Moral Imperative Quotes

Only conservatives believe that subversion is still being carried on in the arts and that society is being shaken by it. Advanced art today is no longer a cause -it contains no moral imperative. There is no virtue in clinging to principles and standards, no vice in selling or in selling out. ~ Harold Rosenberg

I think optimism is a moral imperative. ~ Marianne Williamson

Being rational is a moral Imperative. You should never be stupider than you need to be. ~ Charlie Munger

When people think the issue can be solved, it becomes a moral imperative to be part of the solution. We can do a lot more within our school districts to recruit aggressively, select people according to high standards, invest in their training and development, and foster and reward their leadership. Once we invest more in attracting, developing and retaining teachers, potential recruits will begin to see it as a profession worth considering. ~ Wendy Kopp

Early childhood education is an urgent educational, economic and moral imperative. Without it, we face a long-term national economic security crisis. ~ J. B. Pritzker

He is an unsuccessful scapegoat whose heroic willingness to die for the truth will ultimately make the entire cycle of satanic violence visible to all people and therefore inoperative. The "kingdom of Satan" will give way to the "kingdom of God." Thanks to Jesus' death, the Spirit of God, alias the Paraclete (a word that signifies "the lawyer for the defense"), wins a foothold in the kingdom of Satan. He reveals the innocence of Jesus to the disciples first and then to all of us. The defense of victims is both a moral imperative and the source of our increasing power to demystify scapegoating. The Passion accounts reveal a phenomenon that unbeknownst to us generates all human cultures and still warps our human vision in favor of all sorts of exclusions and scapegoating. If this analysis is true, the explanatory power of Jesus' death is much greater than we realize, and Paul's exalted idea of the Cross as the source of all knowledge is anthropologically sound. The ~ Rene Girard

Two presidents pursued human rights policies that were serious and effective: Reagan and George W. Bush. They understood that American support for human rights activists is a moral imperative for us and also makes the world safer for us. ~ Elliott Abrams

Taking responsible steps to reduce poverty is not merely a moral imperative but an economic one. ~ John Yarmuth

Environmental policies are not just about good publicity; they are about responding to the moral imperative to address both climate change and resource depletion ... A company culture that is based on measuring everything in purely financial terms will be crippled by a high turnover of staff, customers and suppliers ~ Toby Robins

Americans ought to be the best-traveled, most cosmopolitan people on earth, not only because experience of the world is desirable in its own right, but because as a people acquires a great concentration of power, worldliness becomes a moral imperative. ~ Shana Alexander

War is Man's greatest fall from grace, of course, especially perhaps when we feel a moral imperative to fight it and find ourselves twisted into ethical knots. We can never doubt (ever) the courage of those men in the Halifaxes and Stirlings and Lancasters but the bombing war was undoubtedly a brutish affair, a crude method employing a blunt weapon, continually hampered by the weather and lack of technology (despite massive advances that war always precipitates). The large gap between what was claimed for the results of the bombing campaign and what was actually achieved was never fully understood at the time, and certainly not, I suspect, by those men flying the bombers. ~ Kate Atkinson

But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It's called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral - it's a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy. ~ Aaron Swartz

The scientists are virtually screaming from the rooftops now. The debate is over! There's no longer any debate in the scientific community about this. But the political systems around the world have held this at arm's length because it's an inconvenient truth, because they don't want to accept that it's a moral imperative. ~ Al Gore

I came to Oxford looking for a Once-in-a-Lifetime Experience. I chose to experience a lifetime.
I know that one day he will lose to the waterfall, slip behind its turbulent curtain forever, lost to me like something out of a fairy tale. But in our story, there's no villain, no witch, no fairy godmother, no moral imperative or cautionary conclusion. No happily-ever-after.
It just is. It's life.
The water keeps flowing as we come and go.
We were never forever, Jamie and I. Nothing is in this life. But if you love someone and are loved by someone, you might find forever after.
Whatever and wherever it is. ~ Julia Whelan

