Moral Progress Quotes

A great gulf, however, has been opened between man's material advance and his social and moral progress, a gulf in which he may one day be lost if it is not closed or narrowed. ~ Lester B. Pearson

Moral progress has consisted in the main of protest against cruel customs, and of attempts to enlarge human sympathy. ~ Bertrand Russell

That was the moment we understood that things can go terribly wrong in our world - not because life is unfair or moral progress impossible but because we have failed, generation after generation, to abolish the delusions and animosities of our ignorant ancestors. ~ Sam Harris

The concept of progress, i.e., an improvement or completion (in modern jargon, a rationalization) became dominant in the eighteenth century, in an age of humanitarian-moral belief. Accordingly, progress meant above all progress in culture, self-determination, and education: moral perfection. In an age of economic or technical thinking, it is self-evident that progress is economic or technical progress. To the extent that anyone is still interested in humanitarian-moral progress, it appears as a byproduct of economic progress. If a domain of thought becomes central, then the problems of other domains are solved in terms of the central domain - they are considered secondary problems, whose solution follows as a matter of course only if the problems of the central domain are solved. ~ Carl Schmitt

The notion that we've made vast moral progress and are now a less violent species is belied by our awesome powers of destruction, our military might, police forces as well-armed as soldiers. Without the threat of such violent force behind it, all law would be meaningless. I prefer stories that remind us of that. At its core, history is a story of violence at work. It all comes down to the old saw that, however much you can gain with a kind word, you can gain more with a kind word and a gun. ~ James Carlos Blake

Without moral progress, stimulated by faith in God, immorality in all its forms will proliferate and strangle goodness and human decency. Mankind will not be able to fully express the potential nobility of the human soul unless faith in God is strengthened. ~ James E. Faust

He who has made great moral progress ceases to pray ~ Immanuel Kant

In support of the idea that moral progress is compatible with a biological approach to the human mind and an acknowledgment of the dark side of human nature. 3 ~ Steven Pinker

If morality is reducible to culture, then there can be no real moral progress. For the only way one can say that a culture is getting better, or progressing, is if there are objective moral norms that are not dependent on culture to which a society may draw closer. ~ Francis J. Beckwith

A great principle of moral advancement, on par with "Love thy neighbor" and "All men are created equal," is the one on the bumper sticker: "Shit happens. ~ Steven Pinker

Racial injustice around the world. Poverty. War. When man solves these three great problems he will have squared his moral progress with his scientific progress. And, more importantly, he will have learned the practical art of living in harmony. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

God doesn't help. I think that's a knockdown argument. I think that it really shows that whatever moral knowledge we have and whatever moral progress we make in our knowledge or whatever progress we make in our moral knowledge is not coming really from religion. It's coming from the very hard work really of moral philosophy, of trying to ground our moral reasonings. ~ Rebecca Goldstein

One can measure the greatness and the moral progress of a nation by looking at how it treats its animals. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

History and experience tell us that moral progress comes not in comfortable and complacent times, but out of trial and confusion. ~ Gerald R. Ford

History was finite and contained within comprehensible limits. It began with the Creation and was scheduled to end in a not indefinitely remote future with the Second Coming, which was the hope of afflicted mankind, followed by the Day of Judgment. Within that span, man was not subject to social or moral progress because his goal was the next world, not betterment in this. In this world he was assigned to ceaseless struggle against himself in which he might attain individual progress and even victory, but collective betterment would only come in the final union with God. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

Forget all labels and simply live as a human, and you'll have all the morality in you - this morality is text-less - it is law-less - it is boundless - it's simply your whole being, beyond conditioning, beyond norms, beyond stereotypes, beyond definitions, beyond theories, beyond intellectualism, beyond ideologies, beyond sects and beyond images. That morality has no Naskar in it - it has no Nietzsche in it - it has no Schopenhauer in it - it has no bible, no quran, no vedas in it - nor has it any messiah or prophet whatsoever. ~ Abhijit Naskar

We will embarrass our descendants, just as our ancestors embarrass us. This is moral progress. ~ Sam Harris

Every Christian church has tried to impose a code of morals of some kind for which it has claimed divine sanction. As these codes have always been opposed to those of the gospels a loophole has been left for moral progress such as hardly exists in other religions. ~ John B. S. Haldane

