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Quotes about morality

501 quotes from 241 people

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I believe, indeed, that overemphasis on the purely intellectual attitude, often directed solely to the practical and factual, in our education, has led directly to the impairment of ethical values.
Albert Einstein1879–1955“The Need for Ethical Culture”, message on the 75th anniversary of the Ethical Culture Society (5 January 1951)
- Education
My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.
George Eliot1819–1880Letter to Charles Bray (15 November 1857)
The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature
George Eliot1819–1880Silas Marner (1861), Part I, Chapter IIIIn context
- Good & Evil
The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.
T. S. Eliot1888–1965
It has always been easy to hate and destroy. To build and to cherish is much more difficult.
Elizabeth II1926–20221957 Christmas Broadcast; quoted on royal website (25 December 1957)
- Good & Evil
Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?
Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882May-Day and Other Pieces (1867), Fragment
- Money
When good men die their goodness does not perish, but lives though they are gone. As for the bad, all that was theirs dies and is buried with them.
Euripides481–407 BCFrg. 734 (Bartlett’s, 1892)
- Good & Evil
There is one thing alone that stands the brunt of life throughout its course: a quiet conscience.
Euripides481–407 BCHippolytus (428 B.C.), l. 435.
What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it.
Gustave Flaubert1821–1880To Guy de Maupassant (February 16, 1880)
- Beauty
If it were absolutely necessary to choose, I would rather be guilty of an immoral act than of a cruel one.
Anatole France1844–1924Le Lys Rouge [The Red Lily] (1894), ch. 1
It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.
Anne Frank1929–1945The Diary of a Young Girl (1942—1944), 15 July 1944
- Good & Evil
Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.
And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
Viktor Frankl1905–1997Postscript 1984: The Case for a Tragic Optimism, based on a lecture at the Third World Congress of Logotherapy, Regensburg University (19 June 1983)
- Good & Evil
- War & Peace
A good conscience is a continual Christmas.
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790
- Christmas
A little neglect may breed great mischief.
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790Poor Richard’s Almanack
Would you live with ease? Do what you ought, not what you please.
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790Poor Richard’s Almanack