Caleb leaned forward in his seat. "So who's the meanest person you've ever arrested?"
"What are you doing?" Nick gasped.
Caleb cracked an evil grin. "You have things you can't resist doing. This is one that is a moral imperative to me." *Must rankle bullies.*
*You're going to get jack-slapped.* ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

But this had happened to me more than once in my life: I had refused to allow convention to determine my conduct, only to learn, after I'd gone my own way, that my bedrock feelings were sometimes more conventional than my sense of unswerving moral imperative. ~ Philip Roth

It's lawmakers know better than anyone that laws are more a matter of practical compromise than any kind of moral imperative. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Think about your own world. Aren't foreign countries and cultures defined narrowly to buttress the policies of your own government? That is not to say that the images presented to you are not based on real entities, or that the facts used to mould your understanding have not occurred, but rather that overall they are a distorted portrayal of reality. When the council acted against Darkness, the scale of his crimes had been significantly decreasing. Although they publicly presented the war as a moral imperative, it was pursued to consolidate their power. ~ Sheila Matharu

There is a moral imperative to seeing mental health through the same lens we use for other pathologies or illnesses. Being sad or overwhelmed is normal, much as being short of breath after a run is normal. Both become abnormal when they happen with no apparent cause and are hard to stop. Those situations need medical attention. ~ Matthew Goldfinger

Information is not synonymous with knowledge. Information is only data, parts of the whole. Knowledge has a moral imperative to enhance intellectual and spiritual unity. ~ Ruth Nanda Anshen

Of course we would all like to "believe" in something, like to assuage our private guilts in public causes, like to lose our tiresome selves; like, perhaps, to transform the white flag of defeat at home into the brave white banner of battle away from home. And of course it is all right to do that; that is how, immemorially, thing have gotten done. But I think it is all right only so long as we do not delude ourselves about what we are doing, and why. It is all right only so long as we remember that all the ad hoc committees, all the picket lines, all the brave signatures in The New York Times, all the tools of agitprop straight across the spectrum, do not confer upon anyone any ipso facto virtue. It is all right only so long as we recognize that the end may or may not be expedient, may or may not be a good idea, but in any case has nothing to do with "morality." Because 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. And I suspect we are already there. ~ Joan Didion

Universal education is not only a moral imperative but an economic necessity, to pave the way toward making many more nations self-sufficient and self-sustaining. ~ Desmond Tutu

As you never tire of stating, the only moral imperative for the writer, against which there is no recourse, is to return to the literary-linguistic community to which he belongs a fresh, personal style of writing different from what previously existed and which he inherited when setting out on his task: to work on what is given, to follow accepted models is to be condemned to an impoverished insignificance, however much applause the writer gets from the public: the work of whoever does not innovate might as well not exist, for its disappearance would not affect the development of his culture at all. ~ Juan Goytisolo

Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Tackling deprivation around the world is a moral imperative and firmly in Britain's national interest. ~ Andrew Mitchell

All sentient beings should have at least one right - the right not to be treated as property ~ Gary L. Francione

The Nuffield report suggests that there is a moral imperative for investment into GM crop research in developing countries. But the moral imperative is in fact the opposite. The policy of drawing of funds away from low-cost sustainable agriculture research, towards hi-tech, exclusive, expensive and unsafe technology is itself ethically questionable. There is a strong moral argument that the funding of GM technology in agriculture is harming the long-term sustainability of agriculture in the developing world. ~ Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher

We who came here saw what was happening. This was far more than a war in a faraway place. This was a moral imperative, a terrible vision of the future. ~ Paddy Ashdown

Liberal gardeners are people who feel that, through gardening, we can alleviate our sense of alienation from nature; and that, through good gardening, we can repair some of the damage we have done to our environment. The most extreme liberals believe that there is an original or a natural state in which the environment would be if we hadn't shown up on the scene, and that we have not only the ability but also a moral imperative to help nature return to this state. ~ Deborah Needleman

