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Quotes about morality

501 quotes from 241 people

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I’m for decency — period. I’m for anything and everything that bodes love and consideration for my fellow man.
Frank Sinatra1915–1998Playboy interview (1963)
- Love
I intend to do what little one man can do to awaken the public conscience, and in the meantime I am not frightened by your menaces.
Upton Sinclair1878–1968Letter to the Louis D. Oaks, Los Angeles Chief of Police (17 May 1923)
- Courage
Living a minimally acceptable ethical life involves using a substantial part of our spare resources to make the world a better place. Living a fully ethical life involves doing the most good we can.
Peter Singerborn 1946The Most Good You Can Do (2015), Preface, p. vii
- Charity
Speciesism⁠—the word is not an attractive one, but I can think of no better term⁠—is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species.
Peter Singerborn 1946Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975), Ch. 1: All Animals Are Equal
- Animals
Nothing but the most exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune.
Adam Smith1723–1790The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, Article III, p. 874.
- Money
It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little.
Sydney Smith1771–1845Often credited to Edmund Burke
There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.
Socrates470–399 BCII: xxxi. Original Greek: ἓν μόνον ἀγαθὸν εἶναι, τὴν ἐπιστήμην, καὶ ἓν μόνον κακόν, τὴν ἀμαθίαν
- Good & Evil
- Knowledge
The difficulty, my friends, is not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.
Socrates470–399 BCThe Apology of Socrates (399 BC)
- Life & Death
Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn1918–2008Letter to three students (October 1967) as translated in Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record (1970) edited by Leopold Labedz, “The Struggle Intensifies”
- Justice
The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn1918–2008The Gulag Archipelago (1973)
- Good & Evil
Of evils current upon earth
The worst is money. Money ’tis that sacks
Cities, and drives men forth from hearth and home;
Warps and seduces native innocence,
And breeds a habit of dishonesty.
Sophocles496–406 BCAntigone (c. 441 BC), spoken by CreonIn context
- Good & Evil
- Money
Nor did I deem that thou, a mortal man,
Could’st by a breath annul and override
The immutable unwritten laws of Heaven.
They were not born today nor yesterday;
They die not; and none knoweth whence they sprang.
Sophocles496–406 BCAntigone (c. 441 BC), spoken by AntigoneIn context
- Justice
- Laws
No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.
Herbert Spencer1820–1903Social Statics (1851), Pt. IV, Ch. 30: General Considerations
- Freedom
- Happiness
We too often forget that not only is there “a soul of goodness in things evil,” but very generally also, a soul of truth in things erroneous.
Herbert Spencer1820–1903First Principles (1862), Pt. I, The Unknowable
- Good & Evil
- Truth & Lies
All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions. This is true of everything that lives.
Herbert Spencer1820–1903Social Statics (1851), Part I, Ch. 2: The Evanescence of Evil, § 1
- Good & Evil