Those who believe that liberal democracy and the free market can be defended by the force of law and regulation alone, without an internalised sense of duty and morality, are tragically mistaken.

Our standards of morality are begotten of the past needs of society, but is society to remain always the same?

To give a man full knowledge of morality, I would send him to no other book than the New Testament.

While boys are taught that the things that make them men–good men–are universally accepted ethical ideals, women are led to believe that our moral compass lies somewhere between our legs. Literally.

Mankind in the aggregate I have found to be brutish, ignorant and unkind, whether those qualities were covered by the coarse tunic of the peasant of the white and purple toga of a senator. And...

The intellectual climate of the 1970s, for which the 1950s had already paved the way, contributed to this. A theory was even finally developed at that time that pedophilia should be viewed as something positive....

… if we adopt the principle of universality: if an action is right (or wrong) for others, it is right (or wrong) for us. Those who do not rise to the minimal moral level of...

As to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly scattered in those books [the Bible], they make no part of this pretended thing, revealed religion. They are the natural dictates of conscience, and...

Intellectual and moral growth is no less indispensable than material improvement. Knowledge is a viaticum. Though is a prime necessity; truth is nourishment, like wheat. A reasoning faculty, deprived of knowledge and wisdom, pines away....

The number one responsibility for each of us is to change ourselves with hope that others will follow.

we raise them for us; that means we owe them some respect. nature is creul but we dont have to be. i wouldnt want to have my guts ripped out by a lion. i’d much...

We Catholics have not only to do our best to keep down our own warring passions and live decent lives, which will often be hard enough in this odd world we have been born into....

Too often in the post-9/11 world, when the time has come to translate the moral, and essentially progressive, roots of foreign policy idealism into plans for American action, liberals have said, ‘Duck.

If moral truths do not exist as a foundation for law, then law itself becomes merely a system of raw political power accountable to no one.

Rationality belongs to the cool observer, but because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason, but faith, and the naive faith requires necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimplifications which are provided...

You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape –...

The nature of atheism merits clarification on two further points which involve less common ideas about theism. The first involves the idea of ‘God’ which is metaphorical — for example, a theist who believes in...

Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live–that productive work is the process by which man’s consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and...

Shameful confession, one of my own Chelas (or so it is rather incredibly reported to me) said recently: “Self-discipline is a form of Restriction.” (That, you remember, is “The word of Sin.”) Of all the...

LOVE YOURSELF” does not mean to do only what one feels or perceives is right, but the thing which is morally right for everyone.

goodness” like a tube running through our bodies. It can be nurtured. It’s always magic, when on a freeway packed with traffic, a stranger makes room for you to change lanes… it gives you hope.

The old exhortations to nationalist fervor and jingoist pride have begun to lose their appeal. Perhaps because of rising standards of living, children are being treated better worldwide. In only a few decades, sweeping global...

The mind is constituted to accept the god of the more powerful. If you have to choose between the god of the slave owner and the god of the enslaved, naturally you will choose the...

This is what you have to ask yourself: Do you want to be good, or just seem good? Do you want to be good to yourself and others? Do you care about other people, always,...

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.

To be intuitive is to possess a godly characteristic, to be bad at second-guessing the good.

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

Morality consists in this for each individual: to attempt each time to extend its region of clear expression, to try to augment its amplitude, so as to produce a free act that expresses the most...

It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it. That is beyond their will; and, however little they acknowledge it, one later discovers that they were among...

There is no such thing as accomplishing a righteous reform by the use of ‘expediency.’ There is no such thing as sliding up hill. In morals, the only sliders are backsliders.

Rakitin was dishonest and was decidedly unaware of it; that, on the contrary, knowing that he wouldn’t steal money from the table, he ultimately considered himself a man of the highest integrity.

Culture, like science, is no protection against demons.

nothing one does in bed is immoral if it helps perpetuate love

Oh no!’ replies Monsieur Tuvache indignantly. ‘We’re not murderers, you know. You have to understand that’s prohibited. We supply what is needed but people do the deed themselves. It’s their affair. We are just here...

Science, as long as it limits itself to the descriptive study of the laws of nature, has no moral or ethical quality and this applies to the physical as well as the biological sciences.

The supernatural worldview is causing a great number of otherwise intelligent people to cling to a collection of atavistic concepts that have not, and never will serve humanity in any ultimately beneficial way. Any benefits...

Lenin refused to recognise moral norms established by slave-owners for their slaves and never observed by the slave-owners themselves; he called upon the Proletariat to extend the class struggle into the moral sphere too. Who...

The night before brain surgery, I thought about death. I searched out my larger values, and I asked myself, if I was going to die, did I want to do it fighting and clawing or...

Can you hold a red-hot iron rod in your hand merely because some one wants you to do so? Then, will it be right on your part to ask others to do the same thing...

To learn that it’s easier to be told by others what to think and believe than it is to think for yourself.

Do what is right for the right reasons.

True freedom is not advanced in the permissive society, which confuses freedom with license to do anything whatever and which in the name of freedom proclaims a kind of general amorality. It is a caricature...

We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses. And then we come across another of God’s teachings on morality: if a man discovers on...

Bullying is an attack upon the runts of the litter – the weak of the species, and it is predicated on a lack of bond with the parents. If a child has a secure bond...

Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It’s your combination sinners – your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards – who dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute.

You know the difference between right and wrong,’ he repeated finally. ‘Man, why did you need Initiation—by the Golden Dawn, or by anybody else? You are a genius, a sage, a giant among men. You...

When statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.

Don’t always think about being a subordinate, otherwise you would lose your self esteem and not succeed in society.

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...