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. ~ Bertrand Russell

You can tell a lot about the intellectual and moral progress of a nation's citizens, by the quality and nature of the films they watch. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The Ten Commandments are preoccupied with goodness. Each commandment is a moral tour de force. Together they present the most compelling plan ever devised for a better life and good world. Yet, they were written - and in the eyes of hundreds of millions, revealed by the Creator - three thousand years ago. The Ten Commandments are what began humanity's long, arduous journey toward moral progress. ~ Dennis Prager

There is nothing - not any religious or secular body of work - that comes close to the Bible in forming the moral bases of Western civilization and therefore of nearly all moral progress in the world. ~ Dennis Prager

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 wrongfulness, the immorality of eating animal food has been recognized by all mankind during all the conscious life of humanity. Why, then have people generally not come to acknowledge this law? The answer is that the moral progress of humanity is always slow; but that the sign of true, not casual Progress, is in uninterruptedness and its continual acceleration. And one cannot doubt that vegetarianism has been progressing in this manner ~ Leo Tolstoy

Ten years have now passed since many of us first felt the jolt of history-when the second plane crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. We knew from that moment that things can go terribly wrong in our world-not because life is unfair, or moral progress impossible, but because we have failed, generation after generation, to abolish the delusions of our ignorant ancestors. ~ Sam Harris

Scientific progress makes moral progress a necessity; for if man's power is increased, the checks that restrain him from abusing it must be strengthened. ~ Madame De Stael

As soon as absolute truth is supposed to be contained in the sayings of a certain man, there is a body of experts to interpret his sayings, and these experts infallibly acquire power, since they hold the key to truth. Like any other privileged caste, they use their power for their own advantage. They are, however, in one respect worse than any other privileged caste, since it is their business to expound an unchanging truth, revealed once for all in utter perfection, so that they become necessarily opponents of all intellectual and moral progress. ~ Bertrand Russell

If we look at our attitudes consistently and work out the logical implications we're on the road to moral progress, moral understanding. ~ Rebecca Goldstein

False rhetoric and false boastfulness spell moral ruin and lead unfailingly to political extinction. ~ Vladimir Lenin

The new growth in the plant swelling against the sheath, which at the same time imprisons and protects it, must still be the truest type of progress. ~ Jane Addams

Nothing lasts. So it's my belief, yes, I know a lot of the things that we liked didn't last, but maybe things we don't like, they're also not going to last. There has been progress in my lifetime. There are certainly things that are better than when I was young, and there are things that are worse. New York City, it's worse. There's no question. ~ Fran Lebowitz

As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection. ~ Charles Darwin

Every practical science is concerned with human operations; as moral science is concerned with human acts, and architecture with buildings. But sacred doctrine is chiefly concerned with God, whose handiwork is especially man. Therefore it is not a practical but a speculative science. ~ Thomas Aquinas

It quite often happens that the old man is subject to the delusion of a great moral renewal and rebirth, and from this experience he passes judgments on the work and course of his life, as if he had only now become clear-sighted; and yet the inspiration behind this feeling of well-being and these confident judgements is not wisdom, but weariness . ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The progress of the sciences toward theories of fundamental unity, cosmic symmetry (as in the unified field theory) - how do such theories differ, in the end, from that unity which Plato called "unspeakable" and "indiscribable," the holistic knowledge shared by so many peoples of the earth, Christians included, before the advent of the industrial revolution made new barbarians of the peoples of the West? In the United States, before spiritualist foolishness at the end of the last century confused mysticism with "the occult" and tarnished both, William James wrote a master work of metaphysics; Emerson spoke of "the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal One . . ."; Melville referred to "that profound silence, that only voice of God"; Walt Whitman celebrated the most ancient secret, that no God could be found "more divine than yourself. ~ Peter Matthiessen

On the whole, my respect for my fellow-men, except as one may outweigh a million, is not being increased these days ... Such do not know that like the seed is the fruit, and that, in the moral world, when good seed is planted, good fruit is inevitable, and does not depend on our watering and cultivating; that when you plant, or bury, a hero in his field, a crop of heroes is sure to spring up. This is a seed of such force and vitality, that it does not ask our leave to germinate. ~ Henry David Thoreau

