Quotes about Morality

Jesting and levity accustom a man to lewdness.

Individual consciences are fine but individual consciences have to be made manifest.

So what if people disagree about values? People also disagree about facts... In my view, the great intellectual challenge facing conservatives is to make the case for morality at a time when many in the West have ceased to believe in an external moral order. The decline of belief in such an order is the most important political development of the past two centuries. Indeed, this decline has created the crisis of the West.

In Obama's America, the wealth creators are greedy, selfish, and materialistic while the wealth stealers are the most morally wonderful people in the country.

The morality of capitalism, just like the morality of democracy, is rooted in consent.

For Alinsky, morality is a scam. Morality is the cloak of power. Activists appeal to the language of morality but recognize that it is a mere disguise. As Alinsky puts it, "Ethical standards must be elastic to stretch with the times... In action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent with one's individual conscience... You do what you can with what you have, and then clothe it with moral garments."

Alinsky's contempt for traditional morality can also be seen in the figure to whom he dedicated his book Rules for Radicals. That figure is the devil. Alinsky calls Lucifer "the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom." He goes on to say, "If there's an afterlife, and I have anything to say about it, I will unreservedly go to hell. Hell would be heaven for me."

The real voice is stiller and smaller and seems to know, without confusion, the difference between right and wrong and the subtle delineation between the beautiful and profane. It's not an agitated voice, but ever patient as though it approves a million false starts. The voice I am talking about is a deep water of calming wisdom.

Work on your character and a good life will come to you.

The person who believes the sum of his morality involves gay marriage and abortion alone, and neglects health care and world trade and the environment and loving his neighbor and feeding the poor is, by definition, a theological liberal, because he takes what he wants from Scripture and ignores the rest.

You can call it God or a conscience, or you can dismiss it as that intuitive knowing we all have as human beings, as living storytellers; but there is a knowing I feel that guides me toward better stories, toward being a better character. I believe there is a writer outside ourselves, plotting a better story for us, interacting with us, even, and whispering a better story into our consciousness.

What good does it do to tell somebody to live morally so they can die 50 years later and apparently go to Hell?