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
There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral.
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) American Journalist, Political Commentator, Writer
A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.
—Socrates (469BCE–399BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.
—James Baldwin (1924–87) American Novelist, Social Critic
The only immorality is not to do what one has to do when one has to do it.
—Jean Anouilh (1910–87) French Dramatist
Every act of every man is a moral act, to be tested by moral, and not by economic, criteria.
—Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) American Educator
Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales.
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) English Occultist, Mystic, Magician
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say “give them up,” for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people.
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) English Occultist, Mystic, Magician
The great rule of moral conduct is, next to God, to respect time.
—Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) Swiss Theologian, Poet
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
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
As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop that an apothecary wouldn’t let it go for less than half-a-crown…
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
From pride, from pride, our very reas’ning springs.
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744) English Poet
The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95) English Biologist
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
Two things fill the mind with ever increasing wonder and awe. The more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.
—Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) Prussian German Philosopher, Logician
Conscience, the sense of right, the power of perceiving moral distinctions, the power of discerning between justice and injustice, excellence and baseness, is the highest faculty given us by God, the whole foundation of our responsibility, and our sole capacity for religion. …God, in giving us conscience, has implanted a principle within us which forbids us to prostrate ourselves before mere power, or to offer praise where we do not discover worth.
—William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) American Unitarian Theologian, Poet
No author can be as moral as his work and no preacher as pious as his sermons.
—Jean Paul (1763–1825) German Novelist, Humorist
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
—H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English Novelist, Historian, Social Thinker
Bad company ruins good morals.
—The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith
In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic
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, Writer
I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
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
Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
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
The terrible immoralities are the cunning ones hiding behind masks of morality, such as exploiting people while pretending to help them.
—Vernon Howard (1918–92) American Spiritual Teacher, Philosopher
The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
Compound for sins they are inclined to by damning those they have no mind to.
—Samuel Butler
Moralistic is not moral. And as for truth—well, it’s like brown—it’s not in the spectrum. Truth is so generic.
—Iris Murdoch (1919–99) British Novelist, Playwright, Philosopher
Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born.
—Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American Head of State
The pure, the bright,
The beautiful that stirred our hearts in youth,
The impulses to wordless prayer,
The streams of love and truth,
The longing after something lost,
The spirit’s yearning cry,
The striving after better hopes;
These things can never die.
The timid hand stretched forth to aid a brother in his need,
A kindly word in grief’s dark hour that proves a friend indeed;
The plea for mercy softly breathed,
When justice threatens high,
The sorrow of a contrite heart;
These things shall never die, shall never die.
Let nothing pass,
For every hand must find some work to do,
Lose not a chance to waken love.
Be firm and just and true,
So shall a light that cannot fade beam on thee from on high,
And angel voices say to thee;
These things can never die.
—Charles Dickens (1812–70) English Novelist
To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny.
—Simone Weil (1909–1943) French Philosopher, Political Activist
Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what’s right.
—Isaac Asimov (1920–92) Russian-born American Writer, Scientist
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
Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.
—Graham Greene (1904–91) British Novelist, Playwright, Short Story Writer
Unfortunately, moral beauty in art—like physical beauty in a person—is extremely perishable. It is nowhere so durable as artistic or intellectual beauty. Moral beauty has a tendency to decay very rapidly into sententiousness or untimeliness.
—Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher
This is the difference between my morality and hedonism. The standard is not: that is good which gives me pleasure, just because it gives me pleasure (which is the standard of the dipsomaniac or the sex-chaser)
—Ayn Rand (1905–82) Russian-born American Novelist, Philosopher
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
We become moral when we are unhappy.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
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
The better one is morally the less aware they are of their virtue.
—James Anthony Froude (1818–94) British Historian, Novelist, Biographer, Editor
Morality represents for everybody a thoroughly definite and ascertained idea: the idea of human conduct regulated in a certain manner.
—Matthew Arnold (1822–88) English Poet, Critic
The foundations of morality are like all other foundations: If you dig too much about them the superstructure will come tumbling down.
—Samuel Butler
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
To give a man full knowledge of morality, I would send him to no other book than the New Testament.
—John Locke (1632–1704) English Philosopher, Physician
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on I am not too sure.
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
It is far easier for a woman to lead a blameless life than it is for a man; all she has to do is to avoid sexual intercourse like the plague.
—Angela Carter (1940–92) English Novelist