Moral Beliefs Quotes

It is no longer acceptable to simply assert your moral beliefs; you have to provide reasons for them, and those reasons had better be grounded in rational arguments and empirical evidence or else they will likely be ignored or rejected. ~ Michael Shermer

My political beliefs are my moral, quasi-religious framework. ~ Ken Livingstone

And we're to accept that the government can dictate the moral beliefs of all its citizens? ~ William Leisner

Law enforcement is a calling. It's about being willing to serve the public as a protector of the innocent and enforcer of the law. The law represents the codified moral beliefs of the people. ~ Dan Arnold

I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism. ~ Barry M. Goldwater

True law necessarily is rooted in ethical assumptions or norms; and those ethical principles are derived, in the beginning at least, from religious convictions. When the religious understanding, from which a concept of law arose in a culture, has been discarded or denied, the laws may endure for some time, through what sociologists call "cultural lag"; but in the long run, the laws also will be discarded or denied.

With this hard truth in mind, I venture to suggest that the corpus of English and American laws--for the two arise for the most part from a common root of belief and experience--cannot endure forever unless it is animated by the spirit that moved it in the beginning: that is, by religion, and specifically by the Christian people. Certain moral postulates of Christian teaching have been taken for granted, in the past, as the ground of justice. When courts of law ignore those postulates, we grope in judicial darkness. . . .

We suffer from a strong movement to exclude such religious beliefs from the operation of courts of law, and to discriminate against those unenlightened who cling fondly to the superstitions of the childhood of the race.

Many moral beliefs, however, though sustained by religious convictions, may not be readily susceptible of "scientific" demonstration. After all, our abhorrence of murder, rape, and other crimes may be traced back to the Decalogue and other religious injunctions. If it can be shown that our oppositio ~ Russell Kirk

If we want to understand the distinctive constitution of Europe, we must go back to its religious foundations. For the moral beliefs which Christianity fostered still underpin civil society in Europe, the institutions that surround us. ~ Larry Siedentop

He wondered how Nathan felt about the killing. Granted that Richard had struck Bobby with the chisel, nevertheless, he asked, how had Nathan felt about the boy's death? It didn't concern him, Nathan replied. He had no moral beliefs and religion meant nothing to him: he was an atheist. Whatever served an individual's purpose - that was the best guide to conduct. In ~ Simon Baatz

Its real deity, I saw, was no longer of a spiritual kind: it was Comfort.

No doubt that there were still many individuals who felt and thought in religious terms and made the most desperate efforts to reconcile their moral beliefs with the spirit of their civilization, but they were only exceptions.

The average European - whether democrat or communist, manual worker or intellectual - seemed to know only one positive faith: the worship of material progress, the belief that there could be no other goal in life than to make that very life continually easier or, as the current expression went, 'independent of nature'.

The temples of faith were the gigantic factories, cinemas, chemical laboratories, dance halls, hydroelectric works; and its priests were the bankers, engineers, politician, film starts, statisticians, captains of industry, record airmen, and commissars. ~ Muhammad Asad

There is a difference between criticizing people and criticizing a people's uninformed ideals. That is, unless one defines himself or others by their ideals, then he is offended, and usually offended secretly. Because oddly enough, this person is the same person quickest to resort to dismissive name-calling, such as 'bigot' or 'zealot'. And oddly enough, he is always the one, the 'open-minded' one, who adamantly protests for, not only himself, but others not to listen to any type of scholarly theological truth inherently for the sake of his own personal, moral beliefs. ~ Criss Jami

You can decide to forgo any ethical deliberations and simply embrace the moral beliefs and norms you inherited from your family and culture. But this approach undermines your freedom, for if you accept without question whatever moral beliefs come your way, they are not really yours. Only if you critically examine them for yourself are they truly yours. ~ Lewis Vaughn

Should our moral beliefs really prove to be dependent on factual assumptions shown to be incorrect, it would be hardly moral to defend them by refusing to acknowledge the facts. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

All this attempt to control... We are talking about Western attitudes that are five hundred years old... The basic idea of science - that there was a new way to look at reality, that it was objective, that it did not depend on your beliefs or your nationality, that it was rational - that idea was fresh and exciting back then. It offered promise and hope for the future, and it swept away the old medieval system, which was hundreds of years old. The medieval world of feudal politics and religious dogma and hateful superstitions fell before science. But, in truth, this was because the medieval world didn't really work any more. It didn't work economically, it didn't work intellectually, and it didn't fit the new world that was emerging... But now... science is the belief system that is hundreds of years old. And, like the medieval system before it, science is starting to not fit the world any more. Science has attained so much power that its practical limits begin to be apparent. Largely through science, billions of us live in one small world, densely packed and intercommunicating. But science cannot help us decide what to do with that world, or how to live. Science can make a nuclear reactor, but it can not tell us not to build it. Science can make pesticide, but cannot tell us not to use it. And our world starts to seem polluted in fundamental ways - air, and water, and land - because of ungovernable science... At the same time, the great intellectual justification of science ~ Michael Crichton

