Morality Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Immanuel Kant

Henry David Thoreau

Salman Rushdie

William Winwood Reade

Arthur C. Clarke

Henry Adams

Graham Greene

Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

Henry David Thoreau

Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

It has been wisely observed by the greatest of modern thinkers that mankind has progressed more rapidly in every other respect than in morality.

Well! some people talk of morality, and some of religion, but give me a little snug property.

Maria Edgeworth

Life does not give itself to one who tries to keep all its advantages at once. I have often thought morality may perhaps consist solely in the courage of making a choice.

By the side of these religious men I discern others whose looks are turned to the earth more than to Heaven; they are the partisans of liberty, not only as the source of the noblest virtues, but more especially as the root of all solid advantages; and they sincerely desire to extend its sway, and to impart its blessings to mankind. It is natural that they should hasten to invoke the assistance of religion, for they must know that liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith; but they have seen religion in the ranks of their adversaries, and they inquire no further; some of them attack it openly, and the remainder are afraid to defend it.

Alexis de Tocqueville

It is wrong to expect a reward for your struggles. The reward is the act of struggle itself, not what you win. Even though you can't expect to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make that attempt. That's morality, that's religion. That's art. That's life.

There is a tone of morality throughout the rural districts of England, which is unhappily wanting in the large towns and the centres of particular manufactures

The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.

He that has not religion to govern his morality, is not a dram better than my mastiff-dog; so long as you stroke him, and please him, and do not pinch him, he will play with you as finely as may be, he is a very good moral mastiff; but if you hurt him, he will fly in your face, and tear out your throat.

The punters know that the horse named Morality rarely gets past the post, whereas the nag named Self-interest always runs a good race.

We must have religion for religion's sake, morality for morality's sake, as with art for art's sake…the beautiful cannot be the way to what is useful, or to what is good, or to what is holy; it leads only to itself.

A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.

The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air, that reality and morality are not givens but imperfect human constructs, is the point from which fiction begins.

Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.

The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.

Arthur C. Clarke

When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.

Shirley Chisholm

God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners (morality).

William Wilberforce

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

Obscenity is a moral concept in the verbal arsenal of the establishment, which abuses the term by applying it, not to expressions of its own morality but to those of another.

Herbert Marcuse

Organizations endure, however, in proportion to the breadth of the morality by which they are governed. Thus the endurance of organization depends upon the quality of leadership; and that quality derives from the breadth of the morality upon which it rests.

Chester Barnard

From early childhood his moral principles had struggled blindly with his interests, but he was certain of one law that ruled all others — masses of men invariably follow interests in deciding morals. Morality is a private and costly luxury.

So always, if we look back, concern for face-to-face morality, and its modern emphasis on justice as well, have historically evolved as religious issues.

A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality.

William Winwood Reade

A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in every district; all studied and appreciated as they merit; are the principal support of virtue, morality, and civil liberty.

Benjamin Franklin