Moral Growth Quotes

Limitless material growth is not sustainable or moral. ~ Bryant McGill

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Nothing is more tragic than failure to discover one's true business in life, or to find that one has drifted or been forced by circumstance into an uncongenial calling. ~ John Dewey

Maybe the growth of "God" signifies the existence of God. That is: if history naturally pushes people toward moral improvement, toward moral growth, and their God, as they conceive their God, grows accordingly, becoming morally richer, then maybe this growth is evidence of some higher purpose, and maybe - conceivably - the source of that purpose is worthy of the name divinity. ~ Robert Wright

Though we may know Him by a thousand names, He is one and the same to us all. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Punishments erode relationships and moral growth. ~ Alfie Kohn

The perfecting of one's self is the fundamental base of all progress and all moral development. ~ Confucius

A sense of our inadequacies and failings, a recognition that we could be better people than we usually are, is
one of the forces for moral growth and improvement in our society. An appropriate sense of guilt makes people try to be better. But an
excessive sense of guilt, a tendency to blame ourselves for things which are clearly not our fault, robs us of our self-esteem and
perhaps of our capacity to grow and to act. ~ Harold S. Kushner

Increase of material comforts, it may be generally laid down, does not in any way whatsoever conduce to moral growth. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Intellectual and moral growth is no less indispensable than material improvement. Knowledge is a viaticum. Though is a prime necessity; truth is nourishment, like wheat. A reasoning faculty, deprived of knowledge and wisdom, pines away. We should feel the same pity for minds that do not eat as for stomachs. If there be anything sadder than a body perishing for want of bread, it is a mind dying of hunger for lack of light. All progress tends toward the solution. Some day, people will be amazed. As the human race ascends, the deepest layers will naturally emerge from the zone of distress. The effacement of wretchedness will be effected by a simple elevation level. ~ Victor Hugo

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

Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it. ~ Frederick Douglass

All the religions of the world, while they may differ in other respects, unitedly proclaim that nothing lives in this world but Truth. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Censor, n. An officer of certain governments, employed to supress the works of genius. Among the Romans the censor was an inspector of public morals, but the public morals of modern nations will not bear inspection. ~ Ambrose Bierce

In general, I know that when speaking of private and opposing worlds, one tends to refer to divided, sometimes even irreconcilable facets of personality or of the spirit, each with its corresponding secret value and its psychological, metaphysical, political, or simply practical- or even pathological- content. But in my case there was neither a moral nor existential disjunctive, what was more, I saw that my two worlds weren't separated in an equal or reciprocal way; neither did one world linger in the shadows or in private as the flip side of the other, the visible one, who knows which; nor would they seek to impose themselves over the other or to merge as one, but force or not, as tends to occur in these cases. Nothing of the sort; they seemed a nearly abnormal example of coexistence, of adaptive tendency and of absolute absence of contrasts. I took all this into consideration, and it seemed worrisome and insoluble. . . But an instant later I resigned myself, thinking that when all was said and done I ought to bow to these conditions, because just as we cannot choose our moment to be born, we also know nothing of the variable worlds we'll inhabit. ~ Sergio Chejfec

Always our action counts for our success, not our time. ~ John Patrick Hickey

For the moral basis, it is obvious that man's ethical responsibility varies with his knowledge of consequences ~ G.K. Chesterton

Money is not good or evil. It has no morals or intentions on its own. Money reflects the character of the user. ~ Dave Ramsey

The English countryside, its growth and its destruction, is a genuine and tragic theme. ~ E. M. Forster

Every day I get letters from people thanking me for helping them to become successful, whether because of their personal growth or because of economic rewards. A few of my former students have even become millionaires. ~ Frederick Lenz

Not everything we experience can be explained by logic or science. ~ Linda Westphal

Small steps may appear unimpressive, but don't be deceived. They are the means by which perspectives are subtly altered, mountains are gradually scaled, and lives are drastically changed. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

