Moral Society Quotes

The inspired principles in the Constitution are the principles of the rule of law which, if preserved, guarantee liberty to every man. These principles are assumed in the Constitution because they had come to be assumed by Americans generally, as they struggled through several generations to find institutional safeguards for the liberty that they prized so highly. Many theoreticians of law and politics have rejected such a tenuous and fragile basis for a nation's freedom. They dream of constitutional arrangements based on clear libertarian principles which would maximize individual liberty whether or not the people understood or supported the basic principles. Their objection does raise the important secondary problem of preserving the liberty we have obtained.

The early Americans themselves recognized the necessity of "public virtue" for the continuing security of their liberty. . . .

The radicals of the left today seek freedom from social and material deprivation through the application of government power. On the right, according to your preferences in political taxonomy, we have either those libertarians who would go far beyond the classically liberal views of the Founding Fathers in restricting the role of government, or those reactionaries who would be willing to invoke arbitrarily the power of government to reshape moral society in their own image. Modern prophets seem to reject both the reactionary and radical left views. And in clearly recognizi ~ Noel B. Reynolds

In a truly moral society, most of our current laws would not exist. ~ Michel Templet

I recall asking the late eminent liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger, in a public forum in Los Angeles in the late 1970s, if he would say that America was, all things considered, a better, i.e., more moral, society than Soviet society. He said he would not. ~ Dennis Prager

Whoever strikes at marriage either by word or act undermines the foundation of all moral society. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Certainly I have made comments on American society with the various pictures and have done about nine antiwar paintings. But I did them because I was incorporating my feelings into my work. ~ James Rosenquist

In the mouth of Society are many diseased teeth, decayed to the bones of the jaws. But Society makes no effort to have them extracted and be rid of the affliction. It contents itself with gold fillings. ~ Khalil Gibran

There was nothing worse, Veppers thought, than a loser who'd made it. It was just part of the way things worked – part of the complexity of life, he supposed – that sometimes somebody who absolutely deserved nothing more than to be one of the down-trodden, the oppressed, the dregs of society, lucked out into a position of wealth, power and admiration.
At least people who were natural winners knew how to carry themselves in their pomp, whether their ascendancy had come through the luck of being born rich and powerful or the luck of being born ambitious and capable. Losers who'd made it always let the side down. Veppers was all for arrogance – he possessed the quality in full measure himself, as he'd often been informed – but it had to be deserved, you had to have worked for it. Or at the very least, an ancestor had to have worked for it.
Arrogance without cause, arrogance without achievement – or that mistook sheer luck for true achievement – was an abomination. Losers made everybody look bad. Worse, they made the whole thing – the great game that was life – appear arbitrary, almost meaningless. Their only use, Veppers had long since decided, was as examples to be held up to those who complained about their lack of status or money or control over their lives: look, if this idiot can achieve something, so can anybody, so can you. So stop whining about being exploited and work harder.
Still, at least individual losers were quite obviously statistical freaks. Yo ~ Iain Banks

Korea is an open society and we will make sure that there is no restriction on foreign investment in Korea. ~ Lee Myung-bak

The fundamental tension of the profession is the struggle between bold advocacy of the client's interests and the need to establish and hold to limits that prevent advocacy from leading to irrational and inequitable results; and thus the lawyer's job in practice is to be on one hand the impassioned representative of his client to the world, and on the other the wise representative to his client of the legal system, and the society, explaining and upholding the demands and restrictions which that system places on them both. ~ Scott Turow

Christian magazine Sojourners, likes to point out that the Bible contains more than three thousand references to alleviating poverty - enough reason, he thinks, for making this a central moral issue for Christians. ~ Peter Singer

The idea of power as a possession, whose asset can be banked and drawn on when needed, comes easy to a society whose rules grow out of the methods of finance capitalism. ~ Elizabeth Janeway

Our goals can only be achieved with a society that respects and equally protects the rights of every human being, old and young, rich and poor, regardless of gender, color, race, or creed. We must reject the initiation of violence by individuals or government as morally repugnant. ~ Ron Paul

If America ever passes out as a great nation, we ought to put on our tombstone: America died from a delusion she had Moral Leadership. ~ Will Rogers

No revolution that has ever taken place in society can be compared to that which has been produced by the words of Jesus Christ. ~ Mark Hopkins

Things like water and sewage systems require states in a large-scale society, but states are also a good mechanism for dealing with health care, education, public transportation, and infrastructure. ~ Cynthia Kauffman

War is indefensible on every grounds, military and economic and diplomatic and also on moral. ~ Eugene McCarthy

We carve on our body what society teaches us and continue this task, not knowing the identity they force us to have. This identity is carved on our faces and our skins. Not knowing our bodies have become "the paper made of human meat," we stuff our bodies and make them a theater where cultural symbols or suppressed symbols play. ~ Kim Hyesoon

We are becoming a nation of sissies and hypochondriacs, a self medicating society easily intimidated by pain and prone to panic. We understand almost nothing about the essential robustness of the human body or its ability to meet the challenge of illness. ~ Norman Cousins

Isana stared at Gaius for a moment. Then she said, "How can you live with yourself?"

