Quotes about Morality

The first and greatest punishment of the sinner is the conscience of sin.

So live with men as if God saw you and speak to God, as if men heard you.

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn, as in doing it.

An action will not be right unless the will be right for from thence is the action derived. Again, the will will not be right unless the disposition of the mind be right for from thence comes the will.

There is no thought, no word, no act, and no area of human life that is not affected by sin.

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.

It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

There are persons whom in my heart I despise, others I abhor. Yet I am not obliged to inform the one of my contempt, nor the other of my detestation. This kind of dissimulation...is a necessary branch of wisdom, and so far from being immoral...that it is a duty and a virtue.

The foundations of national morality must be laid in private families.

Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.