Moral Meaning Quotes

The slogan 'Never Again!' that emerged after the Holocaust implies that the Holocaust has a universal moral meaning, which, if properly learned, can provide at least a theoretical prophylactic against its repetition against anyone. ~ David Novak

And I got to thinking about the moral meaning of memory, per se. And what it means to forget, what it means to fail to find and preserve the connection with the dead whose lives you, or I, want or need to honor with our own. ~ June Jordan

Many people have written about the economic meaning of globalization; in One World Peter Singer explains its moral meaning. His position is carefully developed, his tone is moderate, but his conclusions are radical and profound. No political theorist or moral philosopher, no public official or political activist, can afford to ignore his arguments. ~ Michael Walzer

The longing for improvement and the fear of waste and worse - it is a pattern still with us, and maybe it speaks to the medium's essential marriage of light and dark, or as Mary Pickford put it in her autobiography (published in 1955), Sunshine and Shadow. Light and dark were the elements of film, and they had their chemistry in film's emulsion. They had a moral meaning, too. But not everyone appreciated that prospect, or credited how it might make your fortune. ~ David Thomson

In a fallen world marked by human depravity and deep-seated sin, in a world where Hitler and Stalin had recruited millions of followers to commit mass murder, love must harness power and seek justice in order to have moral meaning. Love without power remained impotent, and power without love was bankrupt. ~ Timothy B. Tyson

I still have that drawing. Whenever I look at it, it makes me happy. That's the moral of the story. That's it. ~ David Levithan

Human beings, in their generous endeavour to construct a hypothesis that shall not degrade a First Cause, have always hesitated to conceive a dominant power of lower moral quality than their own; and, even while they sit down and weep by the waters of Babylon, invent excuses for the oppression which prompts their tears. ~ Thomas Hardy

Moral questions may not have objective answers-whether revealed by God or by science-but they do have rational ones, answers rooted in a rationality that emerges out of social need. That rationality can only be discovered through exercising the human potential for rational dialogue, the potential for thinking about the world, and for discussing, debating and persuading others. Values can never be entirely wrenched apart from facts; but neither can they be collapsed into facts. It is the existence of humans as moral agents that allows us to act as the bridge between facts and values. ~ Kenan Malik

I do three weeks at the Hall of Justice Jail. It's a potent crime primer. I'm the geek that all the pro thugs disdain. I observe them up close. It's the '60s. It's social-grievance-as-justification-for-bad-actions time. My cellmates have sadness raps down. I gain a notch on my crime-as-continuing-circumstance notion. Crime is large-scale individual moral default.

That means you, motherfucker. ~ James Ellroy

N indeed peace had come. Messages of peace breathed from the sea to the shore. Never to break its sleep any more, to lull it rather more deeply to rest, and whatever the dreamers dreamt holily, dreamt wisely, to confirm - what else was it murmuring - as Lily Briscoe laid her head on the pillow in the clean still room and heard the sea. Through the open window the voice of the beauty of the world came murmuring, too softly to hear exactly what it said - but what mattered if the meaning were plain? ~ Virginia Woolf

It is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning. ~ Thomas Merton

In a poem the words should be as pleasing to the ear as the meaning is to the mind. ~ Marianne Moore

The root of all inauthentic manifestations of being-with-others is the attitude of self-concern. It is in this state of mind that, either consciously or unconsciously, we reduce the central aim of all value and meaning to the accomplishment of the welfare of ourselves alone. This attitude can operate very deviously even in the person who outwardly appears to be thoroughly altruistic. Despite all magnanimous commitments and generous deeds, it silently measures the ultimate worth of these things in terms of the personal satisfaction that results from them. It is the root of inauthentic being-with because it is primarily responsible in preventing our essential being-with-others from full and genuine expression. ~ Stephen Batchelor

I'll come back to you," he whispered, not meaning to say it out loud. "And I will ravish you over breakfast, and I will never leave you alone another night of my life. ~ Charlotte Featherstone

A passionate obsession with the outside world or the private lives of others is an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life ~ Eric Hoffer

By allowing the imposition of direction from centers far beyond our control, we have time and again missed the lesson of the Congregational principle: people are less than whole unless they gather themselves voluntarily into groups of souls in harmony. Gathering themselves to pursue individual, family, and community dreams consistent with their private humanity is what makes them whole; only slaves are gathered by others. And these dreams must be written locally because to exercise any larger ambition without such a base is to lose touch with the things which give life meaning: self, family, friends, work, and intimate community. ~ John Taylor Gatto

The outline of the city became frantic in its effort to explain something that defied meaning. Power seemed to have outgrown its servitude and to have asserted its freedom. The cylinder had exploded, and thrown great masses of stone and steam against the sky. ~ Henry Adams

All working, practical political systems, even those professing to originate in moral grandeur, are based upon and operate by contempt of human life and the individual fate ... ~ Katherine Anne Porter

