quotes about Moral
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No moral system can rest solely on authority.
-- A.J. AyerSource : Humanist Outlook (1968) introduction
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While moral rules may be propounded by authority the fact that these were so propounded would not validate them.
-- A.J. AyerSource : "The Meaning of Life and Other Essays" by A.J. Ayer, ("The Meaning of Life"), 1990.
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How can we say nobody's perfect if there is no perfect to compare to? Perfection implies that there really is a right and wrong way to be. And what type of perfection is the best type? Moral perfection? Aesthetic? Physiological? Mental?
-- A.S. King -
Customs form us all, our thoughts, our morals, our most fixed beliefs; are consequences of our place of birth.
-- Aaron Hill -
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The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.
-- Abraham Joshua HeschelSource : Telegram to President John F. Kennedy, June 16, 1963.
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Money has no moral opinions.
-- Abraham PolonskySource : "Fictional character: Joe Morse". "Force of Evil", 1948.
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The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life.
-- Adam GopnikSource : "The Caging of America" by Adam Gopnik, www.newyorker.com. January 30, 2012.
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I believe that rules do not make us moral; loving each other makes us moral.
-- Adam Savage -
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In some ways, what I learned is that you can take a character and breathe with them, and its up to the audience to interpret rather than you putting moral stamp on the character.
-- Aden YoungSource : "The GQ+A: 'Rectify' Star Aden Young Doesn't Want To Know If He's Innocent Or Guilty". Interview with Jen Ortiz, www.gq.com. April 22, 2013.
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If the present civilisation does not acquire some stable moral fondations ("bases morales stables", Fr.), its existence will hardly be more assured than that of the civilisations that have preceeded it, and which have fallen (or collapse, or failed
-- African Spir -
There is a radical dualism between the empirical nature of man and its moral nature.
-- African SpirSource : "Paroles d'un sage: Choix de pensées d'African Spir" ("Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir") by Hélène Claparède-Spir, (p. 59), 1937.
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The moral improvement demands an evolution leading to a higher consciousness
-- African Spir -
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We can, following the exemple of Kant, consider the moral development and improvement of men, as the supreme goal of human evolution.
-- African SpirSource : "Paroles d'un sage: Choix de pensées d'African Spir" ("Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir") by Hélène Claparède-Spir, (p. 61), 1937.
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We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.
-- Agnes Repplier -
Every nation has a moral obligation to safeguard the future.
-- Al GoreSource : Interview with George Negus, www.sbs.com.au. August 23, 2013.
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I don't really consider this a political issue, I consider it to be a moral issue.
-- Al Gore -
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I feel that it is our moral obligation to stand and to be courageous with these families, and particularly Cindy, that have become the conscience of this nation.
-- Al Sharpton -
Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
-- Alan Bennett -
The fundamental premise of liberalism is the moral incapacity of the American people.
-- Alan KeyesSource : Alan Keyes' Speech at the Christian Coalition Dinner in Manchester, New Hampshire, www.keyesarchives.com. February 6, 1999.
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Christians belong in American politics because there is not and cannot be a fundamental separation between our moral vocation and our citizenship.
-- Alan Keyes -
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I have confronted theoretical positions whose protagonists claim that what I take to be historically produced characteristics of what is specifically modern are in fact the timelessly necessary characteristics of all and any moral judgment, of all and any selfhood.
-- Alasdair MacIntyre -
The wonder of nature does not become smaller because one cannot measure it by the standards of human moral and human aims.
-- Albert Einstein -
The content of scientific theory itself offers no moral foundation for the personal conduct of life.
-- Albert Einstein -
If only people would realize that moral principles are like measles.... They have to be caught. And only the people who've got them can pass on the contagion.
-- Aldous Huxley -
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I have no point in my system or morals where I say, 'This is too far.
-- Alex BorsteinSource : Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.
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It's through the small things that we develop our moral imagination, so that we can understand the sufferings of others.
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions.
-- Alexander Pushkin -
Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville -
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The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage. That is a commonplace truth, but one to which my studies are always bringing me back. It is the central point in my conception. I see it at the end of all my reflections.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville -
The best companion and helper is admirable morals.
