Moral Issues Quotes

Moral issues rarely have yes or no answers.
-Myles to Alanna when she asks about the Gift ~ Tamora Pierce

Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests. ~ C. Wright Mills

My fellow Americans, people all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis, it's not a political issue, it's a moral issue. We have everything we need to get started, with the possible exception of the will to act, that's a renewable resource, let's renew it. ~ Al Gore

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

You should protest about the views of people you disagree with over major moral issues, and argue them down, but you should not try to silence them, however repugnant you find them. That is the bitter pill free speech requires us to swallow. ~ Julian Baggini

Killing for pleasure is wrong and should be banned. Fox hunting, stag hunting and hare coursing are moral issues. It is time that we stood up for morality. The commandment Thou shall not kill may be hedged with exceptions.Thou shall not kill for pleasure is not; it is a commandment for the 21st century and it is time that we respected it unambiguously, without prevarication and without procrastination. ~ Lyndon Harrison, Baron Harrison

Lifestyle and livelihood are pivotal moral issues. ~ Stephanie Mills

The topdog may win the game of force. But not the moral issue - and when that dawns upon him and his allies, change of consciousness sets in, and demoralization starts thawing the frozen heart. The game is over. ~ Johan Galtung

America truly is the best idea for a country that anyone has ever come up with so far. Not only because we value democracy and the rights of the individual, but because we are always our own most effective voice of descent ... We must never mistake disagreement between Americans on political or moral issues to be an indication of their level of patriotism. If you don't like what I say or don't agree with where I stand on certain issues, then good. I'm glad we're in America, and don't have to oppress each other over it. We're not just a nation, we're not an ethnicity. We are a dream of justice that people have had for a thousand years. ~ Craig Ferguson

Moral issues are always terribly complex for someone without principles. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

When we talk about self-confrontations, we are speaking about moral issues rather than social issues. ~ Asghar Farhadi

Lyndon Johnson faced some clear moral issues. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

Increasingly, politics is not about "who gets what, when, how" but about values, each of them considered to be absolute. Politics is about "the right to life." It is about the environment. It is about gaining equality for groups alleged to be oppressed. None of these issues is economic. All are fundamentally moral. ~ Peter Drucker

There are people, at the moment, who feel that all the important questions have been answered; all the important moral and ethical dilemmas have an answer; and that, at this point in history, everything's been worked out – and anyone who's exploring different ideas, or is doutbtful about these moral issues, is...evil.

...So I come from a different approach where, like, 'I don't know what's going on. I'm trying to work it out with other people, and I want the freedom to be able to explore. ~ Claire Lehmann

We have an idea of what is right or wrong. And we can debate moral issues as ideas. But moral *standards* are not ideas; they exist in the form of observable measurable behavior. What one sees, hears, and feels every day, by observing how people around one behave, inculcates such standards of behavior. ~ Karl Marlantes

The way you challenge Superman is by having things happen very, very quickly in different places and then asking, 'Who does he save first? What powers must he use to save each person or stop each disaster?' That's one of the ways you make him interesting beyond the thematic and moral issues that make Superman. ~ Jim Lee

When we are confronted with extreme situations, we forget about moral issues; we simply act and must then accept the consequences. ~ Park Chan-wook

I am conservative with a small 'c.' It's possible to be conservative in fiscal policy, and tolerant on moral issues or questions of freedom of expression. ~ Mick Jagger

If we reject, as we must, the doctrine that the majority is always right, to submit moral issues to the vote is to gamble that what we believe to be right will come out of the ballot with more votes behind it than what we believe to be wrong; and that is a gamble we will often lose. ~ Peter Singer

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

That's my personal view I would say most in my caucus agree with that but there are some who don't and I've always said that on these kinds of moral issues, people have the right to their own opinions. ~ Stephen Harper

The most distressing aspect of the world into which you are going is its indifference to the basic issues, which now, as always, are moral issues. ~ Robert M. Hutchins

God is not dead; he really does communicate today. He's interested in every part of your life, your home, your finances, every kind of decision - and more than just the moral issues. His eye is always on you. He wants to lead you. But you have to believe that he will indeed speak to you when you wait before him in believing prayer, with a yielded heart to do his will. ~ Jim Cymbala

