Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations on Morals

Don’t say you don’t have enough time.
You have exactly the same number of hours per day
that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur,
Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci,
Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (b.1940) American Self-Help Author

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68) American Civil Rights Leader, Clergyman

Many people convince themselves if it is economically necessary, it’s morally right. That’s not always the case.
Unknown

There are few things more disturbing than to find, in somebody we detest, a moral quality which seems to us demonstrably superior to anything we ourselves possess. It augurs not merely an unfairness on the part of creation, but a lack of artistic judgment. Sainthood is acceptable only in saints.
Pamela Hansford Johnson (1912–81) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Literary Critic, Social Critic

When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble.
Joan Didion (1934–2021) American Essayist, Novelist, Memoirist

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright

Don’t let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter.
Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet

Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright

Morality is the custom of one’s country and the current feeling of one’s peers.
Samuel Butler

Force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels.
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist

It is not best when we use our morals on weekdays; it gets them out of repair for Sundays.
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist

We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.
John Locke (1632–1704) English Philosopher, Physician

However great an evil immorality may be, we must not forget that it is not without its beneficial consequences. It is only through extremes that men can arrive at the middle path of wisdom and virtue.
Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) German Philosopher, Linguist, Statesman

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic

It is safe to say that no other superstition is so detrimental to growth, so enervating and paralyzing to the minds and hearts of the people, as the superstition of Morality.
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) Lithuanian-American Anarchist, Feminist

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99% of them are wrong.
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic

Morality is largely a matter of geography.
Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American Writer, Publisher, Artist, Philosopher

Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born.
Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American Head of State

I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monumentos of man’s pride.
William James (1842–1910) American Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician

From pride, from pride, our very reas’ning springs.
Alexander Pope (1688–1744) English Poet

The disesteem into which moralists have fallen is due at bottom to their failure to see that in an age like this one the function of the moralist is not to exhort men to be good but to elucidate what the good is. The problem of sanctions is secondary.
Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) American Journalist, Political Commentator

For the “superior morality,” of which we hear so much, we too would desire to be thankful: at the same time, it were but blindness to deny that this “superior morality” is properly rather an “inferior criminality,” produced not by greater love of Virtue, but by greater perfection of Police; and of that far subtler and stronger Police, called Public Opinion.
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist

He who steadily observes those moral precepts in which all religions concur will never be questioned at the gates of heaven as to the dogmas in which they all differ.
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer

Might was the measure of right.
F. L. Lucas (1894–1967) English Literary Critic, Poet, Novelist, Playwright

The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, “I was wrong.”
Sydney J. Harris (1917–86) American Essayist, Drama Critic

We moralize among ruins.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81) British Head of State

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people whom we personally dislike.
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright

The better one is morally the less aware they are of their virtue.
James Anthony Froude (1818–94) British Historian, Novelist, Biographer, Editor

The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error.
Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German Poet, Dramatist

If you think of standardization as the best that you know today, but which is to be improved tomorrow, you get somewhere.
Henry Ford (1863–1947) American Businessperson, Engineer

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