Quotes about Morality

Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.

In order to make the Kingdom of God a practical reality, it was necessary for Him to dissociate it from all the forces of this world, and to bring morality and religion into the closest connexion. "The law of love was the indissoluble bond by which Jesus for ever united morality with religion." "Moral instruction was the principal content and the very essence of all His discourses." His efforts "were directed to the establishment of a purely ethical organisation.

was important, therefore, to overthrow superstition and to bring religion within the domain of reason. First of all the priesthood must be deprived for ever of its influence. Then an improvement of the social condition of mankind must be introduced, since the level of morality depends upon social conditions. Jesus was a social reformer. Through the attainment of "the highest perfection of which Society is capable, universal peace" was "gradually to be brought about.

Ethik ist ins Grenzenlose erweiterte Verantwortung gegen alles, was lebt.

A man does not have to be an angel to be a saint.

The thinking (person) must oppose all cruel customs, no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another.

Hell isn't merely paved with good intentions, it is walled and roofed with them.

We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science, but in a rather grisly morning-after, when it has become apparent that what triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends.

The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.

No man shall be the avenger of his own wrongs, especially by a deed alike interdicted by the laws of God and man.

I never did think the truth was a crime.

I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke and if I go out to a movie I like to watch things that are moral.