Ethics

"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."

"All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought good; they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, when they had a mind to it and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other thing; for so had Gargantua established it. In all their rule and strictest tie of their order there was but this one clause to be observed, Do What Thou Wilt; because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour."

"Herren-Moral und Sklaven-Moral. [Master-morality and slave-morality.]"

"Dionysus used to laugh at professors who did research into the bad qualities of Ulysses yet knew nothing of their own; at musicians whose flutes were harmonious but not their morals; at orators whose studies led to talking about justice, not to being just."

"Though the customs be both good as customs, and suitable to him, yet to conform to custom, merely as custom, does not educate or develop in him any of the qualities which are the distinctive endowment of a human being. The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice. He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best. The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used. The faculties are called into no exercise by doing a thing merely because others do it, no more than by believing a thing only because others believe it."

"Society has made it so I have to get paid in order to do basic things like eat and be indoors and not be naked. Once that happened, morality’s bound to get slippery."

"When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men. When we foolishly minimize the internal of our lives and maximize the external, we sign the warrant for our own day of doom."

"The main objection to absolute morality is that even if there were absolute moral standards we should have no way of knowing whether we had found them."

"There is a principle, supposed to prevail among many, which is utterly incompatible with all virtue or moral sentiment; and as it can proceed from nothing but the most depraved disposition, so in its turn it tends still further to encourage that depravity. This principle is, that all benevolence is mere hypocrisy, friendship a cheat, public spirit a farce, fidelity a snare to procure trust and confidence; and that while all of us, at bottom, pursue only our private interest, we wear these fair disguises, in order to put others off their guard, and expose them the more to our wiles and machinations."

"Plausible moral theory must have at its center a concern for the lives and well-being of persons...It is presumptively wrong to do violence to innocent persons...a necessary condition of the justifiable pursuit of an any objectives in war by any means whatsoever...is that one be justified in engaging in such killing and violence in the first place."

"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."

"Our moral traditions, like many other aspects of our culture, developed concurrently with our reason, not as its product."

"Cowardice, caressed by Christianity, creates morality."

"We frolic in our emancipation from theology, but have we developed a natural ethic — a moral code independent of religion — strong enough to keep our instincts of acquisition, pugnacity, and sex from debasing our civilization into a mire of greed, crime, and promiscuity? Have we really outgrown intolerance, or merely transferred it from religious to national, ideological, or racial hostilities?"

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."

"To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision."

"There are two principles of established acceptance in morals; first, that self-interest is the mainspring of all of our actions, and secondly, that utility is the test of their value."

"Tut, tut, child," said the Duchess. "Everything's got a moral if only you can find it."

"Wisdom is purified by morality, and morality is purified by wisdom: where one is, the other is, the moral man has wisdom and the wise man has morality, and the combination of morality of wisdom is called the highest thing in the world."

"We cannot have right virtue without right conditions."

"Virtue is not a mushroom, that springeth up of itself in one night when we are asleep, or regard it not; but a delicate plant, that groweth slowly and tenderly, needing much pains to cultivate it, much care to guard it, much time to mature it, in our untoward soil, in this world's unkindly weather."

"Virtue consists in doing our duty in the several relations we sustain in respect to ourselves, to our fellow men, and to God, as known from reason, conscience, and revelation."

"What the world calls virtue is a name and a dream without Christ. The foundation of all human excellence must be laid deep in the blood of the Redeemer's cross, and in the power of His resurrection."

"No state of virtue is complete, however total the virtue, save as it is won by a conflict with evil, and fortified by the struggles of a resolute and even bitter experience."

"Everybody makes fun of virtue, which by now has, as its primary meaning, an affection of prudery practiced by hypocrites and the impotent."

"A small knowledge of human nature will convince us, that, with far the greatest part of mankind, interest is the governing principle; and that, almost, every man is more or less, under its influence. Motives of public virtue may for a time, or in particular instances, actuate men to the observance of a conduct purely disinterested; but they are not of themselves sufficient to produce a persevering conformity to the refined dictates and obligations of social duty. Few men are capable of making a continual sacrifice of all views of private interest, or advantage, to the common good. It is in vain to exclaim against the depravity of human nature on this account—the fact is so, the experience of every age and nation has proved it, and we must, in a great measure, ch⟨ange⟩ the constitution of man, before we can make it otherwise. ⟨No⟩ institution, not built on the presumptive truth of these ma⟨xims,⟩ can succeed."