The mark of the "Noble Minded Man" is that he does not do things simply because they are pleasing or profitable to himself, but because they flow from an unconditional moral imperative. They are things that he sees to be right and good in themselves. Hence, anyone who is guided by the profit motive, even though it be for the profit of the society to which he belongs, is not capable of living a genuinely moral life. Even when his acts do not conflict with the moral law, they remain amoral because they are motivated by the desire of profit and not for the love of good. ~ Thomas Merton

Our moral imperative is to work with all our powers for that day when the children of the world grow up without the fear of nuclear war. ~ Ronald Reagan

You're alive. Do something. The directive in life, the moral imperative was so uncomplicated. It could be expressed in single words, not complete sentences. It sounded like this: Look. Listen. Choose. Act. ~ Barbara Hall

In truth, the belief in "government" is a religion, made up of a set of dogmatic teachings, irrational doctrines which fly in the face of both evidence and logic, and which are methodically memorized and repeated by the faithful. Like other religions, the gospel of "government" describes a superhuman, supernatural entity, above mere mortals, which issues commandments to the peasantry, for whom unquestioning obedience is a moral imperative. ~ Larken Rose

In a world in which everything is interconnected, the supreme moral imperative becomes the imperative to know. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

You'll notice that for many progressives, taking from the rich is not simply a necessity of budgeting but a moral imperative and a tool to institute fairness that capitalism supposedly hasn't. ~ David Harsanyi

You always say oh, that's so unprofessional as though there's some definition of professional that's also a moral imperative for how to behave. ~ Miriam Toews

I find the scientific mind horrendous. All those brains and not a moral imperative between them. ~ Lucille Kallen

The necessary consequence of man's right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.
If some "pacifist" society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it. ~ Ayn Rand

Action isn't a burden to be hoisted up and lugged around on our shoulders. It is something we are. The work we have to do can be seen as a kind of coming alive. More than some moral imperative, it's an awakening to our true nature, a releasing of our gifts. ~ Joanna Macy

There's a real moral imperative in being an organization that takes the time to sit and listen to the customers and the people they're serving. ~ Jacqueline Novogratz

Like probably a lot of people, I came away from watching films like 'Miss Representation' and 'Half the Sky' with the realization that the battle for women's rights is not over, especially not globally, and that the moral imperative of our century is to achieve full rights for everyone regardless of gender. ~ Adora Svitak

Renunciation isn't a moral imperative or a form of self-denial. It's simply cooperation with the way things are: for moments do pass away, one after the other. Resisting this natural unfolding doesn't change it; resistance only makes it painful. So we renounce our resistance, our noncooperation, our stubborn refusal to enter life as it is. We renounce our fantasy of a beautiful past and an exciting future we can cherish and hold on to. Life just isn't like this. Life, time, is letting go, moment after moment. Life and time redeem themselves constantly, heal themselves constantly, only we don't know this, and much as we long to be healed and redeemed, we refuse to recognize this truth. This is why the sirens' songs are so attractive and so deadly. They propose a world of indulgence and wishful thinking, an unreal world that is seductive and destructive. (142) ~ Norman Fischer

I should never have allowed the gates of the town to be opened to people who assert that there are higher considerations than those of decency. ~ J.M. Coetzee

To me, hope is a moral imperative. I have hope and faith in forces unseen. ~ Marianne Williamson

Proselytizing is a moral imperative and feeds the marketplace of ideas. I want to hear everyone tell the truth as they see it. I want to learn from everyone. ~ Penn Jillette

I think a novelist must be more tender with living or 'real' people. The moral imperative of having been entrusted with their story looms before you every day, in every sentence. ~ Rick Bass

Darwinism undermined traditional morality and the value of human life. Then, evolutionary progress became the new moral imperative. This aided the advance of eugenics, which was overtly founded on Darwinian principles. Some eugenicists began advocating euthanasia and infanticide for the disabled. On a parallel track, some prominent Darwinists argued that human racial competition and war is part of the Darwinian struggle for existence. Hitler imbibed these social Darwinist ideas, blended in virulent anti-Semitism, and
there you have it: Holocaust ~ Richard Weikart

Laws that require equal protections reinforce the moral imperative of equality. ~ Hillary Clinton

