Quotes about Norms

It had never occurred to him that he should live in any other than what he would have called an ordinary way, with green glasses for hock, and excellent waiting at table. In warming himself at French social theories he had brought away no smell of scorching. We may handle even extreme opinions with impunity while our furniture, our dinner-giving, and preference for armorial bearings in our own ease, link us indissolubly with the established order.

The privileges of a few do not make common law.

All human 'virtue' is depraved if it is not from a heart of love to the heavenly Father- Even if the behaviour conforms to biblical norms.

Culture socializes us into what is considered proper behavior. For Christians, this is true in our churches as well as in society at large.

Law is downstream from culture. By the time you make a law about something, you're reacting, not acting. I'd rather shape the culture.

I get a feeling that American standards are sort of an unspoken norm, and that whether one resists them, or whether one adopts them, they are there to be reckoned with

Somewhere, on the edge of consciousness, there is what I call a mythical norm, which each of us within our hearts knows 'that is not me.

Oh, it's not done,' I said, 'but neither is adultery or theft or running away from the enemy's fire. The not done things are done every day, Henry. It's part of modern life. I've done most of them myself.

The most dangerous ideas in a society are not the ones being argued, but the ones that are assumed.

Society is constantly recalibrating, redefining what it considers to be moral and immoral.

The source of a Christian ethic is not the reality of one's own self, not the reality of the world, nor is it the reality of norms and values. It is the reality of God that is revealed in Jesus Christ.

Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.