Philosophy & Thought: Ethics & Morality Quotes

"It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations"

Walter Bagehot, Author

"There is no surer mark of the absence of the highest moral and intellectual qualities than a cold reception of excellence"

Philip James Bailey, Poet

"Vice stirs up war, virtue fights"

Luc de Clapiers, Writer

"Everybody has a different definition of the good side"

Will Wright, Scientist

"I simply cannot vote for Senator Obama because he's not pro-life"

Alveda King, Clergyman

"We may not all break the Ten Commandments, but we are certainly all capable of it. Within us lurks the breaker of all laws, ready to spring out at the first real opportunity"

Isadora Duncan, Dancer

"Doesn't the fight for survival also justify swindle and theft? In self defence, anything goes"

Imelda Marcos, Celebrity

"If our vaunted rule of the people, does not breed nobler men and women than monarchies have done, it must and will inevitably give place to something better"

Anna Julia Cooper, Educator

"Everything that used to be a sin is now a disease"

Bill Maher, Comedian

"No temptation can gravitate to a man, unless there is that is his heart, which is capable of responding to it"

James Allen, Author

"If you real desire is to be good, there is no need to wait for the money before you do it; you can do it now, this very moment, and just where you are"

James Allen, Author

"The U.S. used to be perceived as the moral leader of the world, and we have absolutely lost that"

Tom Ford, Designer

"To be good, we must do good; and by doing good we take a sure means of being good, as the use and exercise of the muscles increase their power"

Tryon Edwards, Theologian

"Though many have tried, no one has ever yet explained away the decisive fact that science, which can do so much, cannot decide what it ought to do"

Joseph Wood Krutch, Environmentalist

"Self is the root, the tree, and the branches of all the evils of our fallen state"

William Law, Clergyman

"Sinful and forbidden pleasures are like poisoned bread; they may satisfy appetite for the moment, but there is death in them at the end"

Tryon Edwards, Theologian

"Seek happiness for its own sake, and you will not find it; seek for duty, and happiness will follow as the shadow comes with the sunshine"

Tryon Edwards, Theologian

"Compromise is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another - too often ending in the loss of both"

Tryon Edwards, Theologian

"The fundamental issue is the moral issue"

David Attenborough, Journalist

"Every act of virtue is an ingredient unto reward"

Jeremy Taylor, Clergyman

"Conscience in most men, is but the anticipation of the opinions of others"

Jeremy Taylor, Clergyman

"How often I have found that we grow to maturity not by doing what we like, but by doing what we should. How true it is that not every 'should' is a compulsion, and not every 'like' is a high morality and true freedom"

Karl Rahner, Theologian

"The moral law commands us to make the highest possible good in a world the final object of all our conduct"

Paul Ricoeur, Philosopher

"The Law is one aspect of a much more concrete and encompassing relation than the relation between commanding and obeying that characterizes the imperative"

Paul Ricoeur, Philosopher

"For my own part, I abandon the ethics of duty to the Hegelian critique with no regrets; it would appear to me, indeed, to have been correctly characterized by Hegel as an abstract thought, as a thought of understanding"

Paul Ricoeur, Philosopher

"The worst thing that can happen to us in an ideological struggle is to become what we are fighting"

Nick Clooney, Politician

"Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can"

Richard Stallman, Scientist

"I think ethics is always there; it's not always a very thoughtful or reflective ethics"

Peter Singer, Philosopher

"Greed has driven the world crazy. And I think I'm lucky that I have a place over here that I can call home"

Nina Simone, Musician

"Psychoanalysis is a terribly efficient instrument, and because it is more and more a prestigious instrument, we run the risk of using it with a purpose for which it was not made for, and in this way we may degrade it"

Jacques Lacan, Psychologist

"Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance"

Vaclav Havel, Leader

"We don't defeat evil by becoming evil"

Nick Clooney, Politician

"I suppose what's happened recently has confirmed suspicions I voiced in the book, and I think made clearer some of those things that I point out. For instance, I have a section of the book where I talk about the possibility of torture"

Peter Singer, Philosopher

"Bush is morally a universalist. For instance, he says the freedom is good, the same thing is good, all over the world. So in that sense he's a universalist"

Peter Singer, Philosopher

"As covetousness is the root of all evil, so poverty is the worst of all snares"

Daniel Defoe, Journalist

"There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side"

Vaclav Havel, Leader

"Those wearing tolerance for a label call other views intolerable"

Phyllis McGinley, Author

"Islam, the third in historical sequence of the ethical monotheistic religions of the Near East, was very successful in establishing its monotheism, but had only very moderate success in spreading its version of Jewish and Christian ethics to the Arabs"

Carroll Quigley, Writer

"I've been a vegetarian for years and years. I'm not judgemental about others who aren't, I just feel I cannot eat or wear living creatures"

Drew Barrymore, Actress

"The passion for office among members of Congress is very great, if not absolutely disreputable, and greatly embarrasses the operations of the Government. They create offices by their own votes and then seek to fill them themselves"

James K. Polk, President

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