realize what blacks learned long ago: Unless you are out here fighting for yourself then nobody else will help you. I think the gay community has a moral obligation to continue the fight. — Bayard Rustin
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
If a policy is wrongheaded, feckless and corrupt, I take it personally and consider it a moral obligation to sound off and not shut up until it's fixed. — David Hackworth
There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless. — Chinua Achebe
In my mind, there are few sins so egregious as extending life without health. This is important. It does not matter if we can extend lifespans if we cannot extend healthspans to an equal extent. And so if we’re going to do the former, we have an absolute moral obligation to do the latter. — David Sinclair
The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people. — Ron Paul
We all have a moral obligation to leave this world a better place than the world that we've found. — Tim McIlrath
Voting is the most precious right of every citizen, and we have a moral obligation to ensure the integrity of our voting process. — Hillary Clinton
There are always lessons to be found in the darkest moments. It's a moral obligation to dig deep and find that little glimmer of hope or pearl of wisdom. — Andrea Pirlo
Moral Aspect Quotes
The idea of winning a doctor's degree gradually assumed the aspect of a great moral struggle, and the moral fight possessed immense attraction for me. — Elizabeth Blackwell
I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.... Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier. — Curtis LeMay
The modern dilemma is essentially a spiritual one, and every one of its main aspects, moral, political and scientific, brings us back to the need of a religious solution. — Christopher Dawson
We would, however, perform an injustice to the bourgeois women's rights movement if we would regard it as solely motivated by economics. No, this movement also contains a more profound spiritual and moral aspect. — Clara Zetkin
Fantasy allows you bend the world and the situation to more clearly focus on the moral aspects of what's happening. In fantasy you can distill life down to the essence of your story. — Terry Goodkind
I have my ethics and morals. I have my anchor point of what is right and wrong in real life, but I'm not afraid to entertain any and every aspect of personality in relationship to creating a character. — Corin Nemec
Sex education, including its spiritual aspects, should be part of a broad health and moral education from kindergarten through grade twelve, ideally carried out harmoniously by parents and teachers. — Benjamin Spock
The moral and spiritual aspects of both personal and international relationships have a practical bearing which so-called practical men deny. — Henry A. Wallace
We observe with confidence that the truly strong mind, view it as intellect or morality, or under any other aspect, is nowise the mind acquainted with its strength; that here the sign of health is unconsciousness. — Thomas Carlyle
The most distressing aspect of the world into which you are going is its indifference to the basic issues, which now, as always, are moral issues. — Robert M. Hutchins
Unless the will is free, man has no freedom; and if he has no freedom he is not a moral agent, that is, he is incapable of moral action and also of moral character. — Charles Grandison Finney
This is not a time to keep the facts from the people-to keep them complacent. To sound the alarm is not to panic but to seek action from an aroused public. For, as the poet Dante once said: 'The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. — John F. Kennedy
Protest to be effective, must be followed by resolute action and at this crisis in world history when materialistic energy aims at overthrowing spiritual energy and moral values, action needs to develop into a world crusade for the Spiritual Humanity. — Vida Goldstein
If we are not inwardly wrought upon, and changed by the powerful operations of the Holy Spirit, and our moral actions proceed from a principle of a new nature, however we may call ourselves Christians, we shall be found naked at the great day. — George Whitefield
Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole. — Vaclav Havel
It is not what they profess but what they practice that makes them good — Greek Proverbs
A network state is a social network with a moral innovation, a sense of national consciousness, a recognized founder, a capacity for collective action, an in-person level of civility, an integrated cryptocurrency, a consensual government limited by a social smart contract, an archipelago of crowdfunded physical territories, a virtual capital, and an on-chain census that proves a large enough population, income, and real-estate footprint to attain a measure of diplomatic recognition. — Balaji Srinivasan
I tend to think of action movies as exuberant morality plays in which good triumphs over evil. — Sylvester Stallone
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
In reality, once one overcomes the propaganda of the twentieth-century state, there is no such thing as a victimless crime. If an action has no victims, it is no crime, regardless of what some self-important voters or bureaucrats would like to believe about their prerogative to legislate morality for others. — Saifedean Ammous
The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life. — Albert Einstein
What is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious. — Marcus Tullius Cicero
Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damages morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hung — Abraham Lincoln
We are born of risen apes, not fallen angels. — Robert Ardrey
I saw that all beings are fated to happiness: action is not life, but a way of wasting some force, an enervation. Morality is the weakness of the brain. — Arthur Rimbaud
All that science can achieve is a perfect knowledge and a perfect understanding of the action of natural and moral forces. — Hermann von Helmholtz
A person may be greedy, envious, cowardly, cold, ungenerous, unkind, vain, or conceited, but behave perfectly by a monumental act of the will. — Thomas Nagel
Unchaste abandon and the self-surrender of the soul to the world of sensuality paralyzes the primordial powers of the moral person: the ability to perceive, in silence, the call of reality, and to make, in the retreat of this silence, the decision appropriate to the concrete situation of concrete action. — Josef Pieper
All virtue lies in individual action, in inward energy, in self determination. There is no moral worth in being swept away by a crowd even toward the best objective. — William Ellery Channing
We now live in a 'post-Christian' America . The Judeo-Christian ethic no longer guides our social institutions. Christian ideals and values no longer dominate social thought and action. The Bible has ceased to be a common base of moral authority for judging whether something is right or wrong, good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable. — Harvey Cox
As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. — Edgar Allan Poe
I have watched constantly that in our work the highest moral and spiritual standards are upheld, whether my productions deal with fable or with stories of living action. — Walt Disney
Your deepest, darkest sins and your shameful secrets are simply irrelevant when it comes to the counterintuitive, ecstatic announcement of the gospel. So are your goodness, your rightness, your church attendance, and all of the wise, moral, mature decisions you have made and actions you have taken. — Rob Bell
It is impossible to live pure lives until we have pure hearts. Many people today are trying to put the cart before the horse. They are teaching purity of motives, desires, and actions to old, deceitful hearts! No wonder we have ended up such moral failures, in spite of our vaunted knowledge and psychological approaches. — Billy Graham
What a person says and does in ordinary moments when when no one is looking reveals more about true character than grand actions taken while in the spotlight. Our true character is revealed by normal, consistent, everyday attitudes and behavior, not by self-conscious words or deeds or rare acts of moral courage. — Michael Josephson
What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions. — Aristotle
Good moral actions are not enough. Everything in us, from the very depths, must be cleansed and reordered. — Thomas Merton
But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do. — C. S. Lewis
That which does not correspond to the truth or to the moral norm possesses, objectively, no right either to existence or to propagation or to action. — Pope Pius XII
There is such a thing as the freedom of exhaustion. Some people are so worn down by the yoke of oppression that they give up. [...] The oppressed must never allow the conscience of the oppressor to slumber. [...] To accept injustice or segregation passively is to say to the oppressor that his actions are morally right. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life. — Albert Einstein
We do want our fellow citizens to respect our deeply held conviction that the absence of an afterlife lends a greater, not a lesser, moral importance to our actions on earth. — Susan Jacoby
Parents who discipline their child by discussing the consequences of their actions produce children who have better moral development , compared to children whose parents use authoritarian methods and punishment. — Simon Baron-Cohen
Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results; bad thoughts and actions can never produce good results … We understand this law in the natural world, and work with it; but few understand it in the mental and moral world—although its operation there is just as simple and undeviating— and they, therefore, do not cooperate with it. — James Allen
All moral laws are merely statements that certain kinds of actions will have good effects. — George Edward Moore
If the majority is moral then why do they need to be ruled by a group of people who are power hungry and gun hungry and probably not quite so good? And evil people want two things: they want something for nothing, and to escape the consequences of their actions, which is pretty much the definition of what government is. — Stefan Molyneux
The first and most important thing is to remain free, free in each line you undertake, in your ideas and in your political action, in your moral conduct. The artist especially must remain free from all outer restraints. — Hans Hartung
An individual can be truly moral only when they are their own master. From the moment when they awaken to a comprehension of that which is equitable and good it is for them to direct their own movements, to seek in the their conscience reasons for their actions, and to perform them simply, without either fearing punishment or looking for reward. — Elisee Reclus
Attitude is everything. It motivates action, which increases productivity and improves morale, which perpetuates a positive attitude. — Robert Urich
In Conclusion
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