Quotes on Morality

The only possible basis for a sound morality is mutual tolerance and respect: tolerance of one another’s customs and opinions; respect for one another’s rights and feelings; awareness of one another’s needs.

We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.

Science cannot destroy the consciousness of freedom, without which there is no morality and no art, but it can refute it.

Those who conduct themselves with morality, integrity and consistency need not fear the forces of inhumanity and cruelty.

To be ashamed of one's immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one's morality.

The ideas of right and wrong change with the experience of the race, and this change is wrought by the gradual ascertaining of consequences - of results.

It cannot be said too often that actions are good or bad in the light of consequences, and that a clear perception of consequences would control actions. That which increases the sum of human happiness is moral; and that which diminishes the sum of human happiness is immoral. . . . Blind, unreasoning obedience is the enemy of morality.

It may here be justly said, that genuine morality is preserved only in the school of adversity, and a state of continuous prosperity may easily prove a quicksand to virtue.

Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful.

Immorality, no less than morality, has at all times found support in religion.

If the Great Way perishes there will morality and duty. When cleverness and knowledge arise great lies will flourish. When relatives fall out with one another there will be filial duty and love. When states are in confusion there will be faithful servants.

All things come out of the one, and the one out of all things.

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.

Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.

Morality may keep you out of jail, but it takes the blood of Jesus Christ to keep you out of hell.

Must someone, some unseen thing, declare what is right for it to be right? I believe that my own morality - which answers only to my heart - is more sure and true than the morality of those who do right only because they fear retribution.

Unless the will is free, man has no freedom; and if he has no freedom he is not a moral agent, that is, he is incapable of moral action and also of moral character.

Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.

Without doubt the greatest injury of all was done by basing morals on myth. For, sooner or later, myth is recognized for what it is, and disappears. Then morality loses the foundation on which it has been built.

In nothing do humans approach so nearly to the gods as doing good to others.

Music directly imitates the passions or states of the soul...when one listens to music that imitates a certain passion, he becomes imbued withthe same passion; and if over a long time he habitually listens to music that rouses ignoble passions, his whole character will be shaped to an ignoble form.