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. ~ Maggie Gallagher

It took a couple of months before we were both convinced there were no rules about sexual activities in Hell and our spouses were not going to show up out of the blue. It was hard to start a sexual relationship in circumstances of such bizarre uncertainty, especially for an active Mormon and a good Christian, both lost in a Zoroastrian Hell. We were like virgin newlyweds. All my life I'd been raised to believe this kind of thing was wrong. All my life I had lived with a strong sense of morality. How do you give it up? How do you do things you thought you'd never do? Where do all the things you believed go, when all the supporting structure is found to be a myth? How do you know how or on what to take a moral stand, how do you behave when it turns out there are no cosmic rules, no categorical imperatives? It was difficult. So tricky to untangle. ~ Steven L. Peck

You're like that single wild flower that grows from the crack in the pavement: miraculous growth with no water source or fertile soil. A person walking by would step around that flower to avoid crushing it. It's not like the field of wild flowers you tromp through carelessly, crushing them under your feet, knowing that the next day will bring a hundred more. ~ J.B. Salsbury

It had only taken me six years to change from a ten-year-old to a sixteen-year-old; surely six years wasn't long enough for a transformation of that magnitude. ~ Nick Hornby

The paradigm that is now receding has dominated our culture for several hundred years, during which it has shaped our modern Western society and has significantly influenced the rest of the world. This paradigm consists of a number of entrenched ideas and values, among them the view of the universe as a mechanical system composed of elementary building-blocks, the view of the human body as a machine, the view of life in society as a competitive struggle for existence, the belief in unlimited material progress to be achieved through economic and technological growth, and - last, not least - the belief that a society in which the female is everywhere subsumed under the male is one that follows a basic law of nature. ~ Fritjof Capra

Undoubtedly, failure is growth in pain's disguise. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

All I know about thermal pollution is that if we continue our present rate of growth in electrical energy consumption it will simply take, by the year 2000, all our freshwater streams to cool the generators and reactors. ~ David R. Brower

Surely it is time for Jews, worried over the huge growth of Arabs in Israel, to consider finishing the exchange of populations that began 35 years ago. ~ Meir Kahane

To live is to grow. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

I wanted to be studying plant growth, but science for war will always pay better than science for knowledge. ~ Hope Jahren

Yet there is dynamism in our house. Day to day, week to week, Cady blossoms: a first grasp, a first smile, a first laugh. Her pediatrician regularly records her growth on charts, tick marks indicating her progress over time. A brightening newness surrounds her. As she sits in my lap smiling, enthralled by my tuneless singing, an incandescence lights the room. Time for me is now double-edged: every day brings me further from the low of my last relapse but closer to the next recurrence - and, eventually, death. Perhaps later than I think, but certainly sooner than I desire. There are, I imagine, two responses to that realization. The most obvious might be an impulse to frantic activity: to "live life to its fullest," to travel, to dine, to achieve a host of neglected ambitions. Part of the cruelty of cancer, though, is not only that it limits your time; it also limits your energy, vastly reducing the amount you can squeeze into a day. It is a tired hare who now races. And even if I had the energy, I prefer a more tortoiselike approach. I plod, I ponder. Some days, I simply persist. If time dilates when one moves at high speeds, does it contract when one moves barely at all? It must: the days have shortened considerably. With little to distinguish one day from the next, time has begun to feel static. In English, we use the word time in different ways: "The time is two forty-five" versus "I'm going through a tough time." These days, time feels less like the ticking clock and more ~ Paul Kalanithi

Simplify and focus on the good. The beauty of the journey ahead will flourish on its own. ~ Erik Tomblin

Two things," the wise man said, "fill me with awe:
The starry heavens and the moral law."
Nay, add another wonder to thy roll, --
The living marvel of the human soul!

Born in the dust and cradled in the dark,
It feels the fire of an immortal spark,
And learns to read, with patient, searching eyes,
The splendid secret of the unconscious skies.

For God thought Light before He spoke the word;
The darkness understood not, though it heard:
But man looks up to where the planets swim,
And thinks God's thoughts of glory after Him.