The scientific method," Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, "is nothing but the normal working of the human mind." That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in corrrecting its mistakes.
Taking this point of view, we may conclude that science is not physics, biology, or chemistry
is not even a "subject"
but a moral imperative drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give perspective, balance, and humility to learning. ~ Neil Postman

There is probably nothing more menacing or dangerous than an individual who is devoid of compassion or empathy. When this individual is permitted by community apathy and bias to successfully cloak himself in the attire of one who claims allegiance to his or her Creator, it becomes the moral imperative of those who lay witness to the peril to step up before it is too late. Until such a time when domestic violence and sexual assault are eradicated for good, the perpetrators of these deplorable acts will continue to cause unspeakable harm as Evil's welcomed ambassadors and Tyranny's strongest ally. ~ Sahar Abdulaziz

When it comes to animal agriculture, there is conventional, which is really hideous, and "compassionate" or "certified humane" or whatever, which *may* be *slightly* less hideous. But it's all torture. It's all wrong. These "happy" gimmicks are just designed to make the public feel better about exploiting animals. Don't buy the propaganda of "happy" exploitation. Go vegan and promote veganism. ~ Gary L. Francione

The Spanish and Portuguese empires proclaimed that it was not riches they sought in the Indies and America, but converts to the true faith. The sun never set on the British mission to spread the twin gospels of liberalism and free trade. The Soviets felt duty-bound to facilitate the inexorable historical march from capitalism towards the utopian dictatorship of the proletariat. Many Americans nowadays maintain that their government has a moral imperative to bring Third World countries the benefits of democracy and human rights, even if these goods are delivered by cruise missiles and F-16s. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Men who scorn the idea of submission to the divine Will and are outraged by the notion of a God who requires submission are among the first to demand total submission to the process in which we are involved and seem to attach a kind of moral imperative to willing participation in it. Any other attitude, so they say, is reactionary or escapist or anti-social. Perhaps, after all, they have found a divinity to worship; and, if they have, the only charitable comment must be: God help them! ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton

There are good people, who are in politics - in both parties - who hold this at arm's length, because if they acknowledge it and recognize it, then the moral imperative to make big changes is inescapable. ~ Al Gore

As once-colonized nations seek to stand on their own, the countries once denuded of their past seek to assert their independent identities through the objects that tie them to it. The demand for restitution is a way to reclaim history, to assert a moral imperative over those who were once overlords. Those countries still in the shadow of more powerful empires seek to claim the symbols of antiquity and colonialism to burnish their own national mythmaking. ~ Sharon Waxman

The security of Israel is a moral imperative for all free peoples. ~ Henry A. Kissinger

I know that one day he will lose to the waterfall, slip behind its turbulent curtain forever, lost to me like something out of a fairy tale. But in our story, there's no villain, no witch, no fairy godmother, no moral imperative or cautionary conclusion. No happily-ever-after. It just is. It's life. The water keeps flowing as we come and go. We were never forever, Jamie and I. Nothing is in this life. But if you love someone, and are loved by someone, you might find forever after. Whatever and wherever that is. ~ Julia Whelan

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

I guess you hate the people most who make justifiable demands. Because they go to the heart of our psyche. We know they are right, and therefore, we have to destroy them if we can. I think a lot of people are really afraid of justifiable Indian claims to land and resources. They're most afraid of the fact that the claims are morally right, because when you are confronted with a moral imperative against an immoral imperative on your part, you've got to hate the people who assert that moral imperative...We hate them because their claims are totally justified--and we know it. ~ Mary Crow Dog

Principles are worth something only if you stick by them, even when they feel inconvenient. It's easy to rationalize and find seemingly altruistic reasons for betraying a moral imperative, but that's exactly when principles are most important. ~ Sarah McBride

