A Quote by Lincoln Steffens

Morality is only moral when it is voluntary.

Lincoln Steffens

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Moral Morality Only Voluntary

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Lincoln Steffens
American - Journalist
April 6, 1866 - August 9, 1936

Rational egoism is the only morality that is for human life; thus, it is the only morality that is actually moral. Those who choose to be rationally self-interested thereby make the most of their life - and they are morally good because of it.

Craig Biddle

I'm not saying that atheists can't act morally or have moral knowledge. But when I ascribe virtue to an atheist, it's as a theist who sees the atheist as conforming to objective moral values. The atheist, by contrast, has no such basis for morality. And yet all moral judgments require a basis for morality, some standard of right and wrong.

William A. Dembski

Our virtues are voluntary (and in fact we are in a sense ourselves partly the cause of our moral dispositions, and it is our having a certain character that makes us set up an end of a certain kind), it follows that our vices are voluntary also; they are voluntary in the same manner as our virtues.

Aristotle

We're always projecting our moral categories on things. I think that's inevitable. But capitalism places no particular value on morality. Morality in the market is enforced by contract and regulation and law, because morality is understood to be in conflict with the motive force of greed and accumulation.

Michael Pollan

Real morality is possible when the sanctions for morality are also tangible and real. Therefore, atheism shifts the basis of morality from faith in god to obligations of social living. Moral conduct is not a passport to heaven; it is social necessity.

Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

Art is not and never has been subordinate to moral values. Moral values are social values; aesthetic values are human values. Morality seeks to restrain the feelings; art seeks to define them by externalizing them, by giving them significant form. Morality has only one aim - the ideal good; art has quite another aim - the objective truth... art never changes.

Herbert Read

In a constitutional democracy the moral content of law must be given by the morality of the framer or legislator, never by the morality of the judge.

Robert Bork

I have a morality. I don't know if it's the best morality. And I do like thinking. If people perceive that as a moral intellectualism, that's fine. That's up to them to decide.

Stephen Colbert

The essential function of art is moral. But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind.

D. H. Lawrence

If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilised morality to savage morality.

C. S. Lewis

Unbounded morality ultimately becomes counterproductive even in terms of the same moral principles being sought. The law of diminishing returns applies to morality.

Thomas Sowell

Leaders can be moral-and they should be moral-without imposing their morality on others.

Geraldine Ferraro

In the West, they have morality. We pretend to be moral people but we are not. We do not have a moral code.

Himani Shivpuri

Man is only a moral being because he lives in society, since morality consists in solidarity with the group, and varies according to that solidarity. Cause all social life to vanish, and moral life would vanish at the same time, having no object to cling to.

Emile Durkheim

Morality is the least of my concerns. To me, morality in a society that - however moral its pose - is hierarchically organized is simply a lie, an alibi for the inequalities that exist in society.

Peter Handke

In mountaineering, there is not only the activity, but the philosophy behind it. Some say a moral, but I am against that because all morality is dangerous.

Reinhold Messner

A Quote by Lincoln Steffens

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