The moral issue here is whether the United States Congress is going to stand in the way of science and preclude scientists from doing lifesaving research. ~ Rosa DeLauro

When the heart is touched by direct experience, the mind may be challenged to change. Personal involvement with innocent suffering, with the injustice others suffer, is the catalyst for solidarity which then gives rise to intellectual inquiry and moral reflection. ~ Peter Hans Kolvenbach

Democracy is not simply a political system; it is a moral movement and it springs from adventurous faith in human possibilities. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

....I came to consider betrayal a moral violation of another's humanity - akin to torture. ~ Sandra Lee Dennis

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect. ~ Ronald Reagan

There's obviously a correlation between an economically empowered woman and the investments she makes. That leads to her social and moral conscience for bettering her community. ~ Andrea Jung

Revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balance the insanity of history. ~ Albert Camus

The American war is over; but this far from being the case with the American revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the drama is closed. It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of government, and to prepare the principles, morals, and manners of our citizens for these forms of government after they are established and brought to perfection. ~ Benjamin Rush

When law becomes despotic, morals are relaxed, and vice versa. ~ Honore De Balzac

Evil is nothing but a word, an objectification where no objectification is necessary. Cast aside this notion of some external agency as the source of inconceivable inhumanity - the sad truth is our possession of an innate proclivity towards indifference, towards deliberate denial of mercy, towards disengaging all that is moral within us.
But if that is too dire , let's call it evil. And paint it with fire and venom. ~ Steven Erikson

I was aware that on my skill as a painter would depend the physical and moral possession of the model ... ~ Paul Gauguin

Every society and religion has rules, for both have moral laws. And the essence of morality consists, as in art, of drawing the line somewhere. ~ Huston Smith

We are much too tolerant of the moral aberration of statesmen and bureaucrats. ~ Kenzaburo Oe

Never confuse movement with action. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

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

Moral principle is the foundation of law. ~ Ronald Dworkin

I have this feeling of wending my way or plundering through a mysterious jungle of possibilities when I am writing. This jungle has not been explored by previous writers. It never will be explored. It's endlessly varying as we progress through the experience of time. These words that occur to me come out of my relation to the language which is developing even as I am using it. ~ William Stafford

I think I'm a pretty moral guy, a very moral guy, but I'm not perfect. ~ Tim O'Brien

If moral truths do not exist as a foundation for law, then law itself becomes merely a system of raw political power accountable to no one. ~ Scott Klusendorf

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. ~ Alexander H. Stephens

The bible and the church have been the greatest stumbling block in the way of women's emancipation. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Anger is what makes our struggle visible, and our struggle is what exposes they hypocrisy of a nation that fashions itself a moral leader. To rise against the narrative and expose the lie gives opportunity to those whose identity depends on the lie to question and, hopefully, change. ~ Mychal Denzel Smith

Most people believe the apple merely represented Knowledge. But we know better. It was the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Nothing less than the curse of consciousness. Of moral responsibility. Of always, ever after, having to choose between what is right and what is wrong. ~ Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

Middle school is kind of like Middle-earth. It's a magical journey filled with elves, dwarves, hobbits, queens, kings, and a few corrupt wizards. Word to the wise: pick your traveling companions well. Ones with the courage and moral fiber to persevere. Ones who wield their lip gloss like magic wands when confronted with danger. This way, when you pass through the congested hallways rife with pernicious diversion, you achieve your desired destination - or at least your next class.
-CeCee, Lucy and CeCee's How to Survive (and Thrive) in Middle School ~ Kimberly Dana

One way to become enthusiastic is to look for the plus sign. To make progress in any difficult situation, you have to start with what's right about it and build on that ~ Norman Vincent Peale

Geography was not furthered by the achievement, scientific progress was scarcely hastened, and nothing new was discovered. Yet the names of Hillary and Tenzing went instantly into all languages as the names of heroes, partly because they really were men of heroic mold but chiefly because they represented so compellingly the spirit of their time. ~ Edmund Hillary

What's the use of talking? You can see for yourself that this is a barbarous country; the people have no morals; and the boredom! ~ Anton Chekhov

