The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name.

Is it a small thing to quench the flames of hell with the holy tears of pity — to unbind the martyr from the stake — break all the chains — put out the fires...

Doesn’t that mean that you do believe there is some kind of moral reality that is “there” that is not defined by us, that must be abided by regardless of what a person feels or...

It is for the reader to see in the book the nature of the motives of human actions and perhaps learn something too of the motives behind the social forces which judge those actions and...

Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that…. The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to...

And the two essential and indispensable things are first of all intelligence in the right most sense of that word and goodwill or the old fashion word charity/love, I mean these two things have to...

Where there is desire, the means to fulfill it are endless.

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Morals do exist outside of organized religion, and the ‘morality’ taught by many of these archaic systems is often outdated, sexist, racist, and teaches intolerance and inequality.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

But she was not even grateful to him for it; nothing good on Pierre’s part seemed to her to be an effort, it seemed so natural for him to be kind to everyone that there...

I tell Allah I love Him immensely, immensely. But I tell Him I cannot be better, because of how the world is.

A steady recognition that the evils which prevent the fullness of moral development are precisely the elements which are also the source of the power that gives existence to whatever moral accomplishments we see about...

Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.

Relationships do not preclude issues of morality.

The principle of freedom is the fundamental principle of morality and the objective of justice.

Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn’t touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been...

One peculiarity of our present [ethical] climate is that we care much more about our rights than about our ‘good’. For previous thinkers about ethics, such as those who wrote the Upanishads, or Confucius, or...

The state is a voluntary association of individuals designed to serve their individual interests. The state is not a faceless villain. The state is all of us. But freedom does not mean the freedom to...

Rules, whether they govern sexual morality or financial probity, regardless of whether they are justifiable or undesirable, always provoke bold recalcitrants to devise clever, defiant ways to breach them.

If you spend your life on a moral hill-top, you see nothing but the mud below. If, like me, you live in the mud itself, you get a damned good view of clear blue sky...

The only crime is pride.

So maybe the difference isn’t language. Maybe it’s this: animals do neither good nor evil. They do as they must do. We may call what they do harmful or useful, but good and evil belong...

We colour and mould according to the wants within us whatever our eyes bring in.

Most men—it is my experience—are neither virtuous nor scoundrels, good-hearted nor bad-hearted. They are a little of one thing and a little of the other and nothing for any length of time: ignoble mediocrities.

It is pleasure that lurks in the practice of every one of your virtues. Man performs actions because they are good for him, and when they are good for other people as well they are...

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.