Quotes about morality

"Morality is a private and costly luxury."

Adams, Henry Brooks on morality   

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"The only immorality is not to do what one has to do when one has to do it."

Anouilh, Jean on morality   

"Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts."

Aristotle on morality
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"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 on morality
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"Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right."

Asimov, Isaac on morality
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"While moral rules may be propounded by authority the fact that these were so propounded would not validate them."

Ayer, Sir Alfred Jules on morality   

"I'm as pure as the driven slush."

Bankhead, Tallulah on morality   

"The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil."

Bataille, Georges on morality
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"I have never regarded politics as the arena of morals. It is the arena of interest."

Bevan, Aneurin on morality   

"Just as there's garbage that pollutes the Potomac river, there is garbage polluting our culture. We need an Environmental Protection Agency to clean it up."

Buchanan, Patrick on morality   

"Though sages may pour out their wisdom's treasure, there is no sterner moralist than pleasure."

Byron, Lord on morality
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"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."

Carlyle, Thomas on morality   

"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."

Carter, Angela on morality   

"The person is always happy who is in the presence of something they cannot know in full. A person as advanced far in the study of morals who has mastered the difference between pride and vanity."

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De on morality   

"I cannot believe that this country cannot come together around some values what these kids need is a moral life... the issue is not ideas, it is conduct. The real question is how we reach these young people morally, and what do we bring to them."

Coles, Robert on morality   

"Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase."

Colton, Charles Caleb on morality   

"The higher the building the lower the morals."

Coward, Noel on morality   

"Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people."

Crowley, Aleister on morality   

"Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales."

Crowley, Aleister on morality   

"A set of rules laid out by professionals to show the way they would like to act if it was profitable."

Dane, Frank on morality   

"Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad."

Diderot, Denis on morality   

"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."

Didion, Joan on morality   

"We moralize among ruins."

Disraeli, Benjamin on morality   

"Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions."

Durant, William J. on morality   

"The fatal trait of the times is the divorce between religion and morality."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on morality
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"A man can do what he ought to do; and when he says he cannot, it is because he will not."

Feoude on morality   

"A woman can look both moral and exciting -- if she also looks as if it was quite a struggle."

Ferber, Edna on morality   

"It is almost systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no difference between right and wrong."

France, Anatole on morality   

"Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine."

Freud, Sigmund on morality
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"The better one is morally the less aware they are of their virtue."

Froude, James A. on morality   

"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."

Goldman, Emma on morality   

"Don't let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter."

Goldsmith, Oliver on morality   

"Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered."

Greene, Graham on morality   

"We may pretend that we're basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise."

Hands, Terry on morality   

"Morality and expediency coincide more than the cynics allow."

Hattersley, Roy on morality   

"Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality."

Hazlitt, William on morality   

"What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after."

Hemingway, Ernest on morality
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"The end never really justifies the meanness."

Hulse, E. Duane on morality   

"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."

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von on morality   

"Moral choices do not depend on personal preference and private decision but on right reason and, I would add, divine order."

Hume, Basil on morality