The First Lord stared at her for a moment, his eyes cold. Then he spoke in a very quiet, precise, measured voice. "I look out my window each day. I look out my window at people who live and breathe. At people who have not been devoured by civil war. At people who have not been ravaged by disease. At people who have not starved to death, who have not been hacked apart by enemies of humanity, at people who are free to lie and steal and plot and complain and accuse and behave in all manner of repugnant ways because the Realm stands. Because law and order stands. Because something other than simple violence shapes the course of their lives. And I look, wife of my son, mother of my heir, at a very few decent people who have had the luxury of living their lives without being called upon to make hideous decisions I would not wish upon my worst enemies, and who consequently find such matters morally appalling when they consider them--because they have not had to be the ones who dealt with them." He took a short, hard swallow of wine. "Feh. Aquitaine thinks me his enemy. The fool. If I truly hated him, I'd give him the Crown. ~ Jim Butcher

I wonder if there is anyone who is not depraved. A wearisome thought.
I want money. Unless I have it ...
In my sleep, a natural death! ~ Osamu Dazai

People bind themselves into political teams that share moral narratives. Once they accept a particular narrative, they become blind to alternative moral worlds. ~ Jonathan Haidt

...Act upon a maxim which, at the same time, involves its own universal validity for every rational being. ~ Immanuel Kant

The individual's desire to dominate his environment is not a desirable trait in a society which every day grows more and more confining. ~ Gore Vidal

Preparing citizens to act thoughtfully to create a more just, open, and creative society gives form, substance and meaning to often abstract concepts of freedom and democracy. ~ Gregory S. Prince, Jr.

However diligent she may be, however dedicated, no mother can escape the larger influences of culture, biology, fate ... until we can actually live in a society where mothers and children genuinely matter, ours is an essentially powerless responsibility. Mothers carry out most of the work orders, but most of the rules governing our lives are shaped by outside influences. ~ Mary Blakely

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

An error in the doctrine of God will have inevitable consequences in the sphere of action, of moral behaviour, of the polity of the Church, and of basic culture and social organization. A change in the doctrine of the Trinity in either of these directions cannot help but have political consequences.

Farrell, commenting on Nazianzen's connection between Trinity and Holy Monarchy ~ Joseph P. Farrell

Whenever society begins to create policies and laws rooted in fear and anger, there will be abuse and injustice. ~ Bryan Stevenson

It seemed to be a law of society that hair must be parted and brushed. ~ Kate Chopin

We've been trained since kindergarten: Be nice, be kind, share, put on a smile. So we're conditioned to squash our natural selfish instincts, and that's the right thing for society. ~ Bryan Cranston

There are always losers when society evolves. In the free market, these losers are expected and encouraged to retrain and find new ways to survive and thrive. ~ John McAfee

Girls do what their mothers tell them. Ladies do what society tells them. Women make up their own minds. ~ Karen Kijewski

The politicians pose some danger because they are interesting and employ popular vanity and the illusion of ideals to make small changes in society. Small does not necessarily mean insignificant, and for this reason the politicians must be watched. ~ L.E. Modesitt Jr.

But there IS a moral to the story, my dears. It's this: I hope you'll always follow your dreams - and settle for nothing less than whatever is the best for you. ~ Lisa Berne

There are many instances in history of people who allow their skepticism to cut the nerve of moral effort, and there are numerous people, on the other hand, who are fierce crusaders at the price of fanaticism. In his political commitments the fanatic makes claims for his particular case which cannot be validated by either a transcendent Providence or a neutral posterity. ~ Elton Trueblood

Lack of empathy lies at the heart of every crime - certainly my own - yet empathy is the key to bringing a former prisoner back into the fold of society. ~ Piper Kerman

Business can constitute an enormous force for goodness in society. Through its commitments to corporate citizenship and to the principles of the UNGC, the global business community can continue to create and deliver value to society. ~ Talal Abu-Ghazaleh

Celibacy,fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude and the whole train of monkish virtues ... Stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper ... A gloomy hair-brained enthusiast, after his death, may have a place in the calendar, but will scarcely ever be admitted, when alive, into intimacy and society, except by those who are as delerious and dismal as himself. ~ David Hume

