Moral Quotes

In fact, the converse is true: At a time when the United States has been called on for a level of moral leadership, vision and inspiration not seen since World War II, we cannot afford to dissemble about crimes against humanity.

Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations - wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.

The truth is that there is no terror untempered by some great moral idea.

If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.

This country was the moral leader of the world until George Bush became president.

I think if you look at people, whether in business or government, who haven't had any moral compass, who've just changed to say whatever they thought the popular thing was, in the end they're losers.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

The Roosevelt enactment of Social Security was a moral revolution in our country: We were assured that we would never reach the very depths of poverty. And to be told, that we are now going to gamble it, on Wall Street, is nonsense!

But is it not the fact that religion emanates from the nature, from the moral state of the individual? Is it not therefore true that unless the nature be completely exercised, the moral state harmonized, the religion cannot be healthy?

To imply that religious believers have no right to engage moral questions in the public square or at the ballot is simply to establish a Reichian secularism as our state faith.

People of different faiths, like yours and mine, sometimes wonder where we can meet in common purpose, when there are so many differences in creed and theology. Surely the answer is that we can meet in service, in shared moral convictions about our nation stemming from a common worldview.

They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience.

Physical bravery is an animal instinct; moral bravery is much higher and truer courage.

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

The moral case for individual initiative in a free economy holds that people have a God-given right to use their creativity to produce things that improve our lives.

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.

We need to be clear when we venerate entrepreneurs what we are venerating.They are not moral leaders. If they were moral leaders, they wouldn't be great businessmen.

About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

If we are now holding late-night talk-show hosts to the same moral accountability as we hold politicians or clergymen, I'm out. I'm gone.

Many smart folks seem to think that if you just get your metaphors and messages right, you'll win. That if you start describing what you favor as a 'moral value' - 'affordable health care is a moral value' etc., - then you'll appeal to red-state voters.

The mere holding of slaves, therefore, is a condition having per se nothing of moral character in it, any more than the being a parent, or employer, or ruler.

The Ten Commandments have never been replaced as the moral basis upon which society rests.

Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.

So after the Lewinsky scandal, everything changed, and we moved from using the Bible to address the moral issues of our time, which were social, to moral issues of our time that were very personal. I have continued that relationship up until the present.

Real genius of moral insight is a motor which will start any engine.

The moral world is as little exempt as the physical world from the law of ceaseless change, of perpetual flux.

It is the inspiration of the Olympic Games that drives people not only to compete but to improve, and to bring lasting spiritual and moral benefits to the athlete and inspiration to those lucky enough to witness the athletic dedication.

The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.

There is no man more dangerous, in a position of power, than he who refuses to accept as a working truth the idea that all a man does should make for rightness and soundness, that even the fixing of a tariff rate must be moral.

Democrats always like to brag that their guys are smarter than the opponents and Republicans always like to brag that their guys are more moral than the opponents. But if you're looking for morals in politics you're looking for bananas in the cheese department.