Just because I do not accept the teachings of the devotaries does not mean I’ve discarded a belief in right and wrong.””But the Almighty determines what is right!””Must someone, some unseen thing, declare what is...

Most morality, thought Mma Ramotswe, was about doing the right thing because it had been identified as such by a long process of acceptance and observance. You simply could not create your own morality because...

But the thing I remember most about the screening in October twenty years ago was the moment Julian grasped my hand that had gone numb on the armrest separating our seats. He did this because...

Some say that because the United States was wrong before, it cannot possibly be right now, or has not the right to be right. (The British Empire sent a fleet to Africa and the Caribbean...

Thought he, it’s a wicked world in all meridians; I’ll die a pagan.

Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error.

To treat fiction as if it were a religious or moral sermon is about as far from the actuality of literature as it is possible to get and indeed it is, in my opinion, the...

Morals do exist outside of organized religion, and the ‘morality’ taught by many of these archaic systems is often outdated, sexist, racist, and teaches intolerance and inequality. When a parent forces a child into a...

If history shows anything, it is that there’s no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by reframing them in the language of debt—above all, because it...

Hitherto, the rights and wrongs had seemed so beautifully simple.

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

Absolution is the washing away of sin. The promise of rebirth. And the chance to escape the transgressions of those who came before us. The best among us will learn from the mistakes of the...

Most of us waste this extraordinary thing called life. We have lived forty or sixty years, have gone to the office, engaged ourselves in social activity, escaping in various forms, and at the end of...

[J]ust the sight of this book, even though it was of no authority, made me wonder how it happened that so many different men – and learned men among them – have been and are...

So far, 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.

When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, he exposed the world to a momentous discovery . For the first time in history, human beings were seen not as creatures of divine...

If you can’t do something smart, do something right.

There is no honour in betraying your friends.

Verily, Allah enjoins justice, and the doing of good to others; and givinglike kindred; and forbids indecency, and manifest evil, and wrongfultransgression. (The Holy Quran, an-Nahl 16:91)This verse sets forth three gradations of doing good.The...

Killing a pig for a good old fry-up is one thing. But there’s no excuse for being cruel, even if you’re a bored teenage kid.

It seems to me that the moralist is the most useless and contemptible of creatures. He is useless in that he would expend his energies upon making judgments rather than upon gaining knowledge, for the...

What was it about us, as humans, that drove us to make apologies for beautiful things?

If it’s wrong when they do it, it’s wrong when we do it.

Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.

Republics exist as long as the people “adhere to principles and virtue.

Do we behave out of fear of punishment, or out of the demands of our heart? For me, it is the latter, as I would hope is true for all adults, thought I know from...

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis argues that human beings cannot be truly good or moral without faith in God and without submis- sion to the will of Christ. Unfortunately, Lewis does not provide any...

Given our obsession with self, it is hardly surprising we think it is fine for us to live in a world with malleable moral markers, as long as we get our own way without being...

He took the woman from her bed, pretending not to notice the question posed in his mind: Why do you always experiment on women? He didn’t care to admit that the inference had any validity....

that great condenser of moral chaos, The City.

If it’s okay to enrich ourselves by denying foreigners the right to earn a living, why shouldn’t we enrich ourselves by invading peaceful countries and seizing their assets? Most of us don’t think that’s a...

Genocide is the responsibility of the entire world.

A moral man is essentially dumbfounded when confronted by a man who is amoral—everything the latter does is met with a certain disbelief.

There is no enemy that respect and love will not conquer. The moral authority for survival comes from respect.

The advantage to a person on being simple and humble all the time is that he is always adorable to innocent hearts, but not to those ignorant minds that treat his simplicity as a sign...

It is often easier to fight for one’s principles than it is to live up to them.

How I treat a brother or sister from day to day, how I react to the sin-scarred wino on the street, how I respond to interruptions from people I dislike, how I deal with normal...

Only way to live here is day by day, same as anywhere.

Life is two things. Life is morality – life is adventure. Squire and master. Adventure rules, and morality looks up the trains in the Bradshaw. Morality tells you what is right, and adventure moves you....

Without moral values, which should begin in Congress, America will lose her roots, her basis, her thesis.

Integrity is never given. It is a quality that can only be proven over time.

When people start talking about Right and Left, they stop talking about right and wrong.

Popular medicine and popular morality belong together and ought not to be evaluated so differently as they still are: both are the most dangerous pseudo-sciences.

There is no justice in the laws of nature, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The Universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don’t care, or...

I tell you that man has no more tormenting care than to find someone to whom he can hand over as quickly as possible that gift of freedom with which the miserable creature is born....

Now here comes in the whole collapse and huge blunder of our age. We have mixed up two different things, two opposite things. Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit...

Latter-day capitalism. Like it or not, it’s the society we live in. Even the standard of right and wrong has been subdivided, made sophisticated. Within good, there’s fashionable good and unfashionable good, and ditto for...

I can explain why I have to do what I’m about to do, but I’m acutely aware that an explanation is not a righteous justification. What’s bad is bad even if necessary.

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.