Fear is often disguised as moral outrage. ~ Judy Blume

[ ... ] morals are worn as a badge to make you look good and [ ... ] it's so much easier to talk about your beliefs than to live up to them ~ Marilyn Manson

THE LAW OF OPPOSITION "To him who overcomes ... " Revelation 2:7 Life without war is impossible in the natural or the supernatural realm. It is a fact that there is a continuing struggle in the physical, mental, moral, and spiritual areas of life. ~ Oswald Chambers

The precise form of your fear will be different from everyone else's, but everyone has those fears, attitudes, and beliefs getting in the way of their leadership potential. ~ Nick Morgan

I believe we can proactively choose to believe whatever we want instead of merely letting our beliefs coalesce as reactions to events. ~ Steve Pavlina

This lunge at moral fastidiousness was something she'd noticed a lot in people around here. They were not good people. They were not kind. But they recycled their newspapers! ~ Lorrie Moore

When you are only able to fight for another person when they share your own lifestyle, your own religion, your own beliefs, or your own gender; that is not fighting for "another person" or for "other people" at all. That is fighting for YOUR OWN IDEALS, YOUR OWN PERSON, and WHAT YOU WANT! Empathy is not empathy when it is only applied to what benefits yourself, your circle, and your beliefs. Empathy is NOT empathy until it reaches beyond your own personal limitations and your own personal interests! ~ C. JoyBell C.

Leadership is about having clear & grand vision, taking initiatives, possessing courage to question the status quo, ability to set large goals, consistently inspire self & others towards those goals, being self motivated and capability to motivate others, being spirited & strong to surmount any obstacle on the path, humility & openness to listen and learn from others, strength to stand for what he believes is right, while being flexible enough to revisit & review his beliefs, ability to organize & shift paradigms of his own & others, ability to attract, retain, develop & work with bigger leaders than himself, ability to trust others & being trust worthy , to think big & not petty, being above self, kind & giving, ability to sacrifice for others and to be bereft of insecurities & suspicion, ability to take risks, learn from both success & failure, being able to forget & forgive mistakes and mishaps of others, being focused, patient & persistent, to possess an amazing ability to be simple & easy to understand, to communicate & express with clarity and above all, being human. ~ Krishna Saagar

It was the mission of the Confederacy, ordinary whites were told, to carry out God's design for an inferior and dependent race. Slaveholders claimed that owning slaves always entailed a duty and a burden - a duty and burden that defined the moral superiority of the South. And this duty and burden was respected by millions of nonslaveholding whites, who were prepared to defend it with their lives. That, perhaps, was the ultimate meaning of a slave society. ~ David Brion Davis

I shook my head. "I'm good, Nicky helped."
Nicky looked at Edward. "She's having one of those what-if-killing-feels-really-good, doesn't-that-make-me-a-bad-person moments."
Edward nodded as if that made perfect sense. "Then it feels good. We can't really control what flips our switch; don't judge it, Anita, and just accept it."
I wanted to argue, but it would have been beyond stupid to argue with the two sociopaths in my life. "Why do I have moral quandary questions with the two of you?"
"Because you don't really have moral quandaries about violence, Anita, but you're afraid of being judged for enjoying it, so you only bring it to the two people in your life who won't judge you."
I wanted to argue with Edward, but I couldn't. "Well, fuck. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

So what the hell's wrong with me?" Nyx eased off the marble slab.
"Besides your deviant moral flexibility and severe phobia of emotional commitment?" Yahfia asked.
"I consider those virtues," Nyx said. ~ Kameron Hurley

Dullness of hearing is hearing without faith and without the moral fruit of faith. It's hearing the Bible or the preaching of the Bible the way you hear the freeway noise on I-94, or the way you hear Muzak in the dentist's office or the way you hear recorded warnings at the airport that this is a smoke-free facility. You do but you don't. You have grown dull to the sound. It does not awaken or produce anything. ~ John Piper