The moral issues with which Marcus struggles would be, as he points out, unchanged whether the universe were mechanical and devoid of meaning or value or ruled by deity or Providence; whether the will were in fact free or determined; whether there were or were not a future life, or any even fugitive rewards and punishments at all. ~ Kenneth Rexroth

The big thing that makes Dostoevsky invaluable for American readers and writers is that he appears to possess degrees of passion, conviction, and engagement with deep moral issues that we-here, today-cannot or do not permit ourselves. ~ David Foster Wallace

My work about corruption is to get people to see it less as a moral issue (right/wrong) and more as an economic issue (economies of influence and their effect). ~ Lawrence Lessig

If we promoted justice and charity among men, we should be playing directly into the Enemy's hands; but if we guide them to the opposite behaviour, this sooner or later produces (for He permits it to produce) a war or a revolution, and the undisguisable issue of cowardice or courage awakes thousands of men from moral stupor. This, indeed, is probably one of the Enemy's motives for creating a dangerous world - a world in which moral issues really come to the point. He sees as well as you do that courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. ~ C.S. Lewis

Yet, if the American Negro has arrived at his identity by virtue of the absoluteness of his estrangement from his past, American white men still nourish the illusion that there is some means of recovering the European innocence, of returning to a state in which black men do not exist. This is one of the greatest errors Americans can make. The identity they fought so hard to protect has, by virtue of that battle, undergone a change: Americans are as unlike any other white people in the world as it is possible to be. I do not think, for example, that it is too much to suggest that the American vision of the world-which allows so little reality, generally speaking, for any of the darker forces in human life, which tends until today to paint moral issues in glaring black and white owes a great deal to the battle waged by Americans to maintain between themselves and black men a human separation which could not be bridged. It is only now beginning to be borne in on us, very faintly, it must be admitted, very slowly, and very much against our will--that this vision of the world is dangerously inaccurate, and perfectly useless. For it protects our moral high-mindedness at the terrible expense of weakening our grasp of reality. People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster. ~ James Baldwin

But here is the heart of the moral issue for many of us. Simply put, those around the world who have contributed least to global warming and climate change will be the most and first to be impacted by the consequences of it all. Sadly, it's an old story. We, the affluent, create the problem, and the poor pay the price for our sins. It is wrong, and it is a sin-ours. ~ Jim Wallis

To meet the serious issues facing us in our respective communities today, we must be examples of virtue and righteousness ourselves and choose today to take our stand on the moral issues which threaten us. ~ Nathan Eldon Tanner

Economic issues are just as much moral issues as social issues. ~ Jonathan Haidt

It is a mindless philosophy that assumes that one's private beliefs have nothing to do with public office. Does it make sense to entrust those who are immoral in private with the power to determine the nation's moral issues and, indeed, its destiny? One of the most dangerous and terrifying trends in America today is the disregard for character as a central necessity in a leader's credentials. The duplicitous soul of a leader can only make a nation more sophisticated in evil. ~ Ravi Zacharias

One of the reasons I admire David Lindsay-Abaire's work is that he, like the Greeks I've spent so much of my professional life contemplating, is not afraid of taking on the big stuff - huge, human, moral issues - what do we owe to those we love? ~ Ellen McLaughlin

There's a great deal of difference between thinking reflectively about moral issues and achieving higher standards of ethical behavior. ~ Derek Bok

The fundamental issue is the moral issue. ~ David Attenborough

The question was not whether one should use his gun when his home was attacked, but whether it was tactically wise to use a gun while participating in an organized demonstration. If they lowered the banner of nonviolence, I said, Mississippi injustice would not be exposed and the moral issues would be obscured. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Characters have changed my mind about some very fundamental moral issues, and that's the real satisfaction in the way I write - the ultimate learning experience. ~ Karen Traviss

Even in the era of AIDS, sex raises no unique moral issues at all. Decisions about sex may involve considerations about honesty, concern for others, prudence, and so on, but there is nothing special about sex in this respect, for the same could be said of decisions about driving a car. (In fact, the moral issues raised by driving a car, both from an environmental and from a safety point of view, are much more serious than those raised by sex.) ~ Peter Singer

It is an almost infallible rule that the more permissive a person is on social and moral issues the more in favour they are of strict gun control. ~ Michael Coren