It's only a game if there is an absence of meaning. ~ Rachel Cohn

Thomas Hobbes said that man is a wolve for anothe one. It seems to me that this became the basic foundation ideology for the Marxians. Though, it seems also inspired in Max Weber's ides, but actually, Weber reject it. According Stjerno, who quote Weber's idea about man (2005, p. 37), that for Weber, action is social when the individual gives it a subjective meaning that takes account of the behaviour of other and lets his ouw course of action, (Weber; 1978 (1922). Social relationship,said Weber, developed when many actors took into account of the hehaviour of the actions of others. A relationship is symmetrical when each actor gives it the same meaning. However, complet symmetry, Weber maintained, Stjerno added, was rare. Generally, the parts of a social relationship orient their actions on a rational basis,zweckrational - goal-oriented, but in part; they are also motivated by their values and sense of duty,(Stjerno, Steinar: 2005) ~ Steinar Stjerno

We learn
that all life
is scarce yet abundant.
Profane yet
sacred.
Loving
yet hateful.
Enlightened
yet obscured.
Isolated yet
collective.
That life is
somehow derived from love. ~ A.P. Sweet

I have always hesitated to give advice, for how can one advise another how to act unless one knows that other as well as one knows himself? Heaven knows. I know little enough of myself: I know nothing of others. We can only guess at the thoughts and emotions of our neighbours. Each one of us is a prisoner in a solitary tower and he communicates with the other prisoners, who form mankind, by conventional signs that have not quite the same meaning for them as for himself. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

When Friedrich Nietzsche mocked Immanuel Kant for having "discovered a moral faculty in man", he inadvertently resolved Kant's dilemma of being unable to identify what exactly constituted his "moral law" for fear of offending against a charge of empiricism from the likes of David Hume. ~ Joseph B.H. McMillan

Neither the inveterateness of the mischief, nor the prevalency of the fashion, shall be any excuse for those who will not take care about the meaning of their own words, and will not suffer the insignificancy of their expressions to be inquired into. ~ John Locke

There are many that enter into friendships and relationships with unrealistic expectations. God has taught me how to stop having high expectations in people, and instead put expectations in Him. He gives humans choices. No matter how "good", strong, or well-meaning a person may be, it's unrealistic to think that he or she can fulfill our every expectation. We live in a world where humans want power; as you can see, everything requires power from the intangible things to the tangible things. Be careful of who you trust because who they truly are, may not be who you thought they were even if you've known them for years. Sometimes the greatest backstabbers are the ones you trusted after many years and then they eventually show their true colors. Such is life. ~ Krystal Volney

Usually, but not always, a story is told mostly for the benefit of the teller. The story (...) demonstrates how the teller has lived a life full of adventure, of meaning; that they're comical, self-deprecating, and brave; that they're ultimately a person worth knowing.
It's as though folks need to remind themselves of their own worth, and they do this by telling and retelling their favourite eleven or twelve stories, the anecdotes that fundamentally define who they are. ~ Penny Reid

I went back every evening, after work, for nearly a year. I learned the meaning of the cud of a leaf and the glisten of wet pebbles, and the special significance of curves and angles. A great deal of the writing was unwritten. Plot three dots on a graph and join them; you now have a curve with certain characteristics. Extend that curve while maintaining the characteristics, and it has meaning, up where no dots were plotted.

In just this way I learned to extend the curve of a grass-blade and of a protruding root, of the bent edges of wetness on a drying headstone. I quit smoking so I could sharpen my sense of smell, because the scent of earth after a rain has a clarifying effect on graveyard reading, as if the page were made whiter and the ink darker. I began to listen to the wind, and to the voices of birds and small animals, insects and people; because to the educated ear, every sound is filtered through the story written on graves, and becomes a part of it.

("The Graveyard Reader") ~ Theodore Sturgeon

The truth, I am convinced, is that there is no longer a poetical audience among the higher class of minds, that moral, political, and physical science have entirely withdrawn from poetry the attention of all whose attention is worth having; and that the poetical reading public being composed of the mere dregs of the intellectual community, the most sufficing passport to their favour must rest on the mixture of a little easily-intelligible portion of mawkish sentiment with an absolute negation of reason and knowledge. ~ Thomas Love Peacock

Rather than the destination it is the journey that lends meaning to our lives, great Neelkanth. Being faithful to our path will lead to consequences, both good as well as bad. For that is the way of the universe. ~ Amish Tripathi

This sort of bullying isn't just present at the universities. It has taken over the media wholesale. For the media, all arguments are character arguments. If you disagree with the members of the media about something, you are a fundamentally bad human being. The same is eminently true in Hollywood, where moral narrative is the heart of the business. ~ Ben Shapiro

The prayer of the Christian reaches beyond its set time and extends into the heart of his work. It includes the whole day, and in doing so, it does not hinder the work; it promotes it, affirms it, and lends it meaning and joy. Thus every word, every work, every labor of the Christian becomes a prayer; not in the unreal sense of a constant turning away from the task that must be done, but in a real breaking through the hard "it" to the gracious Thou. "Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus" (Col. 3: 17). ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We have the truth still with us. But it is not found in books, to any given extent. It has been passed along......from lip to ear. When it was written down at all, its meaning was veiled in terms of alchemy and astrology, so that only those possessing the key could read it aright. ~ Three Initiates

The most moral activity of all is the creation of space for life to move around. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

Economics that hurt the moral well-being of an individual or a nation are immoral and, therefore, sinful. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Anyone who turns love between two consenting adults into a negative, doesn't understand the meaning of the word. ~ Fran Drescher

A weak King must be what other Kings have been; a strong King is himself, and from then on the meaning of the name of King is changed. ~ Orson Scott Card

YES and NO is just a word but it have big meanings inside it. ~ Adel Sakura