Morality Quotes

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There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom,, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.

The refinement of morality increases together with the refinement of fear. Today the fear of disagreeable feelings in other people is almost the strongest of our own disagreeable feelings.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Looking to future generations, there is no cause to fear that the social instincts will grow weaker... the social instincts, - the prime principle of man's moral constitution - with the aid of active intellectual powers and the effects of habit, naturally lead to the golden rule, "As ye would that men should do to you; do ye to them likewise"; and this lies at the foundation of morality.

The trodden worm curls up. This testifies to its caution. It thus reduces its chances of being trodden upon again. In the language of morality: Humility.

Friedrich Nietzsche

I desire to see the time when education, and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry shall become much more general than at present.

Abraham Lincoln

If the ethical – that is, social morality – is the highest … then no categories are needed other than the Greek philosophical categories.

Søren Kierkegaard

Honesty and interest are as intimately connected in the public as in the private code of morality.

Thomas Jefferson

If there is one tendency of the day which more than any other is unhealthy and undesirable, it is the tendency to deify mere "smartness," unaccompanied by a sense of moral accountability. We shall never make our republic what it should be until as a people we thoroughly understand and put in practice the doctrine that success is abhorrent if attained by the sacrifice of the fundamental principles of morality.

Theodore Roosevelt

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

Be not too hasty to trust or to admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels, but they live like men.

Frantic administration of panaceas to the world is certainly discouraged by the reflection that "this present" might be "the world's last night"; sober work for the future, within the limits of ordinary morality and prudence, is not.

Truly, if the preservation of all mankind, as much as in him lies, were every one's persuasion, as indeed it is every one's duty, and the true principle to regulate our religion, politicks and morality by, the world would be much quieter, and better natur'd than it is.

In order for once to get a glimpse of our European morality from a distance, in order to compare it with other earlier or future moralities, one must do as the traveller who wants to know the height of the towers of a city: he leaves the city.

Friedrich Nietzsche

If throughout your life you abstain from murder, theft, fornication, perjury, blasphemy, and disrespect toward your parents, your church, and your king, you are conventionally held to deserve moral admiration even if you have never done a single kind or generous or useful action. This very inadequate notion of virtue is an outcome of taboo morality, and has done untold harm.

Bertrand Russell

Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder-tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.

I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality.

Morality must be the heart of our existence, if it is to be what it wants to be for us. … The highest form of philosophy is ethics. Thus all philosophy begins with I am. The highest statement of cognition must be an expression of that fact which is the means and ground for all cognition, namely, the goal of the I.

When we assume God to be a guiding principle—well, sure enough, a god is usually characteristic of a certain system of thought or morality. For instance, take the Christian God, the summum bonum: God is love, love being the highest moral principle; and God is spirit, the spirit being the supreme idea of meaning. All our Christian moral concepts derive from such assumptions, and the supreme essence of all of them is what we call God.

It is difficult to preach, this morality of mediocrity! It may never admit what it is and what it wants! It must speak about restraint and worth and duty and love of one's neighbor.

Friedrich Nietzsche

There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not always call itself by that name.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.
Aim above morality.
Be not simply good;
be good for something.
All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the story. Let nothing come between you and the light. Respect men and brothers only. When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God

Henry David Thoreau

The world of empirical morality consists for the most part of nothing but ill will and envy.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Morality is: the mediocre are worth more than the exceptions … I abhore Christianity with a deadly hatred.

Friedrich Nietzsche

When one gives up Christian belief one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality. For the latter is absolutely not self-evident: one must make this point clear again and again, in spite of English shallowpates.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.