The necessity of political struggle especially means confronting and contradicting those on the left who say that resistance is futile. Such people have no place in a movement for justice. For actionists who choose to work aboveground, this confrontation with detractors - and some of these detractors reject the idea of resistance of any kind - is one of the small, constant actions you can take. Defend the possibility of resistance, insist on a moral imperative of fighting for this planet, and argue for direct action against perpetrators. Despite what much of the left has now embraced, we are not all equally responsible. There are a few corporations that have turned the planet into a dead commodity for their private wealth, destroying human cultures along with it. ~ Lierre Keith

He ceased to be able to distinguish between personal preference and moral imperative, and he ceased to accept that such a distinction was possible. ~ Eleanor Catton

The solution to racism lies in our ability to see its ubiquity but not to concede its inevitability. It lies in the collective and institutional power to make change, at least as much as with the individual will to change. It also lies in the absolute moral imperative to break the childish, deadly circularity of centuries of blindness to the shimmering brilliance of our common, ordinary humanity. ~ Patricia J. Williams

- I have been understood. At the opening of the Bible there is the whole psychology of the priest. - The priest knows of only one great danger: that is science - the sound comprehension of cause and effect. But science flourishes, on the whole, only under favourable conditions - a man must have time, he must have an overflowing intellect, in order to "know."... "Therefore, man must be made unhappy," - this has been, in all ages, the logic of the priest. - It is easy to see just what, by this logic, was the first thing to come into the world: - "sin."... The concept of guilt and punishment, the whole "moral order of the world," was set up against science - against the deliverance of man from priests.... Man must not look outward; he must look inward. He must not look at things shrewdly and cautiously, to learn about them; he must not look at all; he must suffer.... And he must suffer so much that he is always in need of the priest. - Away with physicians! What is needed is a Saviour. - The concept of guilt and punishment, including the doctrines of "grace," of "salvation," of "forgiveness" - lies through and through, and absolutely without psychological reality - were devised to destroy man's sense of causality: they are an attack upon the concept of cause and effect! - And not an attack with the fist, with the knife, with honesty in hate and love! On the contrary, one inspired by the most cowardly, the most crafty, the most ignoble of instincts! An attack of priests! An atta ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

To speak of 'limits to growth' under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be 'persuaded' to limit growth than a human being can be 'persuaded' to stop breathing. Attempts to 'green' capitalism, to make it 'ecological', are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth. ~ Murray Bookchin

The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it. Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it. ~ David Hume

We have never stopped sin by passing laws; and in the same way, we are not going to take a great moral ideal and achieve it merely by law. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

There is indeed something deeply wrong with a person who lacks principles, who has no moral core. There are, likewise, certainly values that brook no compromise, and I would count among them integrity, fairness, and the avoidance of cruelty. But I have never accepted the argument that principle is compromised by judging each situation on its own merits, with due appreciation of the idiosyncrasy of human motivation and fallibility. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

One of the most moral acts is to create a space in which life can move forward. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

The law that will work is merely the summing up in legislative form of the moral judgment that the community has already reached. ~ Woodrow Wilson

Americans are blessed with great plenty; we are a generous people and we have a moral obligation to assist those who are suffering from poverty, disease, war and famine. ~ Adam Schiff

Moral, adj. Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right. Having the quality of general expediency. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Morality must keep up with technology because if a person is faced with the choice of being moral and dead or immoral and alive, they'll choose life everytime. ~ Michael Crichton

One thing that the white man can never give the black man is self respect. The black man in the ghettos, have to start self correcting his own material moral, and spiritual defects, and evil. The black man need to start his own program to get rid of drunkenness, drug addiction and prostitution. The black man in America has to lift up his own sense of values. ~ Malcolm X

The future is very markedly in your hands, its value and its moral standing in the world and among ourselves. If you will take the power you have and use it, I have no fear of the outcome of the future. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

America is ensnared in self-indulgence and its future hangs in the balance. Our moral and spiritual foundations are rapidly being destroyed. Our arrogance is producing a socialist state that is becoming our god. The entitlement state of mind has created a nation that looks to the government for the answer to our problems, when the only answer is, "Our Father which art in heaven." ~ John Hagee