Matters of taste are not, it turns out, moral issues. ~ Annie Dillard

We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness - the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction. ~ Orson Scott Card

The really difficult moral issues arise, not from a confrontation of good and evil, but from a collision between two goods ~ Irving Kristol

The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision. It is a silent acquiescence to evil. The Tragedy of our time is that those who still believe in honesty lack fire and conviction, while those who believe in dishonesty are full of passionate conviction. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

I think it's part of moral progress to be able to face things that once looked as if they weren't problems. I have that kind of feeling about our relation to animals... Abortion's a similar case-there are complicated moral issues. Feminist issues were a similar case. Slavery was a similar case. I mean, some of these things seem easy now, because we've solved them and there's a kind of shared consensus-but I think it's a very good thing that people are asking questions these days about, say, animal rights. I think there are serious questions there. Like, to what extent do we have a right to experiment on and torture animals? I mean, yes, you want to do animal experimentation for the prevention of diseases. But what's the balance, where's the trade-off? ~ Noam Chomsky

The second dynamic is that each vocation presents many spiritual and moral issues, ethical quandaries, temptations, discouragements, and other questions that particularly confront the Christians in that profession. A good deal of spiritual nurture in the church is very general and only addresses generic or private-world matters. But we spend most of our week in our vocational field, and we need to hear how other Christians have dealt with the same problems we face every day. ~ Timothy J. Keller

We are confronted primarily with a moral issue ... whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. ~ John F. Kennedy

I think from a moral issue, CEOs should not be making - whether it's 270 or 300 times more than their workers are making. ~ Hillary Clinton

Forgiveness is not a moral issue.
It is an energy dynamic ...
Forgiveness means that you do not carry the baggage of an experience.
When you choose not to forgive,
the experience that you do not forgive sticks with you.
When you choose not to forgive,
it is like agreeing to wear dark, gruesome sunglasses that distort everything,
and it is you who are forced every day
to look at life through those contaminated lenses
because you have chosen to keep them. ~ Gary Zukav

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

It should be lifted above partisanship because it's a question of survival. It's a moral issue. ~ Al Gore

I quit eating red meat a long time ago. I'm a vegetarian, but not by a moral issue or any kind of stand. I still eat dairy. And I quit eating sugar about the same time I quit eating red meat, but I eat fruit. ~ Dwight Yoakam

I firmly believe that the court should take another direction on many of these moral issues that face us. ~ Tom Coburn

Bad judges, lousy cops, greedy lawyers, lazy prosecutors, mediocre teachers, and incompetent bureaucrats are inevitable. When they happen, they should be weeded out and sent back to school to learn something about moral courage and the Golden Rule. ~ Dennis McDougal

I listened to Bill Bennett and tons of other talk show hosts who talked about that and other policies and started branching out and caring about other issues in regards to politics. ~ Jonathan Krohn

Reality television gave me an amazing feeling of moral and intellectual superiority without actually requiring any effort past moving the dogs to find the remote. ~ Jen Lancaster

When you look at the earth's existence as a whole, we're nothing. We haven't even been here long enough to earn bragging rights. Yet humans believe we're the center of the universe. We focus on the stupidest, most mundane issues. We stress about things that mean absolutely nothing to the universe, when we should be nothing but grateful that evolution even gave our species a chance to have problems. Because one of these days . . . humans won't exist. History will repeat itself and earth will move on to a different species altogether. Me and you . . . we're just two people out of an entire race that, in retrospect, is still way less impressive at sustainability than a dinosaur. We just haven't reached our expiration date yet. ~ Colleen Hoover

One of the major difficulties, and one of the monumental dangers, of sex education courses in public schools is that they disregard this significant principle of teaching. They tell all before the youngster is ready, and in so doing, they often wreak havoc with the spiritual, emotional, and moral stability of the students. They open them to great jeopardy. Things should be done in the season thereof, and there is a time for all things. A wise teacher and a wise parent will be alert to that fact.

Likewise, in programming Church activities we should use great wisdom in considering the maturity and readiness of our members to be taught the basic principles of morality. If we teach the basic principles too soon, they may be meaningless to the youngsters. The matter of teaching morality may be necessary, but the framework in which it is set should recognize the degree of maturity and readiness.

