Quotes about Morality

If you take God and faith and morality out of the equation, everything inevitably falls apart.

Strange that the most generous men and religious, do not see that their duties increase with their fortune, and that they will be punished for spending it" on themselves in eating and drinking.

He understood that the law could not force people to do what was right. In fact, the laws of America didn't try to do this. They provided freedom, and what the citizens did with that freedom was something else altogether. "Thus," Tocqueville writes, "while the law permits the Americans to do what they please, religion prevents them from conceiving, and forbids them to commit, what is rash or unjust."

Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.

Paula Bonhoeffer's faith was most evident in the values that she and her husband taught their children. Exhibiting selflessness, expressing generosity, and helping others were central to the family culture.

Tocqueville put it as bluntly as Franklin or Adams had, writing: "Liberty cannot be established without morality.

Adams understood that the secret to self-government is that the people must themselves be self-governing, which is to say they must be motivated by something beyond the law. Each individual must govern himself, and for this morality was plainly necessary.

What Wilberforce vanquished was something even worse than slavery, something that was much more fundamental and can hardly be seen from where we stand today: he vanquished the very mind-set that made slavery acceptable and allowed it to survive and thrive for millennia.

Human being's moral integrity begins when he is prepared to sacrifice his life for his convictions.

We who are sometimes obsessed with social conscience can no longer imagine a world without it, or a society that regards the suffering of the poor and others as the "will of God.

One must be more zealous to please God than to avoid sin. One must sacrifice oneself utterly to God's purposes, even to the point of possibly making moral mistakes. One's obedience to God must be forward-oriented and zealous and free, and to be a mere moralist or pietist would make such a life impossible:

No sooner is a playhouse opened in any part of the Kingdom than it at once becomes surrounded by a halo of brothels.