1,889 Quotes About Morality

Morality says, “Always keep your promises.” Wisdom says, “Never make promises because you only know the present moment. You don’t know how things will turn out in future.”Morality binds you. Wisdom frees you.

It is, however, not only undignified to idealize political victims; it is also very dangerous. One of our political actualities is that the victims of political torture and injustice are often no better than their tormentors. They are only waiting to change places with the latter. Of course, if one puts cruelty first this makes no difference. It does not matter whether the victim of torture is a decent man or a villain. No one deserves to be subjected to the appalling instruments of cruelty.

Being righteous and being right are two different things, one indicates morality, another indicates rationality, and we need a healthy balance between both to live and prosper with health, sanity and serenity.

Stop outsourcing your morality to governments

Do not swallow your moral code in tablet form.

A high moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.

[Orwell’s] very ordinariness is the sterling guarantee that we need no saintly representative consciences. We would do better to make sterner use of our own.

The idea that we need a supernatural being to make us act morally assumes that there is something unnatural about morality. but why? morality of some kind is natural. all social mammals from chimpanzees to rats have ethical codes that limit things such as theft and murder.

The besetting sin of a philanthropist, it appears to me, is apt to be a moral obliquity. His sense of honor ceases to be the sense of other honorable men. At some point of his course—I know not exactly when or where—he is tempted to palter with the right, and can scarcely forbear persuading himself that the importance of his public ends renders it allowable to throw aside his private conscience.