Profoundly inspirational moral quotes will challenge the way you think, change the way you live and transform your whole life.
Famous Moral Quotes
Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness. Immanuel Kant
Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.
Morality is just a fiction used by the herd of inferior human beings to hold back the few superior men. Friedrich Nietzsche
I do not wish for any reward but to know I have done the right thing.
A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true. Socrates
What’s the use you learning to do right when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?
A scientist has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. Albert Einstein
Tut, tut, child! said the Duchess. Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.
Morality is only moral when it is voluntary. Lincoln Steffens
I know what’s legal, not what’s right. And I’ll stick to what’s legal.
A man that has lost moral sense is like a man in battle with both of his legs shot off: he has nothing to stand on. Henry Ward Beecher
A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.
The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Albert Einstein
You see, though nothing mattered to me, I could feel pain, for instance. If any one had struck me it would have hurt me. It was the same morally: if anything very pathetic happened, I should have felt pity just as I used to do in old days when there were things in life that did matter to me.
The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live. Ayn Rand
The sincere wish to be good is half the battle.
Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered. Graham Greene
And that’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.
We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right. Ronald Reagan
The crux of the matter is whether total war in its present form is justifiable, even when it serves a just purpose. Does it not have material and spiritual evil as its consequences which far exceed whatever good might result? When will our moralists give us an answer to this question?
Morality is truth in full bloom. Victor Hugo
You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you feel. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was.
Morality knows nothing of geographical boundaries, or distinctions of race. Herbert Spencer
You don’t know what I have to go through or over or under to do your job for you. I do it my way. I do my best to protect you and I may break a few rules, but I break them in your favor.
To love our neighbor as ourselves is such a truth for regulating human society, that by that alone one might determine all the cases in social morality. John Locke
It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in
Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons. Thomas Hardy
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
The quality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved. Aldous Huxley
Moral wounds have this peculiarity they may be hidden, but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart
The best way to teach morality is to make it a habit with children. Aristotle
Evil must be punished. Even in the face of Armageddon I shall not compromise.
Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality. Henry Ward Beecher
The morality of my activities escapes me.
Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. Ayn Rand
Pure logic can lead you to conclusions that are ethically wrong, whereas if you are moral and righteous, that will ensure that you don’t act shamefully.
Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality. Mahatma Gandhi
I hope you will grow up gentle and good, and never learn bad ways; do your work with a good will, lift your feet up well when you trot, and never bite or kick even in play.
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike. Oscar Wilde
Confidence. The secret to a man’s success.
There is nothing divine about morality; it is a purely human affair. Albert Einstein
I think television’s become a downright dangerous thing. It has no moral barometer whatsoever. If you want to talk about something that is all about money, just watch the television. Tom Petty
In the end, all men die. How you lived will be far more important to the Almighty than what you accomplished
The higher the building the lower the morals. Noel Coward
It has been said that the Negroes do not connect morals with religion. The historian would like to know what race or nation does such a thing. Certainly the whites with whom the Negroes have come into contact have not done so.
Children often have a much stronger concept of morality than adults. Nina Bawden
The answer is that there is no good answer. So as parents, as doctors, as judges, and as a society, we fumble through and make decisions that allow us to sleep at night because morals are more important than ethics, and love is more important than law.
Morality is of the highest importance but for us, not for God. Albert Einstein
I’m actually educated to think that morals and ethics do not necessarily go hand in hand.
Even if everyone else is not doing good, I alone will. Even if everyone else is doing wrong, I alone will not. Gautama Buddha
What makes a man a ‘sophist’ is not his faculty, but his moral purpose.
People of our type see in morality a purely human matter, albeit the most important in the human sphere. Albert Einstein
It was puzzling that such a muddy little river like the Rio Grande should make such a difference in terms of what was lawful and what not.
Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. Aristotle
Over the last few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. So I have tried to make it clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or even more, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.
I do not believe in the immortality of the individual. Albert Einstein
One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
Compassion is the basis of morality. Arthur Schopenhauer
Don’t you talk to me that way, he says. ‘Don’t you question me. You don’t know anything about my life
The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better. John Dewey
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
The greatest tragedy in mankind’s entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion. Arthur C. Clarke
Circumstances should never alter principles!
Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.
Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting.
Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.
All right then, I’ll go to hell
You cannot serve God and money. Matthew 6:24.
The instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man’s self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred.
For this, you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Ephesians 5:5
If I didn’t care about doing right and didn’t feel uncomfortable doing wrong, I should get capital.
It will be righteousness for us if we are careful to observe all this commandment before the Lord our God, just as He commanded us. Deuteronomy 6:25
I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12
Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one’s age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality.
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Galatians 5:16
With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to the truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.
I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Matthew 5:43-44
Let us first be as simple and as well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our brows, and take up a little life into our pores. Do not stay to be an overseer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies of the world.
Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. Romans 13:8
On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.
Do not be deceived: Bad company ruins good morals. Corinthians 15:33.
It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence.
Conventionality is not morality. Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Nowadays, with our modern mania for morality, everyone has to pose as a paragon of purity, incorruptibility, and all the other seven deadly virtues and what is the result? You all go over like ninepins one after the other.
That’s just the way: a person does a low down thing, and then he doesn’t want to take any consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain’t no disgrace. Mark Twain, The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn.
So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after. Ernest Hemingway, Death In The Afternoon
This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. Polonius, Hamlet’, Act I, Scene III.
Lady Chiltern is a woman of the very highest principles, I am glad to say. I am a little too old now, myself, to trouble about setting a good example, but I always admire people who do.
Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality. Arthur Schopenhauer, The Basis Of Morality
There is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is as hard as nails. C.S. Lewis
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Oscar Wilde
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man That function is smothered in surmise, And nothing is but what is not. Macbeth’, Act I, Scene III.
