A Quote by Georges Lefebvre

The moralist must praise heroism and condemn cruelty; but the moralist does not explain events.

Georges Lefebvre

Quote Topics

Condemn Cruelty Does Events Explain Heroism Moralist Must Praise

Quote Author

Georges Lefebvre
August 6, 1874 - August 28, 1959

A Scotchman must be a very sturdy moralist who does not love Scotland better than truth.

Samuel Johnson

The moralist and the revolutionary are constantly undermining one another. Marx exploded a hundred tons of dynamite beneath the moralist position, and we are still living in the echo of that tremendous crash. But already, somewhere or other, the sappers are at work and fresh dynamite is being tamped in place to blow Marx at the moon. Then Marx, or somebody like him, will come back with yet more dynamite, and so the process continues, to an end we cannot foresee.

George Orwell

If you want to move beyond hive-docility, you must become God the Moralist.

Timothy Leary

It seems to me that the moralist is the most useless and contemptible of creatures. He is useless in that he would expend his energies upon making judgments rather than upon gaining knowledge, for the reason that judgment is easy and knowledge is difficult. He is contemptible in that his judgments reflect a vision of himself which in his ignorance and pride he would impose upon the world. I implore you, do not become a moralist; you will destroy your art and your mind.

John Edward Williams

To the moralist prostitution does not consist so much in the fact that the woman sells her body, but rather that she sells it out of wedlock.

Emma Goldman

I am a moralist. I worry.

Toni Morrison

Rough Johnson, the great moralist.

Lord Byron

A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.

Will Durant

Ages when custom is unsettled are necessarily ages of prophecy. The moralist cannot teach what is revealed; he must reveal what can be taught. He has to seek insight rather than to preach.

Walter Lippmann

The public only knows one side of [Mark Mark Twain] - the amusing part. Little does it suspect that he was a man of strong convictions upon political and social questions and a moralist of no mean order.

Andrew Carnegie

Here was the rub: one must be more zealous to please God than to avoid sin. One must sacrifice oneself utterly to God's purposes, even to the point of possibly making moral mistakes. One's obedience to God must be forward-oriented and zealous and free, and to be a mere moralist or pietist would make such a life impossible.