MORALITY QUOTES
quotations about morality
It's easy enough to preach morality on a full belly.
ERWIN SYLVANUS
Dr. Korczak and the Children
Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785
We can't go far in morality before realizing that right is a relative thing and that those who disagree with us may be striving for it as earnestly as we are ourselves. It is the spirit that counts.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Reformers", Intimations
The true fountains of evidence [are] the head and heart of every rational and honest man. It is there nature has written her moral laws, and where every man may read them for himself.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
French Treaties Opinion, 1793
Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibal country.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Samuel Butler's Notebooks
The essence of morality must be found in a careful attention to, and an attentive care for, others.
ERMANNO BENCIVENGA
Return from Exile: A Theory of Possibility
Law, morality, religion, are ... so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.
KARL MARX
The Communist Manifesto
"Tut, tut, child," said the Duchess. "Everything's got a moral if only you can find it."
LEWIS CARROLL
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.
OSCAR WILDE
"Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young"
The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
A Testament of Hope
About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Death in the Afternoon
Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains, rather than do an immoral act.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785
All systems of morality are fine. The gospel alone has exhibited a complete assemblage of the principles of morality, divested of all absurdity. It is not composed, like your creed, of a few common-place sentences put into bad verse. Do you wish to see that which is really sublime? Repeat the Lord's Prayer.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant and knows better.
MARK TWAIN
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Morality never faileth; but, whether there be dogmas, they shall fail; whether there be creeds, they shall cease; whether there be churches, they shall crumble away; but morality shall abide for evermore and endure as long as the endless circle of Nature revolves around the Eternal Throne.
ANNIE BESANT
My Path to Atheism
Morality is always the product of terror; its chains and strait-waistcoats are fashioned by those who dare not trust others, because they dare not trust themselves, to walk in liberty.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Do What You Will
The Human moral keyboard is limited ... there's nothing you can play on it that hasn't been played before. And, my dear Friends, I am sorry to say this, but it has its lower notes.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
A man that has lost moral sense is like a man in battle with both of his legs shot off: he has nothing to stand on.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Without freedom there can be no morality.
CARL JUNG
Two Essays on Analytical Psychology
And if moral truth has its high authority in the very nature of man, so that he who utters it nobly and faithfully needs no credentials but the truth itself, which is a cipher to which all men hold the key, so, again, the possession of the truth is the true and self-sealed commission to declare it, investing its holder with sacred and all-commanding powers.
HENRY WHITNEY BELLOWS
Re-statements of Christian Doctrine