Moral Decisions Quotes

Our moral decisions about ourselves can be spiritual. Our moral decisions about other people can only be practical. ~ Andrew Klavan

The ability to see and examine himself; the ability to make moral decisions and act on them; the mental and physical courage of his suicide. "He took his own life" is the phrase; but Adrian also took charge of his own life, he took command of it, he took it in his hands - and then out of them. How few of us - we that remain - can say that we have done the same? We muddle along, we let life happen to us, we gradually build up a store of memories. ~ Julian Barnes

I deeply believe - and not just as a matter of politics, but even as a matter of morality - that matters about reproduction and intimacy and relationships and contraception are in the personal realm. They're moral decisions for individuals to make for themselves. And the last thing we need is government intruding into those personal decisions. ~ Tim Kaine

A photograph is a moral decision taken in one eighth of a second. ~ Salman Rushdie

You don't really want an army of people making individual decisions. And I don't think I completely understood that until people gave me examples of what happens when your army takes over your government and it's like, "Oh, yeah, I guess you can't really have people make individual moral decisions." ~ Joel Stein

The way that we think is dependent upon our flowering formal and informal education. How we think affects our behavior. How we conduct ourselves in the unscripted interactions with our family, friends, and lovers alters our emotional being. Our emotional being funnels our thought processes. Our community modulates our actions and establishes standards for behavior, and our logical reasoning and moral reasoning skills evolve as we mature. The didactical association between education, thinking, behaving, communal relationships, and the ongoing process of making logical and moral decisions continues to shape unions and disunions of our transforming character. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

What we should be looking for is fresh ideas of how we make moral decisions about our dealings with one another, economic, social, cultural. Economic determinism is an objectionable creed where men and women espouse it in its communist or capitalist form because it treats human beings as economic units and not as responsible persons. ~ Davis McCaughey

It should be apparent that the belief in objectivity in journalism, as in other professions, is not just a claim about what kind of knowledge is reliable. It is also a moral philosophy, a declaration of what kind of thinking one should engage in, in making moral decisions. It is, moreover, a political commitment, for it provides a guide to what groups one should acknowledge as relevant audiences for judging one's own thoughts and acts. ~ Michael Schudson

Literature is an ethical leap. It is a moral decision. A perilous exercise in constant failure. Literature should have grievances, because there are so many grievances in the world. ~ Miguel Syjuco

Part of the human makeup which distinguishes man from other creatures is his ability to reason and make moral decisions. Man is a free moral agent. ~ Billy Graham

The nature of morality must be considered, and preferably before one is exposed to situations where a moral decision is required. ~ Brandon Sanderson

The industrialisation of England had quickened during Hardy's life and in the novel he places great importance on rural culture and the need of man to interact with, and understand the natural world, however indifferent it may be to human survival. The author does not sketch a portrait of an idyllic rural scene, but highlights and details the devastating consequences and brute force of the natural world. Hardy uses these disasters to underline the prominence of chance or luck in life, rather than benevolent design by a creator and how this might impact moral decisions. Impressionist art also influences Hardy's perception of reality and what knowledge each individual is capable of attaining in any situation. ~ Thomas Hardy

Isana stared at Gaius for a moment. Then she said, "How can you live with yourself?"

The First Lord stared at her for a moment, his eyes cold. Then he spoke in a very quiet, precise, measured voice. "I look out my window each day. I look out my window at people who live and breathe. At people who have not been devoured by civil war. At people who have not been ravaged by disease. At people who have not starved to death, who have not been hacked apart by enemies of humanity, at people who are free to lie and steal and plot and complain and accuse and behave in all manner of repugnant ways because the Realm stands. Because law and order stands. Because something other than simple violence shapes the course of their lives. And I look, wife of my son, mother of my heir, at a very few decent people who have had the luxury of living their lives without being called upon to make hideous decisions I would not wish upon my worst enemies, and who consequently find such matters morally appalling when they consider them--because they have not had to be the ones who dealt with them." He took a short, hard swallow of wine. "Feh. Aquitaine thinks me his enemy. The fool. If I truly hated him, I'd give him the Crown. ~ Jim Butcher

[Religion] attacks us in our deepest integrity - the core of our self-respect. Religion says that we would not know right from wrong, we would not know an evil, wicked act from a decent human act without divine permission, without divine authority or without, even worse, either the fear of a divine punishment or the hope of a divine reward. It strips us of the right to make our own determination, as all humans always have, about what is and what is not a right human action. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Sometimes, in order to follow our moral compass and/or our hearts, we have to make unpopular decisions or stand up for what we believe in. ~ Tabatha Coffey

Do you know why people are prone to make such foolish moral decisions? Because something always whispers to us that our situations are unique: Nobody has ever felt this way before. ~ Andy Stanley

When people commit themselves to a certain vision of reality, it becomes their ultimate explainer. It serves to interpret the universe for them, to guide their moral decisions, to give meaning and purpose to life, and all the other functions normally associated with a religion. ~ Nancy Pearcey

