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Quotes about morality

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As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see.
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790Letter to Ezra Stiles (9 March 1790)
- Christianity
No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human beast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.
Sigmund Freud1856–1939Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905), his analysis of the case of Ida Bauer (also translated as Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria)
- Good & Evil
It’s a moral problem that the government is making into criminals people, who may be doing something you and I don’t approve of, but who are doing something that hurts nobody else.
Milton Friedman1912–2006America’s Drug Forum interview (1991)
- Government
In a free society, it is hard for “good” people to do “good,” but that is a small price to pay for making it hard for “evil” people to do “evil,” especially since one man’s good is another’s evil.
Milton Friedman1912–2006“The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits”, The New York Times Magazine (13 September 1970)
- Freedom
- Good & Evil
The devil made me do it the first time, and after that I did it on my own.
Robert Fulghumborn 1937
Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
Mahatma Gandhi1869–1948Written statement in trial for sedition, March 1922
- Good & Evil
In the Orthodox spiritual tradition, the ultimate moral question we ask is the following: Is what we are doing, is what I am doing, beautiful or not?
CGCarolyn Gifford
- Beauty
To be engaged in opposing wrong affords, under the conditions of our mental constitution, but a slender guarantee for being right.
William Ewart Gladstone1809–1898Homeric Synchronism: An Enquiry Into the Time and Place of Homer (1876), Introduction
If you start to think about your physical or moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749–1832Proverbs in Prose (1819)
There is no outward mark of politeness that does not have a profound moral reason. The right education would be that which taught the outward mark and the moral reason together.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749–1832Elective Affinities (1809), Bk. II, Ch. 5, R. J. Hollingdale, trans. (1971), p. 195
- Education
A good man, through obscurest aspiration,
Has still an instinct of the one true way.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749–1832Faust (1808), Prologue in Heaven, spoken by The LordIn context
- Character
- Good & Evil
Part of that Power, not understood,
Which always wills the Bad, and always works the Good.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749–1832Faust (1808), Scene III, spoken by MephistophelesIn context
- Good & Evil
I am the Spirit that Denies!
And justly so: for all things, from the Void
Called forth, deserve to be destroyed:
’Twere better, then, were naught created.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749–1832Faust (1808), Scene III, spoken by MephistophelesIn context
- Good & Evil
Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.
William Golding1911–1993Lord of the Flies (1954), Ch. 12: The Cry of the Hunters
- Friendship
- Good & Evil
Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.
Baltasar Gracián1601–1658