For the wagons that bear grain to the whole of mankind without any moral basis for their action may most cold-bloodedly exclude an important part of mankind from the enjoyment of what they bear, something that has already happened ... ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Man in the mass sinks unconsciously to an inferior moral and intellectual level, to that level which is always there, below the threshold of consciousness, ready to break forth as soon as it is activated by the formation of a mass.
...
Since nobody is capable of recognizing just where and how much he himself is possessed and unconscious, he simply projects his own condition upon his neighbor, and thus it becomes a sacred duty to have the biggest guns and the most poisonous gas. ~ C. G. Jung

Even if three centuries of outsider status and intermittent persecution had tested the endurance of individuals and communities, coping with the patronage of a newly Christian emperor posed a challenge. The challenge was all the more threatening for its moral complexity. Was it right for the churches to accept the Emperor's favour, knowing full well that if they did so, they also tacitly accepted his right, so evident in all other aspects of life in the Roman Empire, to call the shots? ~ Kate Cooper

People with a poverty mindset remain poor and usually it is because of the fears in their mind. They tie up their energy in with the lack of money. ~ Hina Hashmi

Income inequality and wage stagnation finally took their place among the principal moral issues of our time. ~ David Rolf

Who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich - whom men have come to regard as a moral ideal. And this has brought us to a world where the more a man produces, the closer he comes to the loss of all his rights, until, if his ability is great enough, he becomes a rightless creature delivered as prey to any claimant - while in order to be placed above rights, above principles, above morality, placed where anything is ~ Ayn Rand

Captain," said the squire, "the house is quite invisible from the ship. It must be the flag they are aiming at. Would it not be wiser to take it in?"
"Strike my colours!" cried the captain, "No sir, not I"... ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Slavery is indeed gone, but its shadow still lingers over the country and poisons more or less the moral atmosphere of all sections of the republic. ~ Frederick Douglass

The idea of winning a doctor's degree gradually assumed the aspect of a great moral struggle, and the moral fight possessed immense attraction for me. ~ Elizabeth Blackwell

Great fiction can often present moral messages with greater power and clarity than instructional writing - since literature, after all, penetrates not just the intellect, but the imagination. ~ Charles Colson

The truth is everything is impermanent. Nothing stays the same. Flowers wither. Our bodies grow old. Even our thoughts and emotions seem to dissolve over time. When we have a fixed concept of self, we lose ourselves in the past and don't allow ourselves to just be who we are in the present. ~ Yong Kang Chan

What does it mean to grow rich?
Is it to have red-blooded adventures and to make a 'fortune,' which is what brought the whalers and other entrepreneurs north?

Or is it, rather, to have a good family life and to be imbued with a far-reaching and intimate knowledge of one's homeland, which is what the Tununirmiut told the whalers at Pond's Bay wealth was?

Is it to retain a capacity for awe and astonishment in our lives, to continue to hunger after what is genuine and worthy? Is it to live at moral peace with the universe? ~ Barry Lopez

Anger at queries about our beliefs is the body's warning signal: here lies unexamined and probably dangerous doctrinal baggage. ~ Carl Sagan

The troubled middle is…a place where it's possible to truly love animals and still accept their occasional role as resources, objects, and tools. Those of us in the troubled middle believe that animals deserve to be treated well, but we don't want to ban their use in medical research. We care enough to want livestock to be raised humanely, but don't want to abandon meat-eating altogether. 'Some argue that we are fence-sitters, moral wimps,' Herzog, himself a resident of the troubled middle, writes. 'I believe, however, that the troubled middle makes perfect sense because moral quagmires are inevitable in a species with a huge brain and a big heart. They come with the territory. ~ Emily Anthes

They stared at each other, wanting each other, drawn to each other, but their silent shout of love went unheard in the roar of misunderstanding, and the clatter of culturally ingrained beliefs. ~ Jean M. Auel

The idea of democracy has been stripped of it moral imperatives and come to denote hollowness and hypocrisy. ~ Paul Wellstone

For God to be kept out of the classroom or out of America's public debate by nervous school administrators or overcautious politicians serves no one's interests. That restriction prevents people from drawing on this country's rich and diverse religious heritage for guidance, and it degrades the nation's moral discourse by placing a whole realm of theological reasoning out of bounds. The price of that sort of quarantine, at a time of moral dislocation, is - and has been - far too high. ~ Nancy Gibbs

the genes of modern-day Africans are a treasure house for all humanity. They possess our species' greatest reservoir of genetic diversity, of which further study will shed new light on the heredity of the human body and mind. Perhaps the time has come, in light of this and other advances in human genetics, to adopt a new ethic of racial and hereditary variation, one that places value on the whole of diversity rather than on the differences composing the diversity. It would give proper measure to our species' genetic variation as an asset, prized for the adaptability it provides all of us during an increasingly uncertain future. Humanity is strengthened by a broad portfolio of genes that can generate new talents, additional resistance to diseases, and perhaps even new ways of seeing reality. For scientific as well as for moral reasons, we should learn to promote human biological diversity for its own sake instead of using it to justify prejudice and conflict. ~ Edward O. Wilson