The moral decisions of others should be treated with respect, as long as such decisions do not conflict with the principle of tolerance. ~ Karl Popper

Grief helps you come to grips with the loss of a loved one. Guilt helps you make better moral decisions or bring you to apologise for a wrongdoing. In proper doses, these types of negative emotions are necessary and healthy. ~ Stephen Richards

Don't you think it's good to serve your country?' I asked. 'No, I don't,' Mr Peterson said. 'I think it's good to serve your principles. And in the army you don't get to pick and choose your fights according to your conscience. You kill on command. Don't ever surrender your right to make your own moral decisions, kid. ~ Gavin Extence

I wanted to make decisions on who I loved by who completed me, made me feel good about myself. Who I could love freely and help make a better person by just being there. ~ Kim Harrison

Quick decision makers are often stuck behind annoying people in line at Starbucks. ~ Ellen DeGeneres

Comrades," he said, "I trust that every animal here appreciates the sacrifice that Comrade Napoleon has made in taking this extra labour upon himself. Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure! On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be? Suppose you had decided to follow Snowball, with his moonshine of windmills - Snowball, who, as we now know, was no better than a criminal? ~ Anonymous

Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility. ~ Oscar Wilde

I'm really trying to dredge up what one might call intellectual and moral material. For example, when do you realize that you are an American? What age does that happen to you? When do you realize what religion your parents practice? When does it all become conscious? I was interested in exploring all of that. ~ Paul Auster

The Oval Office is a place where there's been, obviously, a lot of amazing experiences over a seven-and-a-half year period. My presidency is one where I've had to make some very tough decisions. I guess some presidencies are kind of - were real smooth, there were no real big issues. Well, that's not the way mine is. ~ George W. Bush

People are unpredictable and predictable at the same time: it seems that whenever you want someone to surprise you they remain themselves, and those who were actually OK screw themselves over some way or another. People make stupid decisions on a regular basis but, worse, have stupid reasons for those decisions-because people are broken then forced together again in ways that they were probably never intended to be. ~ Helen Hiorns

Don't do the right thing for the wrong reasons. It is the "why" that keeps us committed to our choices and defines our character. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Successful resistance to temptation may result in an increase of moral muscle, but that is because one is going to need it. A temptation resisted may become more, not less, fierce. ~ N. T. Wright

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. ~ Tim O'Brien

To be a visionary, all you have to do is make decisions based off of your eyes instead of your ears and your memory. ~ Kanye West

...fiction is as useful as truth, for giving us matter, upon which to exercise the judgment of value. ~ G.E. Moore

Nowadays it seems that moral education is no longer considered necessary. Attention is wholly centered on intelligence, while the heart life is ignored. ~ George Sand

When man loves as a biological hypostasis, he inevitably excludes others: the family has priority in love over "strangers," the husband lays exclusive claim to the love of his wife - facts altogether understandable and "natural" for the biological hypostasis. For a man to love someone who is not a member of his family more than his own relations constitutes a transcendence of the exclusiveness which is present in the biological hypostasis. Thus a characteristic of the ecclesial hypostasis is the capacity of the person to love without exclusiveness, and to do this not out of conformity with a moral commandment ("Love thy neighbor," etc.), but out of his "hypostatic constitution," out of the fact that his new birth from the womb of the Church has made him part of a network of relationships which transcends every exclusiveness. ~ John D. Zizioulas

If you make the tough decisions, people will hate you today. But they will thank you for generations. ~ Meryl Streep

Etiquette is the grease that makes it possible for all of us to rub together without unnecessary overheating. ~ Russell Baker

The University has a moral obligation to provide equal opportunities to women, minority persons and all other groups who work or seek to work at Harvard. ~ Derek Bok

Moral indignation is a pleasure, often the only pleasure, in many lives. It's also one of the few pleasures people feel obliged to force on other people. ~ Barbara Holland

Had probably never had a real conversation with anyone other than a woman I loved, and essentially it seemed unsurprising to me that the exchange of ideas with someone who doesn't know your body, is not in a position to secure its unhappiness or on the other hand to bring it joy, was a false and ultimately impossible exercise, for we are bodies, we are, above all, principally and almost uniquely bodies, and the state of our bodies constitutes the true explanation of the majority of our intellectual and moral conceptions. ~ Michel Houellebecq

If you demand the collective to pay for your medical expenses, then be prepared for the collective to demand to make your medical decisions for you. ~ A.E. Samaan

As we move forward to debate our economic and fiscal challenges in the weeks and months ahead, one thing is clear: Our economic agenda, choices and decisions, will be viewed through the perspective and the eyes of our nation's women and their needs and those of their families. ~ Nancy Pelosi

