80 Quotes About Morality

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

The standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people's ideas get nearer to that real Right than others.

The truth is that while liberals now hold the reins of power in Washington, D.C., the American people have not abandoned traditional morality and a conservative philosophy of government.

Nothing in the world so tends to defile the imagination, to pervert the affections, and to corrupt the morals, as self-consciousness. You know it is connected with every disease and morbid action of the body. ...All self-consciousness is of the very essence and nature of sin.

The popular concept that we should each determine our own morality is based on the belief that the spiritual realm is nothing at all like the rest of the world. Does anyone really believe that? For many years after each of the morning and evening Sunday services I remained in the auditorium for another hour to field questions. Hundreds of people stayed for the give-and-take discussions. One of the most frequent statements I heard was that 'Every person has to define right and wrong for him- or herself.' I always responded to the speakers by asking, 'Is there anyone in the world right now doing things you believe they should stop doing no matter what they personally believe about the correctness of their behavior?' They would invariable say, 'Yes, of course.' Then I would ask, '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 thinks?' Almost always, the response to that question was silence, either a thoughtful or a grumpy one.

The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike. Unless we return to the crude and nursery-like belief in objective values, we perish.

Men of authority and influence may promote good morals. Let them in their several stations encourage virtue. Let them favor and take part in any plans which may be formed for the advancement of morality.

Research indicates that once an uncommitted couple gets involved in sexual intercourse, the relationship usually begins to end. They have reached the superficial end of the physical aspects of the relationship, and they have no particularly compelling reason to explore its depths.

As a result of this total breakdown of basic morality in virtually every distinguished element within the American framework, constitutional governance is also virtually nonexistent. Adams was right: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral . . . people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Our Western society is so deeply divided between these two approaches (moralism, self-discovery) that hardly anyone can conceive of any other way to live. If you criticize or distance yourself from one, everyone assumes you have chosen to follow the other, because each of these approaches tends to divide the whole world into two basic groups. The moral conformists say: 'the immoral people -- the people who 'do their own thing' -- are the problem with the world, and moral people are the solution.' The advocates of self-discovery say: 'The bigoted people -- the people who say, 'We have the Truth' -- are the problem with the world, and progressive people are the solution.

Place not thy amendment only in increasing thy devotion, but in bettering thy life. It is the damning hypocrisy of this age that it slights all good morality, and spends its zeal in matters of ceremony, and a form of godliness without the power of it.

Heat water to the highest degree, you cannot make wine of it; it is water still; so, let morality be raised to the highest, it is nature still; it is old Adam put in a better dress.

Unless we discover actual truth, morality is up for grabs.

the character of the world is morally different from the Spirit-imparted life we have received from God.

All men alike stand condemned, not by alien codes of ethics, but by their own, and all men therefore are conscious of guilt.

False notions of liberty are strangely common. People talk of it as if it meant the liberty of doing whatever one likes - whereas the only liberty that a man, worthy of the name of man, ought to ask for, is, to have all restrictions, inward and outward, removed that prevent his doing what he ought.

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.

Community service has become a patch for morality. You can devote your life to community service and be a total schmuck.

Mr. Osteen can be assured that his weak and evasive non-answer to this reporter's question will put him at very little risk for arrest. But then, pandering prophets are rarely at much of a risk from the public anyway. There was no conviction in his answer; no clear declaration of biblical truth; no Gospel, no judgment, and no promise. Just a non-answer with a smile. Pathetic . . . simply pathetic. (regarding Osteen's failure to declare homosexuality as sin)

Morality, like numinous awe, is a jump; in it, man goes beyond anything that can be 'given' in the facts of experience.

Wherever any precept of traditional morality is simply challenged to produce its credentials, as though the burden of proof lay on it, we have taken the wrong position.

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead top political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great Pillars?

The devil may also make use of morality.

I am not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

No books are so legible as the lives of men; no character so plain as their moral conduct.

The absence of the true Light means moral Death. The darkness of the natural world to the intellect is not all. What history testifies to is, first the partial, and then the total eclipse of virtue that always follows the abandonment of belief in a personal God.

Morality or duty never yet made a man happy in himself or dear to others.

I believe that a long step toward public morality will have been taken when sins are called by their right names.

No government is lawful or innocent that does not recognize the moral law as the only universal law, and God as the Supreme Lawgiver and Judge, to whom nations in their national capacity, as well as individuals, are amenable.

If we get our very identity, our sense of worth, from our political position, then politics is not really about, it is about us. Through our cause we are getting a self, our worth. That means we MUST despise and demonize the opposition. If we get our identity from our ethnicity or socioeconomic status, then we HAVE to feel superior to those of other classes and races. If you are profoundly proud of being an open-minded, tolerant soul, you will be extremely indignant toward people you think are bigots. If you are a very moral person, you will feel superior to people you think are licentious. And so on.