"La vertu suppose la liberté, comme le transport d’un fardeau suppose la force active. Dans la contrainte point de vertu, et sans vertu point de religion. Rends-moi esclave, je n’en serai pas meilleur. Le souverain même n’a aucun droit d’employer la contrainte pour amener les hommes à la religion, qui suppose essentiellement choix et liberté. Ma pensée n’est pas plus soumise à l’autorité que la maladie ou la santé."

"Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more."

"I wanted to damage every man in the place, and every woman--and not in their bodies or in their estate, but in their vanity — the place where feeble and foolish people are most vulnerable. So I disguised myself and came back and studied you. You were easy game. You had an old and lofty reputation for honesty, and naturally you were proud of it — it was your treasure of treasures, the very apple of your eye. As soon as I found out that you carefully and vigilantly kept yourselves and your children out of temptation, I knew how to proceed. Why, you simple creatures, the weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire."

"Virtue cannot be separated into male and female. ... The difference is one of bodies not of souls."

"The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues."

"The tragedy of virtue is that the more obvious, boring, unoriginal, and sermonizing the proverb, the harder it is to implement."

"Unde clare intelligimus, quantum illi a vera virtutis aestimatione aberrant, qui pro virtute et optimis actionibus, tanquam pro summa servitute, summis praemiis a Deo decorari exspectant, quasi ipsa virtus Deique servitus non esset ipsa felicitas et summa libertas."

"In the memory of virtue is immortality,"

"Ipsa quidem virtus sibimet pulcherrima merces."

"Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame A mechanized automaton."

"The paths of virtue, though seldom those of worldly greatness, are always those of pleasantness and peace."

"People who are eccentric enough to be quite seriously virtuous understand each other everywhere, discover each other easily, and form a silent opposition to the ruling immorality that happens to pass for morality."

"As the saints and prophets were often forced to practise long vigils and fastings and prayers before their ecstasies would fall upon them and their visions would appear, so Virtue in its purest and most exalted form can only be acquired by means of severe and long continued culture of the mind. Persons with feeble and untrained intellects may live according to their conscience; but the conscience itself will be defective. … To cultivate the intellect is therefore a religious duty; and when this truth is fairly recognized by men, the religion which teaches that the intellect should be distrusted and that it should be subservient to faith, will inevitably fall."

"Men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompts them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honor. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition by which they formerly were inclined to virtue."

"God commands (people) to maintain justice, kindness, and proper relations with their relatives. He forbids them to commit indecency, sin, and rebellion."

"I shall turn away from My guidance those who are unjustly proud on the earth. And if they see every lesson, they will not believe in it; and if they see the way of rectitude, they ignore it and if they see the wrong teaching, they follow it directly. This is because they reject Our guidance and are heedless of them. And those who reject Our messages and the meeting of the Hereafter their undertakings become fruitless. Then how could they be rewarded from what they have done?"

"Why do we assert that virtue is unteachable, and thus make it non-existent?"

"Virtue itself does not have the same characteristics for all; we see good and evil change according to opinions and usages."

"Those who prefer idleness to labor, not only prevent the growths but also wither and destroy the roots. But those who consider inaction mischievous and are willing to labor, do as the husbandman does with fine young shoots. By constant care they rear the virtues into stems rising up to heaven, saplings ever blooming and immortal, bearing and never ceasing to bear the fruits of happiness, or as some hold, not so much bearing as being in themselves that happiness."

"What need is there of long journeying on the land or voyaging on the seas to seek and search for virtue, whose roots have been set by their Maker ever so near us, as the wise legislator of the Jews also says, “in thy mouth, in thy heart and in thy hand,” thereby indicating in a figure, words, thoughts and actions?"

"We can never enter upon the path to virtue unless we have hope as our guide and companion."

"Aristotle and the other classics observed that democracy was constantly prone to overestimate those virtues (manly courage, patriotism, piety) that were within the reach of the poor majority, while neglecting those virtues or excellences requiring unusual capacity, education, leisure, and broad political experience."

"Virtue is infinitely various. There is no situation in which a rational being is placed, from that of the best instructed Christian down to the condition of the rudest barbarian, which affords not room for moral agency; for the acquisition, exercise, and display of voluntary qualities, good and bad. Health and sickness, enjoyment and suffering, riches and poverty, knowledge and ignorance, power and subjection, liberty and bondage, civilisation and barbarity, have all their offices and duties, all serve for the formation of character: for when we speak of a state of trial, it must be remembered, that characters are not only tried, or proved, or detected, but that they are generated also, and formed, by circumstances. The best dispositions may subsist under the most depressed, the most afflicted fortunes."

"Between two vices, virtue does not always dwell, but often, but all too often only weakness and lame impotence."