But virtue, by the bare statement of its actions, can so affect men's minds as to create at once both admiration of the things done and desire to imitate the doers of them. The goods of fortune we would possess and would enjoy; those of virtue we long to practise and exercise. We are content to receive the former from others, the latter we wish others to experience from us. Moral good is a practical stimulus; it is no sooner seen, than it inspires an impulse to practice, and influences the mind and character not by a mere imitation which we look at, but by the statement of the fact creates a moral purpose which we form. ~ Plutarch

You aren't your name. Your decisions are your own. ~ Stephanie Perkins

The elder brother is not losing the father's love in spite of his goodness, but because of it. It is not his sins that create the barrier between him and his father, it's the pride he has in his moral record; it's not his wrongdoing but his righteousness that is keeping him from sharing in the feast of the father. ~ Timothy Keller

Our mastery over the forces of nature has led to a rapid growth of population, and a vast accumulation of wealth; but these have brought with them such an amount of poverty and crime, and have fostered the growth of so much sordid feeling and so many fierce passions, that it may well be questioned, whether the mental and moral status of our population has not on the average been lowered, and whether the evil has not overbalanced the good. ~ Alfred Russel Wallace

But eating with genuine good appetite is no easy thing when you are seated at the opposite end of a long table from a man who makes it a point of moral significance to subsist on half a grapefruit, eaten in under a minute so that the bowl could be pushed emphatically away, another duty done. ~ Richard Russo

The uttermost beautiful and glorious feeling is a Trust. It is a breath of love too, even the key to all doors of one's way. Breaking the Trust is a suicide of moral and harmonious values. ~ Ehsan Sehgal

If my work is pornography, so what? I don't have any moral compunction about pornography. Any feelings I have about it are purely stylistic ... I don't see why it should be excluded as a serious subject. ~ David Salle

I absolutely refuse to associate myself with anyone who cannot discern the essential night-and-day difference between theocratic fascism and liberal secular democracy, even less do I want to engage with those who are incapable of recognizing the basic moral distinction between premeditated mass murder and unintentional killing. ~ Christopher Hitchens

I believe that the United States has a moral obligation to stand up for those citizens of the world who cannot stand up for themselves, and I am proud to have authored the bill signed into law today that continues to put significant pressure on the brutal Burmese military junta. ~ Joseph Crowley

When I was 17 until, I don't know, 20, I had this massive, baseless confidence. This very clear idea of myself and how I would achieve success, which involved making decisions. I saw myself picking up the phone and saying 'Absolutely not' or 'Definitely yes.' Having control. Except you have to figure out whether the way you think at 19 or 20 has any value. And eventually I understood, with all that control, which was probably illusory, I wasn't progressing. So now I'm relinquishing a bit. I'll be a tiny bit naked. ~ Robert Pattinson

If it is all up to me to live a consistently whole and healthy spiritual life, then the dry bones of my dry soul will not live. If it is all up to preachers like you and me to keep a local congregation alive in community and ministry, then we may as well close the doors right now. If it is all up to you, me and all the other preachers alive today to bring about a moral revolution breaking the chains that bind us, then our world is doomed. ~ Darrell W. Johnson

Say what you mean and mean what you say. Don't be afraid to stand firm on the decisions that you make. Trust yourself. Believe in your instincts. Do what works best for YOU. Stay true to yourself and be good to yourself. Allow every decision that you make to empower, enrich, and add value to your life! ~ Stephanie Lahart

For science, the end of the evolution struggle is simply represented by 'survival.' As for the means to that end, apparently anything goes. Darwinism leaves humanity without a moral compass. ~ Bruce Lipton

Then there were the general moral duties: not to commit adultery or fornication, not to stay out late at night after 8 p.m. frequenting inns and brothels, and not to play cards except during the Twelve Days of Christmas. ~ Jasper Ridley

The Fourth Industrial Revolution can compromise humanity's traditional sources of meaning - work, community, family, and identity - or it can lift humanity into a new collective and moral consciousness based on a sense of shared destiny. The choice is ours. ~ Klaus Schwab

We have become so addicted to our greed-driven habits that we have lost our moral compass and don't know what is right and wrong. ~ Sharon Gannon

We should go forward in courts and Congress with investigations into post-9/11 interrogations and the decisions leading to them. ~ Christine Pelosi

What keeps me up at night? Sometimes it's day-to-day work stuff. And a lot of the times, it's, 'Am I making the wrong decisions in terms of reaching young women?' ~ Tyra Banks

Why did you write "Charlie Brown is a blockhead" on the sidewalk?"
"Because I sincerely believe you are a blockhead! I have to write what I believe is true... It's my moral respolsibility!"
"Deep down I admire her integrity... ~ Charles M. Schulz

I'm trying to justify it somehow, he thought, meaning it not in the moral sense but rather in the mathematical one. Buildings are built by observing certain natural laws; natural laws may be expressed by equations; equations must be justified. Where was the justification in what had happened less than half an hour ago? ~ Stephen King

We must have an economy that does not force the migrant worker's child to miss school in order to earn ... just so the family can eat. That is the moral bankruptcy that trickle-down economics is all about. ~ Barbara Jordan