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Quotes about morality

501 quotes from 241 people

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A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next to escape the censures of the world.
Joseph Addison1672–1719The Spectator, No. 122 (20 July 1711)
- Character
States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.
George W. Bushborn 1946The Axis of Evil (2002)
- Good & Evil
- War & Peace
Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports.
George Washington1732–1799George Washington’s Farewell Address (1796)
- Politics
- Religion
By ceaseless efforts to live the good life we maintain our moral sanity. Not from without, but from within, flow the divine waters that renew the soul.
Felix Adler1851–1933Life and Destiny (1913), p.34
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
Isaiah766–686 BCIsaiah 5:20 (KJV)
- Good & Evil
A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified.
Leon Trotsky1879–1940Their Morals and Ours (1938)
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Richard Dawkinsborn 1941River out of Eden (1995), pp. 131–132
- Good & Evil
- Science
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
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 Camus1913–1960The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), “The Absurd Man”
- Philosophy
One single war — we all know — may be productive of more evil, immediate and subsequent, than hundreds of years of the unchecked action of the mutual-aid principle may be productive of good.
Peter Kropotkin1842–1921Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902)
- Good & Evil
- War & Peace
For evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name “evil.”
Augustine of Hippo354–430The City of God, Book XI, ch. 9
- Good & Evil
I believe that there is, from the ethical point of view, no symmetry between suffering and happiness, or between pain and pleasure.
Karl Popper1902–1994The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), Vol. 1, Notes to the Chapters: Ch. 9, Note 2.
- Happiness
The right way to requite evil, according to Jesus, is not to resist it. This saying of Christ removes the Church from the sphere of politics and law.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer1906–1945The Cost of Discipleship (1937), “Revenge”, p. 141
Not only does the action of Governments not deter men from crimes; on the contrary, it increases crime by always disturbing and lowering the moral standard of society.
Leo Tolstoy1828–1910The Meaning of the Russian Revolution (1906), a work about the 1905 Russian Revolution.
- Government
The world would be in better shape if people would take the same pains in the practice of the simplest moral laws as they exert in intellectualizing over the most subtle moral questions.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach1830–1916Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 30.