-- Ali ibn Abi Talib -
so the moral of this week is: if u do something really, really stupid in front of someone ur just getting to know & they still think youre awesome, then you got yourself a friend .
-- Alicia WittSource : alicia witt @aliciawitty, twitter.com. August 15, 2010.
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If surrealism ever comes to adopt a particular line of moral conduct, it has only to accept the discipline that Picasso has accepted and will continue to accept.
-- Andre Breton -
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Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express -- verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner -- the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.
-- Andre BretonSource : "First Manifesto of Surrealism". Book by Andre Breton, 1924.
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There's obviously a correlation between an economically empowered woman and the investments she makes. That leads to her social and moral conscience for bettering her community.
-- Andrea Jung -
I lost my moral compass and I have done terrible things that I very much regret.
-- Andrew FastowSource : "I was very greedy, says Enron trial's star witness" by Richard Wray, www.theguardian.com. March 8, 2006.
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I would define morality as enlightened self-interest...That old Platonic ideal that there are certain pure moral forms just isn't where we are.
-- Andrew Young -
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In a sane, civil, intelligent and moral society, you don't blame poor people for being poor.
-- Andrew Young -
I've tried to live my life right, just like a story.
-- Angela Sidney -
Human beings have rights, because they are moral beings: the rights of all men grow out of their moral nature; and as all men have the same moral nature, they have the same rights.
-- Angelina Grimke -
There is something in the heart of man which will bend under moral suasion. There is a swift witness for truth in his bosom, which will respond to truth when it is uttered with calmness and dignity.
-- Angelina Grimke -
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Taking the life of another is always a moral crime.
-- Angelo Scola -
Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.
-- Anita Brookner -
To remain pure, a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation.
-- Anita Brookner -
Consumers have not been told effectively enough that they have huge power and that purchasing and shopping involve a moral choice.
-- Anita Roddick -
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Poverty must be reduced not only for reasons of moral and justice, but also of security.
-- Anna Lindh -
I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it.
-- Anne Bronte -
Tell the truth as you understand it. If you're a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act - truth is always subversive.
-- Anne Lamott -
Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.
-- Anthony Burgess -
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Reason can never be the absolute dictator of man's mental or moral economy.
-- Anthony Daniels -
Flies purify the air, and plays - the morals.
-- Anton Chekhov -
I'm very interested in good and evil and the moral natures of people.
-- Antonia Fraser -
If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?
-- Antonin ScaliaSource : "Antonin Scalia's 10 most memorable lines" By Gregory Krieg, www.cnn.com. February 13, 2016.
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Moral qualities are so constituted as to be destroyed by excess and by deficiency . . .
-- Aristotle -
Every formed disposition of the soul realizes its full nature in relation to and dealing with that class of objects by which it is its nature to be corrupted or improved.
-- Aristotle -
We have next to consider the formal definition of virtue.
-- Aristotle -
Rightness in our choice of an end is secured by [Moral] Virtue;
-- Aristotle -
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[Prudence] is the virtue of that part of the intellect [the calculative] to which it belongs; and . . . our choice of actions will not be right without Prudence any more than without Moral Virtue, since, while Moral Virtue enables us to achieve the end, Prudence makes us adopt the right means to the end.
-- Aristotle -
The moral values I've learnt in my life I've learnt through football.
-- Arsene Wenger -
Golf is a game not just of manners but of morals.
-- Art SpanderSource : Mark Mulvoy, Art Spander (1977). “Golf: the passion and the challenge”, Prentice Hall
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As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.
-- Arthur C. Clarke -
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It is never easy to define what is moral, particularly in foreign policy. But at the risk of being simplistic, it appears to me that a foreign policy that is morally right protects human rights everywhere.
-- Arthur Goldberg -
A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence.
-- Arthur Miller -
When we talk about self-confrontations, we are speaking about moral issues rather than social issues.
-- Asghar FarhadiSource : "A Separation's Asghar Farhadi: 'We need the audience to think" by Saeed Kamali Dehghan, www.theguardian.com. July 15, 2011.
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Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.
-- Assata ShakurSource : Assata Shakur (2016). “Assata: An Autobiography”, p.151, Zed Books Ltd.
