Morality Without Religion Quotes

The Samurai lived by a code of honor, not unlike the code that you live by. It's called the Bushido. It was never written down; was always something the Samurai knew, and it was handed down from one warrior to another. One of the tenets of the code is about justice. Not the pounding of a gavel on the bench of some judge who's been appointed to pass judgment on people by some politician. No, malaka, this concept of justice is what you feel in your bones: to die when it is right and to strike when it is right. ~ Kenneth Eade

Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning - an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

Morality established from Science is the key to understanding Coexistence.
Science based on Morality is the reason we have prejudice for things we don't understand. ~ Anonymous

You couldn't say 'I had orders.' You couldn't say 'It's not fair.' No one was listening. There were no Words. You owned yourself. [ ... ] Not 'Thou Shalt Not'. Say 'I Will Not'. ~ Terry Pratchett

Morality does not come to this mortal world from some imaginary paradise. It rises from the neurons of mortal humans. ~ Abhijit Naskar

If you go door to door in our nation and talk to citizens about domestic violence, almost everyone will insist that they do not support male violence against women, that they believe it to be morally and ethically wrong. However, if you then explain that we cannot end male violence against women by challenging patriarchy, and that means no longer accepting the notion that men should have more rights and privileges than women because of biological difference or that men should have the power to rule over women, that is when the agreement stops. There is a gap between the values they claim to hold and their willingness to do the work of connecting thought and action, theory and practice to realize these values and thus create a more just society. ~ Bell Hooks

Morality exists in the neurons as a natural sensation. Religion only tries to codify it. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Would a just God sentence a morally good individual to hell for never having heard of him? And for that matter, would a just God expel a morally good individual to hell who has heard of Jesus, but simply finds no evidentiary reason to believe? According to any reasonable interpretation of Christianity's key doctrines, the answer is a simple and firm 'Yes.' This is because, according to Christian dogma, it is impossible to be 'moral' without Jesus Christ; I disagree with this on a fundamental level. ~ David G. McAfee

It's a sin only if it harms you ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

It might feel, at least to some of us, that our opinions about issues such as abortion and the death penalty are the products of careful deliberation and that our specific moral acts, such as deciding to give to charity or visit a friend in the hospital - or for that matter, deciding to shoplift or shout a racist insult out
of a car window - are grounded in conscious decision-making. But this is said to be mistaken. As Jonathan Haidt argues, we are not judges; we are lawyers, making up explanations after the deeds have been done. Reason is impotent. "We celebrate rationality," agrees de Waal, "but when push comes to shove we assign it little weight. ~ Paul Bloom

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

The darker side of Nietzsche's ideas was incorporated into the Nazi belief system. Part of the link was straightforward: some things Nietzsche said were pure Nazi doctrine. His comments that 'The extinction of many types of people is just as desirable as any form of reproduction' and that 'the tendency must be towards the rendering extinct of the wretched, the deformed, the degenerate' could come from any work on racial hygiene.

Nietzsche's central contribution was not these explicitly Social Darwinist views, but his rejection of the Judeo-Christian morality of compassion for the weak. Self-creation required hardness towards oneself: a strong will imposing coherence on conflicting impulses. It also requires hardness on others. Conflicts between the self-creative projects of different people made inevitable the attempt to dominate others. The whole of life was a struggle in which victory went to the brave and to the strong-willed. Noble human qualities, linked with the will to power, were brought out in combat but atrophied in peace. Compassion was weakness, cowardice and self-deception. The Judeo-Christian emphasis on it was poison. In drawing these consequences from his beliefs about the death of God and from Social Darwinism, Nietzsche provided the part of the Nazi belief system which 'justified' the cruel steps they took to implement their other beliefs. ~ Jonathan Glover

To learn that it's easier to be told by others what to think and believe than it is to think for yourself. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Religion without morality is a superstition and a curse, and morality without religion is impossible. ~ Mark Hopkins

I think we have to give religion its due. I think we have to respect those for whom religion is important, but equally respect those who can achieve good morality without religion. ~ Alan Dershowitz

It's the strangest thing about this church - it is obsessed with sex, absolutely obsessed. Now, they will say we, with our permissive society and rude jokes, are obsessed. No. We have a healthy attitude. We like it, it's fun, it's jolly; because it's a primary impulse it can be dangerous and dark and difficult.
It's a bit like food in that respect, only even more exciting. The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese, and that in erotic terms is the Catholic Church in a nutshell. ~ Stephen Fry

