Motivational Quotes

Morality

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

- Socrates

Best Quotes about Morality

The soul is the captain and ruler of the life of morals.

Sallust

Scandal is great entertainment because it allows people to feel contempt, a moral emotion that gives feeling of moral superiority while asking nothing in return.

Jonathan Haidt

He that has not religion to govern his morality, is not a dram better than my mastiff-dog; so long as you stroke him, and please him, and do not pinch him, he will play with you as finely as may be, he is a very good moral mastiff; but if you hurt him, he will fly in your face, and tear out your throat.

Selden, John

History is a voice forever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.

James A. Forude

Time is the great equalizer in the field of morals.

Mencken, H. L.

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.

Mencken, H. L.

In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.

Lowell, James Russell

In Los Angeles, it's like they jog for two hours a day and then they think they're morally right. That's when you want to choke people, you know?

Neeson, Liam

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

Locke, John

10.

Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

Kant, Immanuel

11.

We may pretend that we're basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.

Hands, Terry

12.

The quality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.

Huxley, Aldous

13.

For the superior morality, of which we hear so much, we too would desire to be thankful: at the same time, it were but blindness to deny that this superior morality is properly rather an inferior criminality, produced not by greater love of Virtue, but by greater perfection of Police; and of that far subtler and stronger Police, called Public Opinion.

Carlyle, Thomas

14.

We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach.

Bertrand Russell

15.

The new so called morality has too often the old immorality condoned.

Shawcross, Lord

16.

No moral system can rest solely on authority.

A. J. Ayer

17.

The fatal trait of the times is the divorce between religion and morality.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

18.

The person is always happy who is in the presence of something they cannot know in full. A person as advanced far in the study of morals who has mastered the difference between pride and vanity.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

19.

Morality is always the product of terror; its chains and strait-waistcoats are fashioned by those who dare not trust others, because they dare not trust themselves, to walk in liberty.

Huxley, Aldous

20.

Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.

Oscar Wilde

21.

Mercy to living beings, self restraint, truth, honesty, chastity and contentment, right faith and knowledge, and austerity are but the entourage of morality.

Sila-Prabhrita

22.

The immorality of men triumphs over the amorality of women.

Kraus, Karl

23.

I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.

G. K. Chesterton

24.

Morality is suspecting other people of not being legally married.

Shaw, George Bernard

25.

Moral choices do not depend on personal preference and private decision but on right reason and, I would add, divine order.

Hume, Basil

26.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

Seneca

27.

Morality and expediency coincide more than the cynics allow.

Hattersley, Roy

28.

The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.

Rand, Ayn

29.

Truth is the secret of eloquence and of virtue, the basis of moral authority; it is the highest summit of art and life.

Henri-FrÚdÚric Amiel

30.

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

Denis Diderot

31.

A moral lesson is better expressed in short sayings than in long discourse.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

32.

The person who still blushes is not yet a degenerate.

Young

33.

It is safe to say that no other superstition is so detrimental to growth, so enervating and paralyzing to the minds and hearts of the people, as the superstition of Morality.

Goldman, Emma

34.

Might was the measure of right.

Lucan, F. L.

35.

If your morals make you dreary, depend on it , they are wrong.

Robert Louis Stevenson

36.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

King Jr. Martin Luther

37.

All sects are different, because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God.

Voltaire

38.

There are few things more disturbing than to find, in somebody we detest, a moral quality which seems to us demonstrably superior to anything we ourselves possess. It augurs not merely an unfairness on the part of creation, but a lack of artistic judgment. Sainthood is acceptable only in saints.

Johnson, Pamela Hansford

39.

I cannot believe that this country cannot come together around some values what these kids need is a moral life... the issue is not ideas, it is conduct. The real question is how we reach these young people morally, and what do we bring to them.

Coles, Robert

40.

Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase.

Colton, Charles Caleb

41.

The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.

Bataille, Georges

42.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

George Bernard Shaw

43.

While moral rules may be propounded by authority the fact that these were so propounded would not validate them.

Ayer, Sir Alfred Jules

44.

Let the public mind become corrupt, and all efforts to secure property, liberty, or life by the force of laws written on paper will be as vain as putting up a sign in an apple orchard to exclude canker worms.

Mann, Horace

45.

Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.

Greene, Graham

46.

Moral indignation in most cases is, 2% moral, 48% indignation, and 50% envy.

Sica, Vittorio De

47.

Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis.

Kraus, Karl

48.

Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

49.

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.

Diderot, Denis

50.

Unfortunately, moral beauty in art -- like physical beauty in a person -- is extremely perishable. It is nowhere so durable as artistic or intellectual beauty. Moral beauty has a tendency to decay very rapidly into sententiousness or untimeliness.

Sontag, Susan