Morality Quotes - Page 32

• Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death?

  Eugene V. Debs

  Brother, Children, Helping Others

  "The Issue". Eugene V. Debs' speech in Girard, Kansas, May 23, 1908.

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• Why wouldn't I help? What good reason do I have as a human being with power and a sense of empathy and morality, why wouldn't I do something?

  John Legend

  Helping Others, Volunteer, Empathy

  "John Legend Shows How Easy Charity Can Be With Poverty Action Tour". Interview with Jayson Rodriguez, www.mtv.com. January 29, 2008.

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• Reverence for Life affords me my fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, assisting, and enhancing life and that to destroy, harm, or to hinder life is evil. Affirmation of the world - that is affirmation of the will to live, which appears in phenomenal forms all around me - is only possible for me in that I give myself out for other life.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Life, Evil, Giving

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• Life was never simple, happiness never where you thought you'd left it, and right and wrong no more fixed than clouds in the sky.

  Janet Morris

  Nature, Simple, Clouds

  Janet Morris (2011). “Tempus with His Right-Side Companion Niko”, p.292, Paradise Publishing

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• Except among those whose education has been in the minimalist style, it is understood that hasty moral judgments about the past are a form of injustice.

  Jacques Barzun

  Past, Judging, Style

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• Religion has ever filled the mind of man with darkness, and kept him in ignorance of his real duties and true interests. It is by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of religion, that we shall discover truth, morality and reason. Religion diverts us from the causes of evils, and from these remedies which nature advocates, far from curing; it only aggravates, perpetuates and multiplies them.

  Baron d'Holbach

  Real, Ignorance, Men

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• Man is not equally moral at all hours, this is well known. If his morality is judged to be the capability for great self-sacrificing resolutions and self-denial (which, when continuous and grown habitual, are called holiness)

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Sacrifice, Men, Self

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Paul Victor Cohn (1910). “Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits”

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• The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from Custom.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Law, Tradition, Customs

  Michel de Montaigne (1859). “Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Journey Into Italy, and Letters, with Notes from All the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical Notices, Etc”, p.171

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• An important species of pleasure, and therewith the source of morality, arises out of habit.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Important, Ethics, Habit

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2012). “Human, All-Too-Human: Parts One and Two”, p.61, Courier Corporation

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• Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Community, Individuality, Ethics

  W. Somerset Maugham (2013). “The Essential W. Somerset Maugham Collection”, p.1292, eBookIt.com

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• Morality and ethics are nothing but footballs, wherewith people, strong people play to win points.

  Theodore Dreiser

  Football, Strong, Winning

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• Principles do not mainly influence even the principled; we talk on principle, but we act on interest.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Principles, Ethics, Influence

  Walter Savage Landor (1853). “The Works of Walter Savage Landor”, p.215

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• Without "ethical culture", there is no salvation for humanity.

  Albert Einstein

  Humanity, Culture, Ethics

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.445, Princeton University Press

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• There are two principles of established acceptance in morals; first, that self-interest is the mainspring of all of our actions, and secondly, that utility is the test of their value.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Acceptance, Self, Two

  "Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think". Book by Charles Caleb Colton, 1820.

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• To make our morality center on forbidden acts is to defile the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of our fellow men a secret element of gusto.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Men, Imagination, Secret

  Robert Louis Stevenson (1900). “A Christmas Sermon”, p.6, Library of Alexandria

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• A man may not transgress the bounds of major morals, but may make errors in minor morals.

  Confucius

  Men, Errors, May

  Chʻu Chai, Confucius, Mencius (1965). “Lun Yü”, New Hyde Park, N.Y. : University Books

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• All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly.

  Albert Camus

  Actions Have Consequences, Ideas, Judging

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.67, Vintage

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• The consistent thinker, the consistently moral man, is either a walking mummy or else, if he has not succeeded in stifling all his vitality, a fanatical monomaniac.

  Aldous Huxley

  Men, Vitality, Ethics

  Aldous Huxley (1956). “The collected works of Aldous Huxley”

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• Morality is character and conduct such as is required by the circle or community in which the man's life happens to be placed. It shows how much good men require of us.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Character, Men, Circles

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.128

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• Science, by itself cannot, supply us with an ethic.

  Bertrand Russell

  Ethics

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• State a moral case to a plowman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Intelligence, Ethics, States

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1853). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, contin”, p.238

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• The most disgusting cad in the world is the man who on the grounds of decorum and morality avoids the game of love. He is one who puts his own ease and security above the most laudable of philanthropies.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Games, Ease

  H.L. Mencken (1920). “Prejudices Second Series”

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• The moral sense enables one to perceive morality, and avoid it. The immoral sense enables one to perceive immorality and enjoy it.

  Mark Twain

  Ethics, Enjoy, Perceive

  Mark Twain (2017). “MARK TWAIN: 12 Novels, 195 Short Stories, Autobiography, 10 Travel Books, 160+ Essays & Speeches (Illustrated): Including Letters & Biographies – The Complete Works of Mark Twain: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn, The Innocents Abroad, Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Life on the Mississippi…”, p.8344, e-artnow

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• Whatever may be the general endeavor of a community to render its members equal and alike, the personal pride of individuals will always seek to rise above the line, and to form somewhere an inequality to their own advantage.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Pride, Community, Lines

  Alexis de Tocqueville (2003). “Democracy in America”, p.551, Regnery Publishing

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• I don't like principles. I prefer prejudices.

  Oscar Wilde

  Principles, Prejudice, Ethics

  Oscar Wilde (1983). “Two Society Comedies”, A&C Black

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