To be effective, morality has to be reasoned (or worked out). To want ("vouloir", Fr.) to repress evil only by coercion, and to obtain morality by a sort of training with the help of constraint, without motivating it from within, is to make it an unnatural result, devoided of lastind value. ~ African Spir

Religion is not a perpetual moping over good books. Religion is not even prayer, praise, holy ordinances,
these are necessary to religion
no man can be religious without them. But religion is mainly and chiefly the glorifying God amid the duties and trials of the world; the guiding of our course amid adverse winds and currents of temptation by the sunlight of duty and the compass of Divine truth, the bearing up manfully, wisely, courageously, for the honor of Christ, our great Leader in the conflict of life. ~ John Caird

Oh, what a nation of moralists the Americans are! With what fervor do they relish bringing their sexual misconduct to light! A pity that they do not bring their moral outrage to bear on their president's arrogance above the law; a pity that they do not unleash their moral zest on an administration that runs guns to terrorists. But, of course, boudoir morality takes less imagination, and can be indulged in without the effort of keeping up with world affairs - or even bothering to know "the whole story" behind the sexual adventure. ~ John Irving

The Bill of Rights is largely a prescription for preventing government from restricting the flow of information and ideas. But the Founding Fathers did not foresee that tyranny by government might be superseded by another sort of problem altogether, namely, the corporate state, which through television now controls the flow of public discourse in America. I raise no strong objection to this fact (at least not here) and have no intention of launching into a standard-brand complaint against the corporate state. I merely note the fact with apprehension, as did George Gerbner, Dean of the Annenberg School of Communication, when he wrote:

Television is the new state religion run by a private Ministry of Culture (the three networks), offering a universal curriculum for all people, financed by a form of hidden taxation without representation. You pay when you wash, not when you watch, and whether or not you care to watch. ~ Neil Postman

A religion without mystics is a philosophy. ~ Quintilian

What does hanging on a cross for twenty-four hours mean to a man who has no children,' I said, 'especially when he knows he's dying for a good cause -- indeed, that he's saving the whole world and then going straight into the best place in Heaven? What's that compared to the suffering I've had to put up with for months and years with the house full of children, when for many whole nights I've shrieked with pain unceasingly and without relief, and I'll soon be dead, and that without having anything to die for; and there'll be no heavenly Kingdom for me, for I know the children will go on crying when I'm dead, and swearing and quarrelling, and begging for milk they can't get. ~ Halldor Laxness

When our institutions lack movement to propel them forward, the Spirit, I believe, simply moves around them, like a current flowing around a rock in a stream...without that soul work that teaches us to open our deepest selves to God and ground our souls in love, no movement will succeed and no institution will stand...it is the linking of action and contemplation, great work and deep spirituality, that keeps goodness, rightness, beauty, and aliveness flowing...as Pope Francis has said, this moment calls for social poets: sincere and creative people who will rise on the wings of faith to catch the wind of the Spirit, the wind of justice, joy, and peace. (p. 180) ~ Brian McLaren

Civilization is first of all a moral thing. Without truth, respect for duty, love of neighbor, and virtue, everything is destroyed. The morality of a society is alone the basis of civilization. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

No one can know how long this dumbing-down of American religion will persist. But so long as it does, citizens should probably be more vigilant about policing the public square, not less so ... [Y]ou cannot sustain liberal democracy without cultivating liberal habits of mind among religious believers. That remains true today, both in Baghdad and in Baton Rouge. ~ Mark Lilla

I'm beginning to wonder," said Kent, sitting down now on an overturned wooden tub. "Who do I serve? Why am I here?"
You are here, because, in the expanding ethical ambiguity of our situation, you are steadfast in your righteousness. It is to you, our banished friend, that we all turn - a light amid the dark dealings of family and politics. You are the moral backbone on which the rest of us hang our bloody bits. Without you we are merely wiggly masses of desire writhing in our own devious bile."
Really?" asked the old knight.
Aye," said I.
I'm not sure I want to keep company with you lot, then. ~ Christopher Moore

