Moral Quotes

• About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Inspiring, Feel Good, Afternoon

  Death in the Afternoon ch. 1 (1932)

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• Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Inspirational, Cheating, Integrity

  Henry David Thoreau, Barry Andrews (2005). “True Harvest: Readings from Henry David Thoreau for Every Day of the Year”, p.83, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

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• Depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Being Strong, Character, Depth

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• It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Courage, Integrity

  Mark Twain (2013). “Autobiography of Mark Twain”, p.372, Univ of California Press

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• Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

  C. S. Lewis

  Wisdom, Religious, Freedom

  "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment". "God in the Dock". Book by C. S. Lewis, 1970.

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  Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

  John Adams

  Bible, God, Religious

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1854). “Works: with a life of the author”, p.229

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  Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.

  John Adams

  Leadership, Character, Persistence

  "I’ll Vote for That" by Katharine Rose, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 22, 2015.

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• The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.

  Saint Augustine

  Lions, Sanity, Truth Is

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• Right is Right even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong even if everybody is wrong about it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Doe, Sanity, Ifs

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• Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Life, Inspiring

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• Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.

  Ayn Rand

  Love, Life, Character

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.98, Penguin

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• To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Leadership, Education, Business

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• What is moral is what you feel good after.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Feel Good, Afternoon, Ethics And Morals

  Death in the Afternoon ch. 1 (1932)

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• Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.

  Karl Kraus

  Country, Moral Corruption, Literature

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• Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons.

  Thomas Hardy

  Integrity, Ethics, Morality

  Thomas Hardy (2012). “Jude the Obscure”, p.267, Courier Corporation

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• In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

  George Orwell

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Wisdom

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• Morality makes stupid.- Custom represents the experiences of men of earlier times as to what they supposed useful and harmful - but the sense for custom (morality) applies, not to these experiences as such, but to the age, the sanctity, the indiscussability of the custom. And so this feeling is a hindrance to the acquisition of new experiences and the correction of customs: that is to say, morality is a hindrance to the development of new and better customs: it makes stupid.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Stupid, Men, New Experiences

  Friedrich Nietzsche, Maudemarie Clark, Brian Leiter (1997). “Nietzsche: Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality”, p.18, Cambridge University Press

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• If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover these precious values - that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Spiritual, Reality, African American

  "Rediscovering Lost Values". Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Sermon at Detroit's Second Baptist Church, kinginstitute.stanford.edu. February 28, 1954.

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• The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, 'I was wrong'.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  Sydney J. Harris (1985). “Pieces of Eight Pa”, Mariner Books

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• The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.

  Bertrand Russell

  People, Religion, Ordinary

  Sceptical Essays

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  The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis.

  Edmund Burke

  Motivational, Peace, Fire

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  I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.

  Frederick Douglass

  Respect, Fear, Integrity

  Frederick Douglass (2013). “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave”, p.54, Simon and Schuster

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• Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have.

  Ronald Reagan

  Courage, War, Patriotic

  First Inaugural Address, delivered 20 January 1981

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• Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.

  H. G. Wells

  Jealousy, Witty, Humorous

  The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman (1914) ch. 9, sect. 2

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• Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.

  Lord Acton

  Fall, Law, Tables

  Inaugural Lecture on the Study of History, 1906, sourcebooks.fordham.edu. June 11, 1895.

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