For instance, when the youngster is too young to have been subjected to the urging of physical desires, he must be taught about the subject in an entirely different way than will be appropriate when he is older. There will come a time for some more mature discussion later, but this must always be with reverence. ~ Boyd K. Packer

If you have a comprehensive explanation for everything then it decreases uncertainty and anxiety and reduces your cognitive load. And if you can use that simplifying algorithm to put yourself on the side of moral virtue then you're constantly a good person with a minimum of effort. ~ Jordan B. Peterson

It was not that donors had no loyalty to each other, but they were not ashamed to betray a fellow donor. In its wisdom the Alliance promulgated the moral rules - the main one being one's duty to the Alliance. The Alliance was sacred - all else secondary. But not all donors - or citizens - bought into that. Many knew in their hearts there was more to life. ~ Cate Campbell Beatty

In this age of space flight when we use the modern tools of science to advance into new regions of human activity, the Bible ... remains in every way an up to date book. Our knowledge and use of the laws of nature that enable us to fly to the moon, also enable us to destroy our home planet with the atom bomb. Science itself does not address the question whether we should use the power at our disposal for good or for evil. The guidelines of what we ought to do are furnished in the moral Law of God. ~ Wernher Von Braun

I write in complete silence using only two fingers so I can't type faster than I edit at the same time, saving me from having to go back. Although it does create a lot of capitalization issues. And punctuation problems. I didn't say it was a good routine. ~ Dan Alatorre

Mine is an enthusiastic and dionysian pessimism, like a flame that sets my vital exuberance ablaze, that mocks at any theoretical, scientific or moral prison. ~ Renzo Novatore

Foreign aid must be viewed as an investment, not an expense ... but when foreign aid is carefully guided and targeted at a specific issue, it can and must be effective. ~ Kay Granger

I've always been an animal lover. People should be made aware of all the issues. Some people think that the whole wearing-fur thing is glamorous, but you can look good without it. ~ Sadie Frost

There are many persons ready to do what is right because in their hearts they know it is right. But they hesitate, waiting for the other fellow to make the make the first move - and he, in turn, waits for you. ~ Marian Anderson

I think people cast their votes for a number of reasons. I think if you look at your polls, you'll probably find that many, many people think that our views are closer to what they believe the future of America should be. That our views are closer on economic issues. And a lot of those polls come down to demographics, to age, to how much money you are making. ~ Bernie Sanders

For me, fantasy has always been a means of exploring reality: it explores the fact that your internal life, your dreams and the weird images and the things that come to you are things that are actually important tools for dealing with real issues. ~ Tim Burton

They are. But in Special Circumstances we deal in the moral equivalent of black holes, where the normal laws - the rules of right and wrong that people imagine apply everywhere else in the universe - break down; beyond those metaphysical event horizons, there exist ... special circumstances." She smiled. "That's us. That's our territory; our domain." "To some people," he said, "that might sound like just a good excuse for bad behavior. ~ Iain M. Banks

Issues such as gender discrimination, racism, and national chauvinism must be recast not only as cultural and social regressions but as evidence of the ills produced by hierarchy. A growing public awareness must be fostered in order to recognize that oppression includes not only exploitation but also domination, and that it is based not only on economic causes but on cultural particularisms that divide people according to sexual, ethnic, and similar traits. ~ Murray Bookchin

We need to make sure that leaks of classified information, of national security secrets, needs to be rigorously pursued and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. ~ John O. Brennan

Japan suffered terribly from the atomic bomb but never adopted a pose of moral superiority, implying: 'We would never have done it!' The Japanese know perfectly well they would have used it had they had it. They accept the idea that war is war; they give no quarter and accept none. Total war, they recognize, knows no Queensberry Rules. If you develop a devastating new weapon during a total war, you use it; you do not put it into the War Museum. ~ George Mikes

An undertaking of great magnitude and importance, the successful accomplishment of which, in so comparatively short a period, notwithstanding the unheard of unestimable difficulties and impediments which had to be encountered and surmounted, in an almost unexplored and uninhabited wilderness ... evinced on your part a moral courage and an undaunted spirit and combination of science and management equally exciting our admiration and deserving our praise. ~ John By