The growing inequality of wealth and income distribution is both a moral and economic problem. If the wealthy are unwilling to pay more taxes, then this is going to lead to spending cuts. And if you put off the table things like national defense, then you're going to end up cutting more and more out of programs that aid the poor. So, I think there are consequences to this idea that tolerance for inequality requires us to - to just do nothing to make the wealthy contribute a higher share of resources to fund the government. ~ Bruce Bartlett

Human philosophy tends to shake down into values which might be categorized as intellectual, religious, moral, and aesthetic. ~ Dan Simmons

It is not the armed forces which can protect our democracy. It is the moral strength of democracy which alone can give any meaning to the efforts at military security. ~ Max Lerner

The human beings at the helm of the new nation [USA], whatever their limitations [slave owners, anti-democracy], were truly revolutionary. The theory of liberty born in that era, the seed of the idea, was perfect.
More important, the idea itself carried within it the moral power to correct the contradictions in its execution that were obvious from the very birth of the new nation. ~ Naomi Wolf

Systems of morals are only a sign-language of the emotions. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Of how much importance is it, that the utmost pains be taken by the public to have the principles of virtue early inculcated on the minds even of children, and the moral sense kept alive. ~ Samuel Adams

More than just a moral issue, hope is a spiritual and even religious choice. Hope is not a feeling; it is a decision. And the decision for hope is based on what you believe at the deepest levels - what your most basic convictions are about the world and what the future holds - all based on your faith. You choose hope, not as a naive wish, but as a choice, with your eyes wide open to the reality of the world - just like the cynics who have not made the decision for hope. ~ Jim Wallis

Philosophers have very justly remarked that the only solid instruction is that which the pupil brings from his own depths; that the true instruction is not that which transmits notions wholly formed, but that which renders him capable of forming for himself good opinions. That which they have said in regard to the intellectual faculties applies equally to the moral faculties. There is for the soul a spontaneous culture, on which depends all the real progress in perfection. ~ Joseph Marie, Baron De Gerando

Religion, with its metaphysical error of absolute guilt, dominated the broadest, the cosmic realm. From there, it infiltrated the subordinate realms of biological, social and moral existence with its errors of the absolute and inherited guilt. Humanity, split up into millions of factions, groups, nations and states, lacerated itself with mutual accusations. "The Greeks are to blame," the Romans said, and "The Romans are to blame," the Greeks said. So they warred against one another. "The ancient Jewish priests are to blame," the early Christians shouted. "The Christians have preached the wrong Messiah," the Jews shouted and crucified the harmless Jesus. "The Muslims and Turks and Huns are guilty," the crusaders screamed. "The witches and heretics are to blame," the later Christians howled for centuries, murdering, hanging, torturing and burning heretics. It remains to investigate the sources from which the Jesus legend derives its grandeur, emotional power and perseverance.

Let us continue to stay outside this St. Vitus dance. The longer we look around, the crazier it seems. Hundreds of minor patriarchs, self-proclaimed kings and princes, accused one another of this or that sin and made war, scorched the land, brought famine and epidemics to the populations. Later, this became known as "history." And the historians did not doubt the rationality of this history.

Gradually the common people appeared on the scene. "The Queen is to blame," the people's repre ~ Wilhelm Reich

People like myself say, 'Fix the problem. Put him in the general [prison] population. The moral prisoners will deal with him in a way we don't have the nerve to do.' ~ Stockwell Day

Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. There may be legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not ... with regard to abortion and euthanasia. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

I believe that if your primary motivation in life is to be moral, you don't become an artist. ~ Mary Gordon

