Motivational Quotes

Morality

However great an evil immorality may be, we must not forget that it is not without its beneficial consequences. It is only through extremes that men can arrive at the middle path of wisdom and virtue.

- Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

Best Quotes about Morality

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

Henry David Thoreau

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

George Bernard Shaw

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

King Jr. Martin Luther

Unfortunately, moral beauty in art -- like physical beauty in a person -- is extremely perishable. It is nowhere so durable as artistic or intellectual beauty. Moral beauty has a tendency to decay very rapidly into sententiousness or untimeliness.

Sontag, Susan

Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.

Durant, William J.

Many people convince themselves if it is economically necessary, it's morally right. That's not always the case.

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.

Thoreau, Henry David

A woman can look both moral and exciting -- if she also looks as if it was quite a struggle.

Ferber, Edna

History is a voice forever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.

James A. Forude

10.

I cannot believe that this country cannot come together around some values what these kids need is a moral life... the issue is not ideas, it is conduct. The real question is how we reach these young people morally, and what do we bring to them.

Coles, Robert

11.

The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.

Bataille, Georges

12.

In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.

Lowell, James Russell

13.

Mercy to living beings, self restraint, truth, honesty, chastity and contentment, right faith and knowledge, and austerity are but the entourage of morality.

Sila-Prabhrita

14.

The only immorality is not to do what one has to do when one has to do it.

Anouilh, Jean

15.

There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral.

Lippmann, Walter

16.

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.

Diderot, Denis

17.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

Seneca

18.

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.

Mencken, H. L.

19.

While moral rules may be propounded by authority the fact that these were so propounded would not validate them.

Ayer, Sir Alfred Jules

20.

Morality and expediency coincide more than the cynics allow.

Hattersley, Roy

21.

Don't be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

Thoreau, Henry David

22.

In Los Angeles, it's like they jog for two hours a day and then they think they're morally right. That's when you want to choke people, you know?

Neeson, Liam

23.

The higher the building the lower the morals.

Coward, Noel

24.

The better one is morally the less aware they are of their virtue.

Froude, James A.

25.

We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one that we preach, but do not practice, and another that we practice, but seldom preach.

Russell, Bertrand

26.

Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

27.

Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase.

Colton, Charles Caleb

28.

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

Aristotle

29.

I have never regarded politics as the arena of morals. It is the arena of interest.

Bevan, Aneurin

30.

Truth is the secret of eloquence and of virtue, the basis of moral authority; it is the highest summit of art and life.

Henri-FrÚdÚric Amiel

31.

A man can do what he ought to do; and when he says he cannot, it is because he will not.

Feoude

32.

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

Kant, Immanuel

33.

Taste is not only a part and index of morality, it is the only morality. The first, and last, and closest trial question to any living creature is "What do you like?" Tell me what you like, I'll tell you what you are.

John Ruskin

34.

The quality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.

Huxley, Aldous

35.

I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.

G. K. Chesterton

36.

When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble.

Didion, Joan

37.

It is almost systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no difference between right and wrong.

France, Anatole

38.

The person is always happy who is in the presence of something they cannot know in full. A person as advanced far in the study of morals who has mastered the difference between pride and vanity.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

39.

Might was the measure of right.

Lucan, F. L.

40.

Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people.

Crowley, Aleister

41.

No author can be as moral as his work and no preacher as pious as his sermons.

Paul, Jean

42.

The biggest threat to our well-being is the absence of moral clarity and purpose.

Shuman, Rick

43.

We may pretend that we're basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.

Hands, Terry

44.

We moralize among ruins.

Disraeli, Benjamin

45.

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.

Selden, John

46.

Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.

Oscar Wilde

47.

Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales.

Crowley, Aleister

48.

The person who still blushes is not yet a degenerate.

Young

49.

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.