The love of justice and the love of country plead equally the cause of these people, and it is a moral reproach to us that they should have pleaded it so long in vain. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I was raised thinking that moral and ethical standards are universals that apply equally to everyone. And these values aren't easily compatible with the kind of religion that posits a Creator. To my way of thinking, an omnipotent being who sets up a universe in which thinking beings proliferate, grow old, and die (usually in agony, alone, and in fear) is a cosmic sadist. ~ Charles Stross

It is perfectly possible to converse with any cat, from prize-winning Siamese to alley tabby. Humans who are slow learners may start with a highly articulate Siamese and progress in time to the more sensitive and difficult business of talking to scared strays. Other people, naturally gifted, can talk to any cat right away. ~ Patricia Moyes

We live in a world where value of creativity is measured by commercial success, and copyrights are mere instruments of financial benefit, not creative progress ~ Kalyan C. Kankanala

You kind of create your own moral universe. It's like, well, I like myself. If other people don't like me, then whatever. I'm out of here. ~ Jessica Cutler

Equal marriage makes a huge impact, because people see gay people being allowed to be happy," he says. "And these events involve families – and not just families but caterers and florists and hotels. And all these people are forced to accept that here are two people who are in love and want to build a family together . . . But I'm not complacent. Progress can falter, and rights can be taken away, and people can be repressed again very easily. ~ Damian Barr

A reasonable man adjusts himself to the world. An unreasonable man expects the world to adjust itself to him. Therefore all progress is made by unreasonable people. ~ Confucius

But there is some connection between critically distancing oneself from prevailing popular opinion and a level of moral conscientiousness that comes to more than obeying the voice of "the Anyone." Crucial to genuine moral conscience is the refusal to lose oneself in the anonymity of what "the Anyone" dictates, a willingness to take one's stand aqainst what is fashionable, to criticize public opinion for the sake of the community, to judge what is right beyond the horizon of the taken-for-granted. That one think for oneself, of course, is no guarantee that one's judgement will be wise. If not thinking can lead to great evil, it does not follow that thinking can prevent it. But at least the habit of critical reflection puts an obstacle in the way of banal evil, for the thoughtful individual may have afterthoughts about saying or doing what he cannot account for. Moral conscience, Arendt contends, is a 'side-effect' of the thinking ego, of the self who would, like Socrates, prefer that 'the multitudes disagree with me than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with and contradict myself. ~ Lawrence Vogel

Life's big questions are big in the sense that they are momentuous. However, contrary to appearances, they are not big in the sense of being unanswerable. It is only that the answers are generally unpalatable. There is no great mystery, but there is plenty of horror. ~ David Benatar

It is progress when a centuries-old oak is cut down to give space for a road sign. ~ Thor Heyerdahl

What is Moral Courage? It is the ability to distinguish right from wrong and having so distinguished it, be prepared to say so,irrespective of the views held by your superiors or subordinates and of consequences to yourself. ~ Sam Manekshaw

Letting off steam makes people angrier, not calmer. Pennebaker discovered that it's not about steam; it's about sense making. The people in his studies who used their writing time to vent got no benefit. The people who showed deep insight into the causes and consequences of the event on their first day of writing got no benefit, either: They had already made sense of things. It was the people who made progress across the four days, who showed increasing insight; they were the ones whose health improved over the next year. ~ Jonathan Haidt

The Democratic Party had failed (in 1983)
'to remember waht got us this far and how we got here
moral indignation, decent instincts, a sense of shared sacrifice and mutual responsibility, and a set of national priorities that emphasized what we had in common.. The Party that was the engine of the national interest
molding our pluralistic interest into a compelling new social contract that served the nation well for fifty years
became perceived as little more than the broker of narrow special interests. Instead of thinking of ourselves as Americans first, Democrats second, and members of interest groups third, we have begun to think in terms of special interests first and the greater interest second.. We have let our opponents set the agenda and define what is at stake.
p. 140 ~ Joe Biden

The more we talk about the epidemic as an individual disease phenomenon or a moral failing, the easier it is to obfuscate and ignore the social and economic conditions that predispose certain individuals to addiction. The fix isn't more Suboxone or lectures on morality but rather a reinvigorated democracy that provides a pathway for meaningful work, with a living wage, for everybody. ~ Beth Macy