In the moral realm, there is very little consensus left in Western countries over the proper basis of moral behavior. And because of the power of the media, for millions of men and women the...

Evil is relative…You can’t hang a sign on it. You can’t touch it or taste it or cut it with a sword. Evil depends on where you are standing, pointing your indicting finger.

To be ethical is to endeavor to find one’s proper place in the larger scheme of things rather than to seek to assert human superiority over the natural world.

My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. ‘Something cannot emerge from nothing,’ he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable ‘the...

Two wrongs’ create an additional problem.’A wrong’ plus ‘A right’ creates a remorse.’Two rights’ create a solution.

It is now established by verifiable evidence that religion stultifies the brain and is the great obstacle in the path of intellectual progress.The more religious a person is, the more he is steeped in ignorance...

morality is moral only when it is voluntary

Take away all the moral beauty and sweetness in the Word, and the Bible is left wholly a dead letter, a dry, lifeless, tasteless thing. By this is seen the true foundation of our duty,...

It inspired a kind of Huck Finn moment when I decided it was better to risk hell than shrivel in the midst of a toxic Southern Baptist morality.

Strength and success – they are above morality, above criticism. It seems, then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it. Is there a check in...

It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The...

Since there is no one else to praise me, I will praise myself — will say that I have never tampered with a single tooth in my thought machine, such as it is. There are...

Many people assert that this abandonment of the god hypothesis means the abandonment of all religion and all moral sanctions. This is simply not true. But it does mean, once our relief at jettisoning an...

May we think of freedom not as the right to do as we please but as the opportunity to do what is right.

yea, ” and no one contradicts you. But for all that, his bowing and scraping are welcome everywhere; he is received, smiled upon, and wriggles himself into all kinds of society; and, if any appointment...

I question the moral integrity of anyone who says they have no regrets.

Redemption precedes morality, and not the other way around.

The fact that it has nothing else to contribute to human wisdom is no reason to hand religion a free licence to tell us what to do. Which religion, anyway? The one in which we...

Whereas modern cynicism brought despair about the ability of the human species to realize laudable ideals, postmodern cynicism doesn’t — not because it’s optimistic, but because it can’t take ideals seriously in the first place....

Now I want you to remember something because I don’t think we shall meet again very soon. It is this; however fashionable despair about the world and about people may be at present, and however...

The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is...

And those who will carefully study the so-called ‘Mosaic code’ contained in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, will see that, though Jahveh’s prohibitions of certain forms of immorality are strict and sweeping, his...

I had as lief have the foppery of freedom as the morality of imprisonment.

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most...

The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.

Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. A mystic craves obedience from men, not their agreement. He wants them to surrender their consciousness to his assertions, his edicts, his wishes,...

Apart from the economic value, money does have high moral value.

Dream big dreams! Imagine that you have no limitations and then decide what’s right before you decide what’s possible.

Do right simply because it is right.

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less...

Any society’s upper-crust is riddled with immorality, how else d’you think they keep their power? Reputation is king of the public sphere, not private. It is dethroned by public acts.

Therefore, let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you.

Yet the same thing happens to the notions of morality. They are devised, at the start, as measures of expediency, and then given divine sanction in order to lend them authority.

There is, after all, no moral difference between the bigot and the tolerator. They are from case to case positive or negative. One man is bigoted because he was given the sword of truth, another...

My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.

So many times the debate of abortion turns to legality. The issue is not legality, the issue is morality. Have you not forgotten? It was legal for Adolf Hitler to place all of those men,...

And a human being whose life is nurtured in an advantage which has accrued from the disadvantage of other human beings, and who prefers that this should remain as it is, is a human being...

Why are those who are notoriously undisciplined and unmoral also most contemptuous of religion and morality? They are trying to solace their own unhappy lives by pulling the happy down to their own abysmal depths.

Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.

A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality.

Some Christians say god is the source of morality, these people have clearly never read the bible.

I have a very simple morality: not to do good or evil to anyone. Not to do evil, because it seems only fair that others enjoy the same right I demand for myself – not...

The primary reason more explicit material is now being published is twofold: there’s money in the sale of sensational material, and few are trying to stop those who want to make this money, that is,...

Sacredness binds people together, and then blinds them to the arbitrariness of the practice.

Every man who begets a free act projects his personality into the infinite. If he gives a poor man a penny grudgingly, that penny pierces the poor man’s hand, falls, pierces the earth, bores holes...

It still remains unrecognised, that to bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind, is a...

True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding the true path for ourselves, and fearlessly following it.

If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void. (95)

We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.

There’s a saying that you can’t put a price on a human life, but that saying is a lie because we have. We have, and it’s so much lower than you would think. Yes, human...