I went into the ministry to use the church to elicit political change according to a soft Marxist vision of wealth distribution and proletarian empowerment. Edrita [his wife] could sense that I was on a long and uncertain path. She was always more conservative than I, but she did share my basic social values and was willing at least to let me test my political follies ... Whenever I read the New Testament after 1950, I was trying to read it entirely without its crucial premises of incarnation and resurrection. That required a lot of circular reasoning for me to establish what the text said. I habitually assumed that truth in religion was finally reducible to economics (with Marx) or psychosexual motives (with Freud) or self assertive power (with Nietzsche). It was truly a self-deceptive time for me, but I had no inkling of its insidious dangers. ~ Thomas C. Oden

The intellectual climate of the 1970s, for which the 1950s had already paved the way, contributed to this. A theory was even finally developed at that time that pedophilia should be viewed as something positive. Above all, however, the thesis was advocated-and this even infiltrated Catholic moral theology-that there was no such thing as something that is bad in itself. There were only things that were "relatively" bad. What was good or bad depended on the consequences.
In such a context, where everything is relative and nothing intrinsically evil exists, but only relative good and relative evil, people who have an inclination to such behavior are left without no solid footing. Of course pedophilia is first rather a sickness of individuals, but the fact that it could become so active and so widespread was linked also to an intellectual climate through which the foundations of moral theology, good and evil, became open to question in the Church. Good and evil became interchangeable; they were no longer absolutely clear opposites. ~ Benedict XVI

Morality rests upon a sense of obligation; and obligation has no meaning except as implying a Divine command, without which it would cease to be. ~ James Anthony Froude

The architecture of the Colisseum and other places of Roman entertainment are difficult to judge without recalling what purpose they served. It was here that gladiators fought to the death; that prisoners of war, convicts and Christians were devoured by as many as 5,000 wild beasts at a time; and that voctims were crucified or burned alive for the entertainment of Roman civilization. When the Romans screamed for ever more blood, artificial lakes were dug and naval battles of as many as 19,000 gladiators were staged until the water turned red with blood. The only emperors who did not throw Christians to the lions were the Christian emperors: They threw pagans to the lions with the same gusto and for the same crime-having a different religion. ~ Petr Beckmann

I dwell mostly upon the religious aspects, because I believe it is the religious people who are to be relied upon in this Anti-Slavery movement. Do not misunderstand my railing - do not class me with those who despise religion - do not identify me with the infidel. I love the religion of Christianity - which cometh from above - which is a pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of good fruits, and without hypocrisy. I love that religion which sends its votaries to bind up the wounds of those who have fallen among thieves.
By all the love I bear such a Christianity as this, I hate that of the Priest and the Levite, that with long-faced Phariseeism goes up to Jerusalem to worship and leaves the bruised and wounded to die. I despise that religion which can carry Bibles to the heathen on the other side of the globe and withhold them from the heathen on this side - which can talk about human rights yonder and traffic in human flesh here.... I love that which makes its votaries do to others as they would that others should do to them. I hope to see a revival of it - thank God it is revived. I see revivals of it in the absence of the other sort of revivals. I believe it to be confessed now, that there has not been a sensible man converted after the old sort of way, in the last five years. ~ Frederick Douglass

As the Nobel Prize-winning American physicist Steven Weinberg said, 'Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion. ~ Richard Dawkins

Quantum artificial intelligence put greater importance to human peace, economic, social, political and cultural rights. It focuses on fundamental freedoms and well-being for all without distinction to race, color, sex, country, language, or religion. ~ Amit Ray

... You see, my dear friend, I am made up of contradictions, and I have reached a very mature age without resting upon anything positive, without having calmed my restless spirit either by religion or philosophy. Undoubtedly I should have gone mad but for music. Music is indeed the most beautiful of all Heaven's gifts to humanity wandering in the darkness. Alone it calms, enlightens, and stills our souls. It is not the straw to which the drowning man clings; but a true friend, refuge, and comforter, for whose sake life is worth living ~ Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

If there is no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. There is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose. ~ William Lane Craig

When I discarded the idea that God was not a man (as I had been raised to think and believe without question), I grew distant, and the flame that once lit my path began to flicker and hiss like a candle burnt to its wick, making longevity impossible without a new energy source. ~ B.G. Bowers