No matter what happens, nothing can prevent the historical process by which society demands freedom and democracy, ~ Ai Weiwei

Some people just think utopians are idiots who are imagining rivers of candy and not really engaging with the world's ills, and sometimes that's surely the case, but I think that imagining the perfected society is a way of expressing your disgust with the current state of affairs. ~ Christine Jennings

Increasingly, the picture of our society as rendered in our media is illusionary and delusionary: disfigured, unreal, out of touch with reality, disconnected from the true context of our life. It is disfigured by celebrity, by celebrity worship, by gossip, by sensationalism, by denial of our societies ~ Carl Bernstein

Messages of instant gratification leads to a corrupt society ~ Sunday Adelaja

Law is for the society; love is for the individual. Law is how you behave with others; love is how you behave with yourself. Love is an inner flowering; law is an outward performance. Because you live with people you have to be lawful, but that is not enough - good, but not enough. ~ Rajneesh

There is no time and space limitation for public accountability on the Internet. Creative commonality is standard and does not resemble the authoritarian style of the dead communist experience. It seems that it is no longer society's obligation to understand legislation; it is a duty for governments to be understood by their people. ~ Eduardo Paes

Whereas the Odyssey represents the maturity of the moral consciousness of a whole people, Huckleberry Finn shows only its beginnings in the mind of a child. And with a self-protective dexterity that would not have surprised Mark Twain in the least, the adult racist mentality of America has dealt with the threat of that beginning by decreeing that Huckleberry Finn is not a book for the chastening of adults, which to a large extent it certainly is, but a book for the entertainment of children. ~ Wendell Berry

The causes which ruined the Republic of Athens illustrate the connection of ethics with politics rather than the vices inherent to democracy. A State which has only 30,000 full citizens in a population of 500,000, and is governed, practically, by about 3000 people at a public meeting, is scarcely democratic. The short triumph of Athenian liberty, and its quick decline, belong to an age which possessed no fixed standard of right and wrong. An unparalleled activity of intellect was shaking the credit of the gods, and the gods were the givers of the law. It was a very short step from the suspicion of Protagoras, that there were no gods, to the assertion of Critias that there is no sanction for laws. If nothing was certain in theology, there was no certainty in ethics and no moral obligation. The will of man, not the will of God, was the rule of life, and every man and body of men had the right to do what they had the means of doing. Tyranny was no wrong, and it was hypocrisy to deny oneself the enjoyment it affords. The doctrine of the Sophists gave no limits to power and no security to freedom; it inspired that cry of the Athenians, that they must not be hindered from doing what they pleased, and the speeches of men like Athenagoras and Euphemus, that the democracy may punish men who have done no wrong, and that nothing that is profitable is amiss. And Socrates perished by the reaction which they provoked. ~ John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

If you want to change society then you must tell an alternative story. ~ Ivan Illich

The argument that there are just wars often rests on the social system of the nation engaging in war. It is supposed that if a 'liberal' state is at war with a 'totalitarian' state, then the war is justified. The beneficent nature of a government was assumed to give rightness to the wars it wages.

...Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt were liberals, which gave credence to their words exalting the two world wars, just as the liberalism of Truman made going into Korea more acceptable and the idealism of Kennedy's New Frontier and Johnson's Great Society gave an early glow of righteousness to the war in Vietnam.

What the experience of Athens suggests is that a nation may be relatively liberal at home and yet totally ruthless abroad. Indeed, it may more easily enlist its population in cruelty to others by pointing to the advantages at home. An entire nation is made into mercenaries, being paid with a bit of democracy at home for participating in the destruction of life abroad. ~ Howard Zinn

The mind is wired by society, the heart is wired by your deepest desires for a blissful life. ~ Steven Redhead

He criticized Christianity, but his objections were not so much intellectual as moral and aesthetic: he attacked the Christian religion because of its impact on the quality of life. Devaluing the natural world for the sake of a spiritual realm, Christianity could not be other than hostile to happiness: 'man', Leopardi wrote, 'was happier before Christianity than after it. ~ John N. Gray

Go through the moral demands ... one by one and you will find that man could not live up to them; the intention is not that he should become more moral, but that he should feel as sinful as possible. If man had failed to find this feeling pleasant - why should he have engendered such an idea and adhered to it for so long? ... Man was by every means to be made sinful and thereby become excited, animated, enlivened in general. To excite, animate, enliven at any price ... ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

As society evolves, people are interested in a new take on an old beloved story. ~ Len Wiseman

What people are afraid of can tell us a lot about society. ~ Anne Holt