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Quotes about morality

501 quotes from 241 people

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We all know that if Russia or China were guilty of what we have done in Vietnam, we would be exploding with moral indignation at these monstrous crimes.
Noam Chomskyborn 1928“On Resistance”, The New York Review of Books, December 7, 1967.
- War & Peace
Shame on the age and on its principles! The senate is aware of these things; the consul sees them; and yet this man lives.
Cicero107–43 BCThe First Oration Against Catiline (63 BC)
- Politics
As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.
Arthur C. Clarke1917–2008Voices from the Sky: Previews of the Coming Space Age (1967)
- Science
The greatest tragedy in mankind’s entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.
Arthur C. Clarke1917–2008“Credo” (1991)
- Anti-Religion
Poetry is an ethic. By ethic I mean a secret code of behavior, a discipline constructed and conducted according to the capabilities of a man who rejects the falsifications of the categorical imperative.
Jean Cocteau1889–1963On Invisibility
- Poetry
Iago’s soliloquy⁠—the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity⁠—how awful it is!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge1772–1834Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare and Other English Poets (1811–1818), Part II: “The Lectures and Notes of 1818”, Section IV: “Notes on Some Other Plays of Shakespeare”, § “Othello”, p. 388
- Good & Evil
To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice.
Confucius551–479 BCAnalects, Chapter II
What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.
Confucius551–479 BCAnalects, Chapter XV, § 23
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
Joseph Conrad1857–1924Under Western Eyes (1911), Pt. II, ch. 4
- Good & Evil
They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience.
Joseph Conrad1857–1924Under Western Eyes (1911), Pt. I, ch. 2
To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe.
Joseph Conrad1857–1924Heart of Darkness (1899), Part IIn context
- Money
I don’t think business should only deal in commercial things. Business, to me, is nothing more than a collection of people. If people have values, then companies should.
Tim Cookborn 1960CNBC: “Apple’s Tim Cook shares a rule that leaders should live by” (26 June 2018)
- Business
The right thing to do never requires any subterfuge, it is always simple and direct.
Calvin Coolidge1872–1933
It is better for a man to die at peace with himself than to live haunted by an evil conscience!
James Fenimore Cooper1789–1851The Last of the Mohicans (1826), Chapter VIIIIn context
- Life & Death
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Aleister Crowley1875–1947The Book of the Law (1904)
- Freedom