Quotes about Morality
Do right and you will be conspicuous.
— Mark Twain
They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.
— Mark Twain
No fact is more firmly established than that lying is a necessity of our circumstances--the deduction that it is then a Virtue goes without saying.
— Mark Twain
The man who speaks an injurious truth lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving.
— Mark Twain
If there is to be peace on earth and good will toward men, we must finally believe in the ultimate morality of the universe, and believe that all reality hinges on moral foundations.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Not only will we have to repent for the sins of bad people; but we also will have to repent for the appalling silence of good people.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right? There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But...the good Samaritan reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, Wait on time.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.