She gives just enough hints about him to make you wonder why he became so villainous. And if he dies, I'll never learnt the answer."
Oliver eyes her closely. "Perhaps he was born villainous."
"No one is born villainous."
"Oh?" he said with raised eyebrow. "So we're all born good?"
"Neither. We start as animals, with an animal's needs and desires. It takes parents and teachers and other good examples to show us how to restrain those needs and desires, when necessary, for the greater good. But it's still our choice whether to heed that education or to do as we please."
"For a woman who loves murder and mayhem, you're quite the philosopher."
"I like to understand how things work. Why people behave as they do."
He digested that for a moment. "I happen to think that some of us, like Rockton, are born with a wicked bent."
She chose her words carefully. "That certainly provides Rockton with a convenient excuse for his behavior."
His features turned stony. "What do you mean?"
"Being moral and disciplined is hard work. Being wicked requires no effort at all-one merely indulges every desire and impulse, no matter how hurtful or immoral. By claiming to be born wicked, Rockton ensures that he doesn't have to struggle to be god. He can just protest that he can't help himself."
"Perhaps he can't," he clipped out.
"Or maybe he's simply unwilling to fight his impulses. And I want to know the reason for that. That's why I keep readin ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Older children need a community of peers and adults with whom to begin forming a synthetic-conventional faith and to begin establishing for themselves a set of values, beliefs, and commitments that will guide their decision making and energize their wills to live out those commitments - a community that knows and lives its faith. ~ Catherine Stonehouse

The cult of self has become an addiction - feeding off the ego of self-glorification. The word cult encompasses many movements and ideas, but simply put, it describes a culture of alternative beliefs, fads, and trends, and tampers with just enough truth to knock many off balance. ~ Billy Graham

The point we desperately need to grasp is that forgiveness is not the same thing as tolerance. We are told again and again today that we must be "inclusive"; that Jesus welcomed all kinds of people just as they were; that the church believes in forgiveness and therefore we should remarry divorcees without question, reinstate employees who were sacked for dishonesty, allow convicted pedophiles back into children's work-actually, we don't normally say the last of these, which shows that we have retained at least some vestiges of common sense. But forgiveness is not the same as tolerance. It is not the same as inclusivity. It is not the same as indifference, whether personal or moral. Forgiveness doesn't mean that we don't take evil seriously after all; it means that we do. ~ N. T. Wright

It seemed to me truer to the experience to be simply astounded that a small bird floated out there in this century, as its forebears had done for thousands of years before either Jesus or any of the rest of us. Nature had no moral imperative: nothing helped the bird; there was no fellow love for it out there; the water didn't help it, save harboring its food source; the other birds wouldn't mourn its passing; the weather was just the weather. A man stood on the beach, watched it pass, and spoke out loud its name, in wonder and intense joy. ~ Luke Dempsey

We are all born with infinite wisdom at our fingertips. All you have to do is approach every disagreement, debate, and alternative view of your core beliefs with the sincere and soul honest desire of being proved partially or completely incorrect ~ Carl Henegan

Perception meets you at the intersection of your beliefs and reality. ~ Bryant McGill

Hundreds of poor laboring men and women are being thrown into jails and police stations because of their political beliefs. In fact, an attempt is being made to deport an entire political party. ~ Jane Addams

Since my moral system rests on my accepted version of the facts, he who denies my moral judgments or my version of the facts, is to me perverse, alien, dangerous. How shall I account for him? The opponent has always to be explained, and the last explanation that we ever look for is that he sees a different set of facts. Such an explanation we avoid, because it saps the very foundation of our own assurance that we have seen life steadily and seen it whole. ~ Walter Lippmann

In many areas of life, freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, the liberating restrictions. Those that fit with the reality of our nature and the world produce greater power and scope for our abilities and a deeper joy and fulfillment. Experimentation, risk, and making mistakes bring growth only if, over time, they show us our limits as well as our abilities. If we only grow intellectually, vocationally, and physically through judicious constraints–why would it not also be true for spiritual and moral growth? Instead of insisting on freedom to create spiritual reality, shouldn't we be seeking to discover it and disciplining ourselves to live according to it? ~ Timothy J. Keller