Top 1200 Moral Ambiguity Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

Zombies sort of typify this ambiguity, that they're not dead and not alive.

Being a moral realist I see normative ethics as a search of the truth about our obligations and a search of explanation; the idea is that moral principles can help us to a moral explanation of our particular obligations.

The eternal ambiguity of human motives and memory.

Bad faith makes the most of every ambiguity.

Scandal is great entertainment because it allows people to feel contempt, a moral emotion that gives feelings of moral superiority while asking nothing in return. With contempt you don't need to right the wrong (as with anger) or flee the scene (as with fear or disgust). And the best of all, contempt is made to share. Stories about the moral failings of others are among the most common kinds of gossip, they are a stable of talk radio, and they offer a ready way for people to show that they share a common moral orientation.

Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it?

If I take refuge in ambiguity, I assure you that it's quite conscious.

We want to live in ambiguity. This is the human condition.

We are naturally moral beings, but our environments can enhance - or, sadly, degrade - this innate moral sense.

The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.

The machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry.

Reasons for not keeping a notebook: 1) the ambiguity of the reader

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

I think it's a really admirable thing to be very sure of your own moral code and not waver from that. If you're sure of your moral code, your moral code is personal. Something that I admire about my TV character is being unapologetic and knowing who she is. That was empowering to play.

Legality alone is no guide for a moral people. There are many things in this world that have been, or are, legal but clearly immoral. Slavery was legal. Did that make it moral? South Africa’s apartheid, Nazi persecution of Jews, and Stalinist and Maoist purges were all legal, but did that make them moral?

Political realism is aware of the moral significance of political action. It is also aware of the ineluctable tension between the moral command and the requirements of successful political action. And it is unwilling to gloss over and obliterate that tension and thus to obfuscate both the moral and the political issue by making it appear as though the stark facts of politics were morally more satisfying than they actually are, and the moral law less exacting than it actually is.

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

Autocratic power requires the degradation of moral authority - not the capture of moral high ground.

Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative.

Ambiguity depletes as your budget rises.

I've always been drawn to ambiguity in pop music.

By "moral discipline," I mean self-discipline based on moral standards. Moral discipline is the consistent exercise of agency to choose the right because it is right, even when it is hard. It rejects the self-absorbed life in favor of developing character worthy of respect and true greatness through Christlike service.

The moral duty of man consists of imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of God, manifested in the creation towards all his creatures. Everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals is a violation of moral duty

Non-ambiguity is the shaping force of reality.

The more moral you pretend to be, the less moral you are; the less moral you try to be, the more moral you are.

People are concrescences of ambiguity.

I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous.

The foundation of leadership is your own moral compass. I think the best quality leaders really know where their moral compass is. They get it out when they are making decisions. It's their guide. But not only do you have to have a moral compass and take it out of your pocket, it has to have a true north.

Ambiguity in directors is a hard thing to deal with.

Force cannot transmit a moral principle: moral ideas can be received only through the reason of the heart.

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.

The purpose of narrative is to present us with complexity and ambiguity.

[nonviolence] seeks to secure moral ends through moral means.

To embrace luck, you have to enhance your tolerance for ambiguity.

A lot of my music has ambiguity and room for people to interpret.

It is of note that for a long time moral nihilism was a kind of unquestioned default position in analytic moral philosophy.

If truth is the main casualty in war, ambiguity is another.

It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules.

True knowledge gives a moral standing and moral strength.

Science is fundamentally a moral enterprise, following the moral imperative to seek the truth.

You know what I think about violence. For me it is profoundly moral -more moral than compromises and transactions.

Fear, coercion, punishment, are the masculine remedies for moral weakness, but statistics show their failure for centuries. Why not change the system and try the education of the moral and intellectual faculties, cheerful surroundings, inspiring influences? Everything in our present system tends to lower the physical vitality, the self-respect, the moral tone, and to harden instead of reforming the criminal.

Contemporary moral philosophy has found an original way of being boring, which is by not discussing moral issues at all.

Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.

I'm a participant in the doctrine of constructive ambiguity.

I think we are trying to run the space age with horse and buggy moral and spiritual equipment. Technology you see has no morals; and with no moral restraints man will destroy himself ecologically, militarily, or in some other way. Only God can give a person moral restraints and spiritual strength.

Ambiguity is something that I really respond to. I like the complexity of it.

For me, nonviolence was not a moral principle but a strategy; there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon.

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

Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality.

High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.

On devient moral de' s qu'on est malheureux. We become moral once we are miserable.

Americans always think they have to lead. I'm interested in ambiguity.

Religious belief has made me comfortable with ambiguity.

The cult of moral grayness is a revolt against moral values.

Ambiguity is the devil's volleyball.

The nature of good fiction is that it dwells in ambiguity.

A tension has always existed between the capitalist imperative to maximize efficiency at any cost and the moral imperatives of culture, which historically have served as a counterweight to the moral blindness of the market. This is another example of the cultural contradictions of capitalism - the tendency over time for the economic impulse to erode the moral underpinnings of society. Mercy toward the animals in our care is one such casualty.

My early research - I'm a social psychologist, and my early research was on how people make moral judgments. When I entered the field in 1987, everybody was looking at moral reasoning - how do kids reason about a moral dilemma? Should a guy steal a drug to save his wife's life?

Without God and religion you don't have moral truth, you have moral opinion