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There is a desperate tendency to try to legislate artists, to try to lay down rules for their obligations to society. Just leave artists alone. If you are a true artist, you will have a very finely tuned moral mechanism.
-- Athol Fugard -
If we do not allow free thinking in chemistry or biology, why should we allow it in morals or politics?
-- Auguste Comte -
Sin is lack of conformity to the moral law of God, either in act, disposition, or state
-- Augustus Hopkins StrongSource : Augustus Hopkins Strong (2014). “Systematic Theology : Volume II (Illustrated)”, p.312, Lulu Press, Inc
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Moral prejudices are the stopgaps of virtue; and, as is the case with other stopgaps, it is often more difficult to get either out or in through them than through any other part of the fence.
-- Augustus William Hare -
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The root of a nation's misfortunes has to be sought in the moral failings of the government.
-- Aung San Suu Kyi -
Neither a pathology nor an index as such of moral default, stupidity is nonetheless linked to the most dangerous failures of human endeavor.
-- Avital RonellSource : Avital Ronell (2002). “Stupidity”, p.3, University of Illinois Press
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All the reasons which made the initiation of physical force evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.
-- Ayn Rand -
It is fairly easy to grasp abstract moral principles; it can be very difficult to apply them to a given situation, particularly when it involves the moral character of another person..
-- Ayn Rand -
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A novel is not moral in the usual sense of the word. It can be called moral when it shakes us out of our stupor and makes us confront the absolutes we believe in.
-- Azar NafisiSource : Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.129, Random House
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Some people are so methodical that that is all they are or ever will be.
-- B. C. Forbes -
By exposing the fallacy of the UK’s extradition arrangements with the US, I leave with my head held high having won the moral victory.
-- Babar Ahmad -
Vigorous Scout games are the best form of physical education because most of them bring in moral education.
-- Baden Powell de Aquino -
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If the Court finds that there is not a state interest in discriminating and showing moral disapproval of homosexuality then we can't stop equal marriage rights.
-- Barack Obama -
The arc of the moral universe may bend towards justice, but it doesn't bend on its own.
-- Barack Obama -
A moral person is one who constantly exercises, and acts on, his best rational judgment.
-- Barbara Branden -
The combination of physical strength and moral sincerity combined with tenderness of heart is exactly what is wanted in a husband.--Ameila Peabody
-- Barbara Mertz -
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Our physical unity has gone far ahead of our moral unity.
-- Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth -
The issue is not that morals be applied to public policy, it's that conservatives bring public policy to spheres of our lives where it should not enter.
-- Barney Frank -
With truths of a certain kind, it is not enough to make them appear convincing: one must also make them felt. Of such kind are moral truths.
-- Baron de Montesquieu -
Every moral has a story, every story has and end. Every battle has its glory, and its consequence.
-- Ben Harper -
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As long as someone else controls your history the truth shall remain just a mystery
-- Ben HarperSource : Song: People Lead, Album: Fight for Your Mind, 1995
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My moral compass is so broken I can barely find the parking lot.
-- Ben QuayleSource : "Dan Quayle's Son Wins Congressional Primary". www.foxnews.com. August 25, 2010.
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Voluntary exchange is more moral than forced redistribution.
-- Ben ShapiroSource : Ben Shapiro (2015). “Ben Shapiro: Volume I”, p.7, Creators Publishing
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There is a violence that liberates, and a violence that enslaves; there is a violence that is moral and a violence that is immoral.
-- Benito Mussolini -
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A nation, as an individual, has duties to fulfill appointed by God and His moral law.
-- Benjamin Disraeli -
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Moral progress has consisted in the main of protest against cruel customs, and of attempts to enlarge human sympathy.
-- Bertrand Russell -
We should feel grateful instead of entitled. We have a moral obligation to give back.
-- Bill Courtney -
But tolerance by itself can be a cover for moral laziness.
-- Bill McKibben -
Nothing penetrates the liberal's sense of moral outrage.
-- Bill Whittle -
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The novel is a penetrating study of morals and ethics.
-- Bille AugustSource : Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.
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I'm very disappointed in my country right now, because I think we've kind of lost our moral compass.
-- Billy Corgan -
I challenge you to show me where the saloon has ever helped business, education, church, morals or anything we hold dear.
-- Billy Sunday -