Top 1200 Morality Quotes & Sayings

Morality which depends upon the helplessness of a man or woman has not much to recommend it. Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts.

That's what I mean by "Western morality," is the lack of morality. There is none. People are out for themselves, and they'll stab you in the back.

The true meaning of religion is thus, not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.

Life is two things. Life is morality – life is adventure. Squire and master. Adventure rules, and morality looks up the trains in the Bradshaw. Morality tells you what is right, and adventure moves you. If morality means anything it means keeping bounds, respecting implications, respecting implicit bounds. If individuality means anything it means breaking bounds – adventure.

A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality.

There are those who believe that a new modernity demands a new morality. What they fail to consider is the harsh reality that there is no such thing as a new morality. There is only one morality . All else is immorality.

It is probably safe to say that over a long period of time, political morality has been as high as business morality.

My version of relativism is pluralistic and attributes functions to morality that in combination with human nature place limits on what could count as a true morality. Unlike many other relativists, I do not hold that people are subject to a morality because they all belong to a certain group. That is, I don't hold that being a member of a group makes one's subject to some set of generally accepted norms. What is true is that others around us teach us morality and moral language, so they inevitably influence us.

A society that is not founded on morality falls apart and becomes easy prey to puritan cults such as Islam that on the surface, promote family values and morality.

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.

The definition of morality: Morality is the idiosyncrasy of decadents having the hidden desire to revenge themselves upon life - and being successful.

True eloquence makes light of eloquence, true morality makes light of morality; that is to say, the morality of the judgment, which has no rules, makes light of the morality of the intellect.... To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.

The only absurdity in which I find equally immense compassion and morality is Christianity - though the compassion is outlandish and the morality is blemished.

It is a depressing fact that Americans tend to confuse morality and art (to the detriment of both) and that, among the educated, morality tends to mean social consciousness.

Everywhere the tendency has been to separate religion from morality, to set them in opposition even. But a religion without morality is a superstition and a curse; and anything like an adequate and complete morality without religion is impossible. The only salvation for man is in the union of the two as Christianity unites them.

Ayn Rand more than anyone else did a fantastic job of explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of individualism.

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

When it comes to morality, I'd rather have an unfaithful president like Bill Clinton, who tried to reform welfare, than a faithful George Bush who propagated an illegal war on the rest of the world. So that is where my morality stands.

All religions begin with a revolt against morality, and perish when morality conquers them.

I think most of the art now is involved with a denial of any kind of absolute morality, or general morality.

Morality must always precede and accompany religion, and yet religion is much more than morality.

Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality. Morality is not bribery or threats. Religion is bribery and threats. Humans have morality. We don't need religion.

Talking about morality can be offensive. Morality is a politically incorrect subject. Many people are genuinely offended if someone speaks of morality and family values. It is okay if you talk about your sexual fantasies and deviances. This is called "liberation". But you would be frowned at if you talk about morality in public. Then you'd be accused of trying to impose your values on others.

where Nietzsche's response to the equation of socialism and morality was to question the value of morality, at least as it had been customarily understood, economists like Mises and Hayek pursued a different path, one Nietzsche would never have dared to take: they made the market the very expression of morality.

To justify Christian morality because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion.

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.

The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.

Commerce is against morality. Morality is going to lose every time.

Zen is not morality, it is aesthetics. It does not impose a code of morality. it does not give you any commandments: do this, don't do that.

religion notoriously claims that they invented morality, they didn't. Morality exists in animals, ya know.

The true artist doesn't substitute immorality for morality. On the contrary, he always substitutes a finer morality for a grosser one.

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.

If you pretend that business is beyond morality, that's the kind of morality you get.

Morality which is no particular socity's morality is to be found nowhere.

At times, it appears easy to sermonise on morality and ethics. But morality and ethics appear good only when applied to others, never on oneself.

[Liberty] considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom.

Morality will perform all this; and Morality is the fruit of Illumination.

The hypothesis I wish to advance is thatthe language of morality is ingrave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have--very largely if not entirely--lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.

Dostoevsky preaches the morality of the pariah, the morality of the slave.

All morality consists in a system of rules, and the essence of all morality is to be sought for in the respect which the individual acquires for these rules.

My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists - and in a single choice: to live.

Compulsion precedes morality, indeed morality itself is compulsion for a time, to which one submits for the avoidance of pain.

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.

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple and doesn't require religion at all.

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.

Although I'm not Christian, I was raised Christian. I'm an atheist, with a slight Buddhist leaning. I've got a very strong sense of morality - it's just a different morality than the loud voices of the Christian morality.... I can't tell you how many films I've turned down because there was an absence of morality. And I don't mean that from any sort of Judeo-Christian-Muslim point of view. I'm not saying they're wrong and can't be made. But, fundamentally, I'm such a humanist that I can't bear to make films that make us feel humanity is more dark than it is light.

Our basic problem today is that we have two religions in conflict, humanism and Christianity, each with its own morality and the laws of that morality.

In his address of 19 September 1796, given as he prepared to leave office, President George Washington spoke about the importance of morality to the country's well-being: Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. . . . And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. . . . Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its virtue?

If anyone tells you that you cannot legislate morality, remeber that legislation IS morality.

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

His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be

... the average Catholic perceives no connection between religion and morality, unless it is a question of someone else's morality.

There should be no argument in regard to morality in art. There is no morality in nature.

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.

How can you construct a morality if there's no morality inherent in the way things are? You might be able to delude yourself into thinking you had 'created' a morality, but that's all it would be, an illusion.

The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.

Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.

These youngsters hold that all morality is relative but that middle class morality is just plain bad.

Morality in Europe today is herd-morality