In any Christian view of life, self-fulfillment must never be permitted to become the controlling issue. The issue is service, the service of real people. The question is, 'How can I be most useful?', not, 'How can I feel most useful?' ~ D. A. Carson

In Sing Sing Prison, in a ghastly white room stands a chair. Its parts are heavy joinings of oak, riveted and screwed together; its strong legs fastened to the floor with teeth and claws of steel. It bites into the marrow of men with fangs of fire. For this is the faldstool of bloody human justice, the prayer-chair of man's vengeance upon man. Into it are strapped ... men who have killed other men. In it, for a high moral purpose, erring human lives are shocked across the barrier into night and the grave. - Edward H. Smith (1918) ~ Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini

We're at this really unique time, I think, in trans representation in popular culture where homelessness, depression, mental health issues, instability-in-general are still so very real and need to be talked about, but we're aware that they've dominated "trans" stories for years and years.

And we're now finally at a place where we're seeing some really positive representations of trans folks in pop culture, and there's this new pressure -- at least, I feel it, within trans and trans-ally communities -- to only focus on the positive. Because we're trying, in some sense, to overcompensate for the years and years of too much negativity. As a writer, you might feel a pressure to push the negative stuff away. But there are consequences for that too. Anyone who's working with trans characters right now is going to have to reconcile that tension. ~ Mitch Kellaway

Moral Teleology supplies the deficiency in physical Teleology , and first establishes a Theology ; because the latter, if it did not borrow from the former without being observed, but were to proceed consistently, could only found a Demonology , which is incapable of any definite concept. ~ Immanuel Kant

This is why I have trust issues.
-A girl realizing her shampoo will never make her look like the model in the advertisement ~ Julie Johnson

If you're in favour of any policy - reform, revolution, stability, regression, whatever - if you're at least minimally moral, it's because you think it's somehow good for people. And good for people means conforming to their fundamental nature. ~ Noam Chomsky

I had a lot of issues with the genre, and I probably even had issues with the whole idea of genre. I was coming into it with a certain degree of outsider attitude, and I didn't have a long-term plan. But I think the way it's worked out, it's sort of warped into what I suppose you could say is my own genre. If people like my books, they have some idea of what the next one will be like. ~ William Gibson

We have nearly lost our capacity to think ihcologicafly about public issues and public problems. ~ Walter Brueggemann

I was raised Catholic and didn't like the dogma and exclusivity of that teaching but I was moved by the moral teachings and by the power of the Jesus fellow. ~ Tom Shadyac

Comparative criticism teaches us that moral and aesthetic defects are more nearly related than is commonly supposed. ~ James Russell Lowell

Wherever God's word is circulated, it stirs the hearts of the people, it prepares for public morals. Circulate that word, and you find the tone of morals immediately changed. It is God peaking to man. ~ Matthew Simpson

My work is inspired by my passion for human rights issues and the environment, and by my love of family, music and nature. ~ Susan Dorothea White

Genesis knew he was crossing a line within his own moral boundaries and judgement but he pushed straight through it nonetheless. His job required him to be morally neutral and for the first time in his entire life he was actually having to introspectively consider that he was slightly more judgemental than even he had realised. ~ Jill Thrussell

But what I believe is that if a person's individual rights or right to be a part of our economic system is violated under statute, we aggressively go after it. But we don't issue mandates to businesses that you've got to do this and you've got to do that. ~ Clarence Thomas

My experience through life has convinced me that, while moderation and temperance in all things are commendable and beneficial, abstinence from spirituous liquors is the best safeguard of morals and health. ~ Robert E.Lee

The first purpose of comedy is to make people laugh. Anything deeper is a bonus. Some comedians want to make people laugh and make them think about socially relevant issues, but comedy, by the very nature of the word, is to make people laugh. If people aren't laughing, it's not comedy. It's as simple as that. ~ Trevor Noah

I began graduate school in the late 1980s, and my goal was to understand how morality varied across cultures and nations. I did some research comparing moral judgment in India and the U.S.A. ~ Jonathan Haidt

Letting go of the security of what is commonly understood requires a big leap of faith and a willingness to fall. ~ Henry Kimsey-House

Most pundits regard an election year session as an opportunity for the two parties to frame issues and garner political advantage in advance of the approaching election. ~ Bob Ehrlich