What knows the star that guides the sailor's way,
Or lights the lover's bower with liquid ray,
Of toil and passion, danger and distress,
Brave hope, true love, and utter faithfulness?

But human hearts that suffer good and ill,
And hold to virtue with a loyal will,
Adorn the law that rules our mortal strife
With star-surpassing victories of life.

So take our thanks, dear reader of the skies,
Devout astronomer, most humbly wise,
For lessons brighter than the stars can give,
And inward light that helps us all to live.

The world has brought the laurel-leaves to crown
The star-discoverer's name with high renown;
Accept the flower of love we lay with these
For influence sweeter than the Pleiades ~ Henry Van Dyke

Without a time for growing, you could never have a feast. If there is no growth, what are you going to feast on? At the time of the feast, the people of Israel brought their riches - cows, lambs, grapes, all the produce which came from the growth. The feast of tabernacles, especially, was a feast for the enjoyment of the harvest. The Lord said that we must come together in His presence and enjoy the harvest - that is a feast. The feast is the result of growing, and this growing is very much related to the moon, the church. If we don't have the church, we lack the element of the feast. Very few Christians have the feast because they don't have the moon. They don't have the full enjoyment of Christ as a feast because they do not have the church. We need the church to appoint the seasons for growing and feasting. ~ Witness Lee

But no one can blink at the fact that in this land, and in other lands across the world, there is an epidemic affecting the lives of millions of youth. It is a sickness that comes of a loss of values, of an abandonment of moral absolutes. The virus which has infected them comes of leaderless families, leaderless schools, leaderless communities. It comes of an attitude that says, "We will not teach moral values. We will leave the determination of such to the individual." ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

I believe that the United Kingdom can stay at the forefront in leading the world's growth and development and also continue to play an important and even bigger role for regional stability and global peace. ~ Li Keqiang

You'll get better with time so be patient with yourself. ~ Robert Tew

A virgin can conceive. A dead body can walk again. Your leprosy can be cured. The blind can see. Nonsense. It's not moral to lie to children. It's not moral to lie to ignorant, uneducated people and tell them that if they only would believe nonsense, they can be saved. It's immoral. ~ Christopher Hitchens

We are spiritual beings - indestructible, immaterial and safe. ~ Donna Goddard

If we don't get a grip on government spending, there will be no growth. ~ George Osborne

The connections that we have with others, the things we learn, and yes, our prayers - all of it is a web of connections that bind us into the fabric of reality and make us part of something greater than ourselves. And if our reality is only a tiny reflection of a much greater reality, still it is also an essential part. And the same is true of each individual life. Each deed and thought - each word between friends - adds a new thread to a tapestry so vast that we may never be able to step back and see the whole. ~ Yael Shahar

We face a deep moral crisis, which we might also describe as a 'crisis of community.' Alongside increasing economic stratification and the continuation of an adaptive racism, a 'morality' of individualism has grown more and more severe. With this deadly combination, we have been losing the spirit that's needed to hold any community or any nation together: a sense of responsibility for each other. In the long term no community can survive when greed and irresponsibility are incentivized instead of reined in. This crisis point to a decision we have to make as a society: Do we want to live in a nation that is defined by inclusionary, solidaristic community values, or one that is defined by the moralistically bankrupt values of Wall Street and the bigoted, exclusionary "solidarity" of reactionaries? ~ Jonathan Smucker

Joblessness gives you time to grow ~ Sunday Adelaja

We believed that growth through Local Government, and perhaps through some special machinery for bringing the wishes and influence of women of all classes to bear on Parliament, other than the Parliamentary vote, was the real line of progress. ~ Mary Augusta Ward

Those emotive theorists who said that the function of moral utterance was to evince emotion would ... have been correct if they had substituted the indefinite for the definite article. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

While there is always room for improvement and personal growth, it is important to remember that you are enough in this moment - just as you are. ~ John Bruna