The Church has an excellent appetite.
She has swallowed whole countries and the question
Has never risen of indigestion.
Only the Church ... can take
Ill-gotten goods without stomach-ache! ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The basic religious idea in all patriarchal religions is the negation of the sexual needs. Only in very primitive religions were religiosity and sexuality identical. When social organization passed from matriarchy to patriarchy and class society, the unity of religious and sexual cult underwent a split; the religious cult became the antithesis of the sexual. With that, the cult of sexuality went out of existence. It was replaced by the brothel, pornography and backstairs-sexuality. It goes without saying that when sexual experiences ceased to be one with the religious cults, when, instead, they became antithetical to them, religious excitation assumed a new function: that of being a substitute for the lost sexual pleasure, now no longer affirmed by society. Only this contradiction inherent in religious excitation makes the strength and the tenacity of the religions understandable: the contradiction of its being at one and the same time antisexual and a substitute for sexuality. ~ Wilhelm Reich

It makes me upset, if not angry, when people assume that there can be no morality without a religious framework. If there's a moral framework without all that religious stuff, it's more valuable. ~ Jane Asher

Without question, the balance of power on the planet today lies in the hands of business. Corporations rival governments in wealth, influence, and power. Indeed, business all too often pulls the strings of government. Competing institutions-religion, the press, even the military-play subordinate roles in much of the world today. If a values-driven approach to business can begin to redirect this vast power toward more constructive ends than the simple accumulation of wealth, the human race and Planet Earth will have a fighting chance. ~ Ben Cohen

First-class religion teaches one how to love God without any motive. If I serve God for some profit, that is business-not love. ~ A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Without even knowing it ourselves, we were ransomed by the small change in copper that was left from the golden coins our great-grandfathers had expended, at a time when morality was not considered relative and when the distinction between good and evil was very simply perceived by the heart. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A religion without rules or God isn't sustainable. ~ David Harsanyi

The hypothesis of value realism is superfluous - a wheel that spins without being attached to anything. From a Darwinian perspective our impressions of value, if construed realistically, are completely groundless. And if that is true for our most basic responses, it is also true for the entire elaborate structure of value and morality that is built up from them by practical reflection and cultural development - just as scientific realism would be undermined if we abandoned a realistic interpretation of the perceptual experiences on which science is based. Even a system based on the maintenance of coherence or consistency among one's responses does not need the idea of mind-independent truth about value (as opposed to logic), ~ Thomas Nagel

Rise up smiling, and walk with me. Rise up in the armor of thy body and what shall pass shall make thee unafraid. Walk among the yellow hills, for they belong to thee. Walk upon grass and let thy feet descend into soft soil; in the end when all has failed thee the soil shall comfort thee, the soil shall receive thee and in thy dark bed thou shalt find such peace as is thy portion.

In thine armor, hear my voice. In thine armor, hear. Whatsoever thou doest, thy friend and thy brother and thy woman shall betray thee. Whatsoever thou dost plant, the weeds and the seasons shall spite thee. Wheresoever thou goest, the heavens shall fall upon thee. Though the nations shall come unto thee in friendship thou art curst. Know that the Gods ignore thee. Know that thou art Life, and that pain shall forever come into thee, though thy years be without end and thy days without sleep, even and forever. And knowing this, in thine armor, thou shalt rise up.

Red and full and glowing is thy heart; a steel is forging within thy breast. And what can hurt thee now? In thy granite mansion, what can hurt thee ever? Thou shalt only die. Therefore seek not redemption nor forgiveness for thy sins, for know that thou hast never sinned.

Let the Gods come unto thee. ~ Michael Shaara

Ethical religion can be real only to those who are engaged in ceaseless efforts at moral improvement. By moving upward we acquire faith in an upward movement, without limit. ~ Felix Adler

The Charter of the United Nations expresses the noblest aspirations of man: abjuration of force in the settlement of disputes between states; the assurance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion; the safeguarding of international peace and security. ~ Haile Selassie

And you know what? If there is a God, and it's that same God who's so eager to have temples built in honor of his greatness, and wars fought over him, and people dropping to their knees telling him what a wonderful, magnificent being he is? If this all-powerful, all-knowing creature for some reason just can't get by without my worship? Then let him give me some proof. Or at least get over himself if I decide to go out and get some. ~ Robin Wasserman

Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. But it cannot achieve its end. Its doctrines carry with them the stamp of the times in which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of the human race. Its consolations deserve no trust. Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery. The ethical commands, to which religion seeks to lend its weight, require some other foundations instead, for human society cannot do without them, and it is dangerous to link up obedience to them with religious belief. If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity. ~ Sigmund Freud

Morality without kindness is the most dangerous weapon. ~ Debasish Mridha

Hinduism, with its openness, its respect for variety, its acceptance of all other faiths, is one religion that should be able to assert itself without threatening others. ~ Shashi Tharoor

Cats catch mice, small birds and the like, very well. Teleology tells us that they do so because they were expressly constructed for so doing - that they are perfect mousing apparatuses, so perfect and so delicately adjusted that no one of their organs could be altered, without the change involving the alteration of all the rest. Darwinism affirms on the contrary, that there was no express construction concerned in the matter; but that among the multitudinous variations of the Feline stock, many of which died out from want of power to resist opposing influences, some, the cats, were better fitted to catch mice than others, whence they throve and persisted, in proportion to the advantage over their fellows thus offered to them.

Far from imagining that cats exist 'in order' to catch mice well, Darwinism supposes that cats exist 'because' they catch mice well - mousing being not the end, but the condition, of their existence. And if the cat type has long persisted as we know it, the interpretation of the fact upon Darwinian principles would be, not that the cats have remained invariable, but that such varieties as have incessantly occurred have been, on the whole, less fitted to get on in the world than the existing stock. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

From religion ... they will learn the only true lesson of equality - the conviction that our destinies are not in our own hands; they will see that no situation in life is without its share of suffering; - and this perpetual reference to a higher power ought equally to teach the rich humility, and the poor devotion. ~ Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Never forget that if you leave your law to judges and your religion to bishops, you will presently find yourself without either law or religion. ~ George Bernard Shaw

According to Gandhi, the seven sins are wealth without works, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principle. Well, Hubert Humphrey may have sinned in the eyes of God, as we all do, but according to those definitions of Gandhi's, it was Hubert Humphrey without sin. ~ Jimmy Carter

In the world as it is, torn with agonies and dissensions, we need some direction for our souls which is never away from us; which, without enslaving us or narrowing our vision, enters into every detail of our life. Everyone longs for some such inward rule, a universal rule as big as the immeasurable law of love, yet as little as the narrowness of our daily routine. It must be so truly part of us all that it makes us all one, and yet to each one the secret of his own life with God.

To this need, the imitation of Our Lady is the answer; in contemplating her we find intimacy with God, the law which is the lovely yoke of the one irresistible love. ~ Caryll Houselander

So you see the whole trust of spirituality is to die without dying. Whereas the whole thrust of religion seems to be to live without living.

And these are two opposite streams of thought, of practice, of theology, of teaching, of achievement.

One lives without living, therefore he is dead even while he is alive. The other dies without dying, therefore he is alive even when he is dead. That is redemption.

So what is the difference between religion and spirituality? You must be able to say this when people ask you what is the difference, what are you talking of? This is religion. This is spirituality. ~ Parthasarathi Rajagopalachari

People develop a conscience with or without religion. Our culture teaches murder and cheating are wrong; we don't need religion to know this.
Guilt comes from a different place in our mental experience, a place that is independent of general cultural training and directly related to religious indoctrination. That is why two people may feel guilt about different things while being equally convinced that cheating and murder are wrong. ~ Darrel Ray

Despotism may be able to do without religion, but democracy cannot. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

A God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature. ~ Alexander Pope

I would be quite content to go to their children's bar mitzvahs, to marvel at their Gothic cathedrals, to 'respect' their belief that the Koran was dictated, though exclusively in Arabic, to an illiterate merchant, or to interest myself in Wicca and Hindu and Jain consolations. And as it happens, I will continue to do this without insisting on the polite reciprocal condition - which is that they in turn leave me alone. But this, religion is ultimately incapable of doing. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Pedantry in learning is like hypocrisy inn religion
a form of knowledge without the power of it. ~ Joseph Addison

The Old and New Testaments contain but one scheme of religion. Neither part of this scheme can be understood without the other. ~ Richard Cecil

Without marriage there will be no misery - and no laughter either. There will be so much silence ... it will be Nirvana on the earth! Marriage keeps thousands of things going on: the religion, the state, the nations, the wars, the literature, the movies, the science; everything, in fact, depends on the institution of marriage. ~ Rajneesh