We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations. ~ Agnes Repplier

Though we are confident that Blessed Martin had no serious sins with which to reproach himself, though his contemporaries assure us that they had moral certitude that he had ever preserved his baptismal innocence, he regarded himself, like St. Paul, as the least of all men and unworthy of the habit he wore. Martin never lost an opportunity of being humiliated; he gladly received any personal insults and injuries as an ordinary person would receive favors. Indeed, he evidenced clear signs of gratitude to those who humbled him - he looked upon them as his real benefactors, and nothing caused him so much affliction of the soul and mental anguish as hearing himself the object of praise. When he found himself thus honored, especially by those distinguished by their good sense and their position of dignity in the community, he promptly sought out the most hidden place and there mercilessly inflicted upon himself a penance, usually in the form of the discipline. When it was impossible for him to retire, he had the habit of striking his breast unobtrusively and humbling himself before Almighty God. Even at times, especially when he was not conscious of the fact that he was being observed, strange words of self-deprecation fell from his lips. We are assured that he often repeated epithets of scorn, that he would mutter: 'What real merit have you? Remember that you ought to be nothing but a slave. Only through the mercy of God are you tolerated by these holy religious. ~ J.C. Kearns

Twitter, far from fostering debate and broadening minds, has turned us into a hive of scolds. Angry mobs wait on the sidelines to strike and then bask in the glow of their moral superiority. ~ Mick Hume

Complaisance, though in itself it be scarce reckoned in the number of moral virtues, is that which gives a lustre to every talent a man can be possessed of. It was Plato's advice to an unpolished writer that he should sacrifice to the graces. In the same manner I would advise every man of learning, who would not appear in the world a mere scholar or philosopher, to make himself master of the social virtue which I have here mentioned. ~ Joseph Addison

...I do not think that it is right for a man to appeal to the jury or to get himself acquitted by doing so; he ought to inform them of the facts and convince them by argument. The jury does not sit to dispense justice as a favour, but to decide where justice lies; and the oath which they have sworn is not to show favour at their own discretion, but to return a just and lawful verdict... Therefore you must not expect me, gentlemen, to behave towards you in a way which I consider neither reputable nor moral nor consistent with my religious duty. ~ Socrates

I have come to make distinctions between what I call the academy and literature, the moral equivalents of church and God. The academy may lie, but literature tries to tell the truth. ~ Dorothy Allison

Some nasty bitch of a woman from the coven of moral and ethical standards tried to fry Rache" the pixy said apparently proud of it. "I pixed the Tink-blasted dildo, and Rache's black-arts boyfriend blew her right out the front door. "Bam! ~ Kim Harrison

PTSD seems to have an even higher prevalence and greater severity following violence or disaster that is man-made; natural disasters, "acts of God," seem somehow easier to accept. (...). This is the case with acute stress reactions, too: I see it often with my patients in hospital, who can show extraordinary courage and calmness in facing the most dreadful diseases but fly into a rage if a nurse is late with a bedpan or a medication. The amorality of nature is accepted, whether it takes the form of a monsoon, an elephant in musth, or a disease; but being subjected helplessly to the will of others is not, for human behavior always carries (or is felt to carry) a moral charge. ~ Oliver Sacks

Some labeled Jerry Falwell an American version of the Ayatollah Khomeni. People for the American Way, a group organized to counter the Moral Majority, launched a slick media campaign attaching the Nazi slur to the religious right. ~ Charles Colson

Better not to do than to do, better to meditate than to act, better his astrophysics, the threshold of the Unkowable, than my chemistry, a mess compounded of stenches, explosions and small futile mysteries. I thought of another moral, more down to earth and concrete, and I believe that every militant chemist can confirm it: that one must distrust the almost-the-same (sodium is almost he same as potassium, but with sodium nothing would have happened_, the practically identica, the approximate, the or-even, all surrogates, and all patchwork. the difference can be small, but they can lead to radically different consequences, like a railroad's switch points; the chemist's trade consists in good part in being aware of these differences, knowing them close up, and foreseeing their effects. And not only the chemist's trade. ~ Primo Levi

In our heart we know that life loves life. Yet we feast on some of the other life-forms with which we share our planet; we kill to live. Taste is what carries us across that rocky moral terrain, what makes the horror palatable, and the paradox we could not defend by reason melts into a jungle of sweet temptations. ~ Diane Ackerman

I've spent all of my life in an attempt to find truth and moral good and then to live it. I can't discard my moral habits for feelings, which are just that.
(The moral virtues)
They are my footholds for moral goodness. Morality is about choice. ~ Patti Callahan