1,889 Quotes About Morality

...the one certain thing in life is that no one can make the truth untrue simply because it hurts.

That America is an exceptional nation is unclear only to one who has not been taught its true history. It ceases to be exceptional only when its representative leaders cease to be exceptional. America, it has been said, is a nation of laws, not of men. The more it becomes a nation of men, the less it remains America.

The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

Wir lernen aus unserer eigenen Geschichte, wozu der Mensch fähig ist. Deshalb dürfen wir uns nicht einbilden, wir seien nun als Menschen anders und besser geworden. Es gibt keine endgültig errungene moralische Vollkommenheit - für niemanden und kein Land! Wir haben als Menschen gelernt, wir bleiben als Menschen gefährdet. Aber wir haben die Kraft, Gefährdungen immer von neuem zu überwinden."[Ansprache am 8. Mai 1985 in der Gedenkstunde im Plenarsaal des Deutschen Bundestages]

I turn to another class [...] in whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong: whose ears detect in each protest against bigotry--that parent of crime--an insult to piety, that regent of God on earth. I would suggest to such doubters certain obvious distinctions; I would remind them of certain simple truths.Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.

Don't tell a lie to be loved, speak the truth to be hated.

Innocence still lives within our hearts and the child within each of us knows right from wrong.

Oh. Yes. He's very bright. But the world, poor world, was as over-burdened with cleverness as with stupidity, and in a sense (lacking this), did they not amount to the very same thing? Oh, he's clever, Clare thought, but who's good? Who's good? Who is good?

Man’s greatness come from knowing he wretched: a tree does not know it is wretched. (21)