As the sailor locates his position on the sea by “shooting” the sun, so we may get our moral bearings by looking at God. We must begin with God.

Mma Ramotswe had listened to a World Service broadcast on her radio one day which had simply taken her breath away. It was about philosophers who called themselves existentialists and who, as far as Mma...

[T]he infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

the difference between the old and the new education being) in a word, the old was a kind of propagation – men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda.

With Truth, Reason, and Morality off the board, we then capture their last Rook —that prissy little virtue, Temperance— for she depends on those other three for her beauty and was thus left wholly undefended.

War does not decide who is right but who is left.

The man who sins but wants to purify it is no more a sinner than the man who doesn’t sin but wants to sin.

We are too prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for the crimes of those who wield them. The products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they...

Such is life. It is no cleaner than a kitchen; it reeks like a kitchen; and if you mean to cook your dinner, you must expect to soil your hands; the real art is in...

Truly, you understand the reverse art of alchemy, the depreciating of the most valuable things! Try, just for once, another recipe, in order not to realise as hitherto the opposite of what you mean to...

But because though art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:16).

It is morally appalling for the so called liberators of South Sudan to keep liberating their own people from a war that has already been won.

Until you are conscious of your conscience, you are morally unconscious.

The individualism of current economic theory is manifest in the purely self-interested behavior it generally assumes. It has no real place for fairness, malevolence, and benevolence, nor for the preservation of human life or any...

My language limitations here are real. My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life. If I really knew this language, there would surely be in...

It’s not God who gave us moral laws, but this doesn’t make them less important

morality… comes at a price.

Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle,...

high in morality,high in honesty a person or a group is most lonely on this planet .

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.

The sign of a good conscience is for a man to be in support of basically everything that Westboro Baptist isn’t.

Morality is always derivative. It stems from one’s worldview.

Morality divorced from the doctrines of the gospel is not that holiness which the gospel requires.

our moral reasoning is plagued by two illusions. The first illusion can be called the wag-the-dog illusion: We believe that our own moral judgment (the dog) is driven by our own moral reasoning (the tail)....

Innocence could be lost more than once after all.

Saying that you are moral because you believe in a god is like saying you are an economist because you play monopoly.

Greaser ‘ didn’t have anything to do with it. My buddy over there wouldn’t have done it. Maybe you would have done the same thing, maybe a friend of yours wouldn’t have. It’s the individual.

In foreign policy, a modest acceptance of fate will often lead to discipline rather than indifference. The realization that we cannot always have our way is the basis of a mature outlook that rests on...

Perspective gets lost in moral certainties. Which only means that no one was ever burned at the stake by a doubter.

Morality is the foundation of sadhana. Morality is the base, intuition is the way and Life Divine is the goal

If theft is advantageous to everyone who succeeds at it, and adultery is a good strategy, at least for males, for increasing presence in the gene pool, why do we feel they are wrong? Shouldn’t...

If God creates morality, then morality is nothing more than the whimsy of a divine being blindly followed by humans.

When it is recalled that until the Christian era the underworld was never regardded as a hostile area, that all gods were useful and essentially friendly to man despite occasional lapsesl when we see the...

You don’t read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses...

If there is any societyamong robbers and murderers, they must at least. . . .abstainfrom robbing and murdering one another. So beneficenceis less essential than justice is to the existence of society; alack of beneficence...

Morality doesn’t exist in space, only in the spaces between people.

Men, some to business take, some to pleasure take; but every woman is at heart a rake

Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.

It ought to be an offense to be excruciating and unfunny in circumstances where your audience is almost morally obliged to enthuse.

Do what is right and be prepared to pay the price.

Realizing the seriously ruthless, venomous habits and agendas of evil always instills a more fierce passion and longing for a closer God. Men, out of pride, may claim their own authorities over what constitutes good...

If you’re capable of despising your own behavior, you might just love yourself.

There’s more to people than some defined label,” said Arcie. “There are more than straight good and evil, aye, even more than law or disorders or fence-sittin. There’s prejudice, whimsey, affection, superstition, habit, upbringing, alliance,...

irresponsibility” of characters. Characters are irresponsible, art is irresponsible when compared to life, because it is first and foremost important that a character be real, and as readers or watchers we tend to applaud any...

There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints. Victorious historians rule where good or evil lies.

Human beings have capitalized on the silence of animals, just as certain human beings have historically imposed silence on certain other human beings by denying slaves the right to literacy, denying women the right to...

In 1881, being on a visit to Boston, my wife and I found ourselves in the Parker House with the Ingersoll’s, and went over to Charleston to hear him lecture. His subject was ‘Some Mistakes...

I have a different idea of elegance. I don’t dress like a fop, it’s true, but my moral grooming is impeccable. I never appear in public with a soiled conscience, a tarnished honor, threadbare scruples,...

If priests—of all clans—were free of disease and immune to death, then there might be some basis for the claim of the religionists. But these “men of God” are victims of the natural course of...

I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.