quotations about morality
There are a great many ways in which, at the present moment, the church, by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering. And of course, as we know, it is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. "What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy."
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
I am, as I have always been, of the opinion that while the niceties of normal moral constraints should be our guides, they must not be our masters.
IAIN M. BANKS
Excession
It is safe to say that no other superstition is so detrimental to growth, so enervating and paralyzing to the minds and hearts of the people, as the superstition of Morality.
EMMA GOLDMAN
"Victims of Morality", Mother Earth, March 1913
Ah! In fact there are two moralities ... The petty one, the conventional one, the one devised by men, that keeps changing and bellows so loudly, making a commotion down here among us, in a perfectly pedestrian way ... But the other one, the eternal one, is all around and above us, like a landscape that surrounds us and the blue sky that gives us light.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Madame Bovary
Immorality, no less than morality, has at all times found support in religion.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Future of an Illusion
The system of morality which Socrates made it the business of his life to teach was raised upon the firm basis of religion. The first principles of virtuous conduct which are common to all mankind are, according to this excellent moralist, laws of God; and the conclusive argument by which he supports this opinion is, that no man departs from these principles with impunity.
WILLIAM ENFIELD
The History of Philosophy
The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.
GEORGES BATAILLE
attributed, "The Dualist Materialism of Georges Bataille", On Bataille
What counts as morality is visible; it is seen by others, and it is they who judge whether or not one's act is moral. In this visible and public world, being is equated with acting ... and it is this surface world of appearances that counts in the world of sociality. Being godly, conversely, is equated with feeling. To be godly is to have one's heart full of God, a notion reminiscent of the Orthodox concept of theosis, at which point the world of appearances, the world of acts, is no longer central. Godly morality, then, cannot be judged by others because it is not visible; it does not depend upon the public. Only God, and perhaps the one who is godly, can know what is in the heart.
JARRETT ZIGON
"Aleksandra Vladimirovna: Moral Narratives of a Russian Orthodox Woman", Religion, Morality, and Community in Post-Soviet Societies
Custom alone regulates morals.
ANATOLE FRANCE
The Revolt of the Angels
Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.
GRAHAM GREENE
A Sort of Life
This is the very heart of true morality--not to struggle, not to fight with any weapons, for one's self alone--but to struggle and to fight for the common interest, to wield the power of brain and good right arm if need be for one's family, for the ordered community of life, for the state, for moral principles, humanity, and the common good.
JOSEPH ALEXANDER LEIGHTON
The Nation and the Ethics of War and Preparedness: An Address
The Importance of Character Morality is not a political matter of negotiating and engineering compromises to suit various pressure groups. It is matter of genuinely discerning what is in the interests of people.
ROGER TRIGG
Morality Matters
In his own way each man must struggle, lest the moral law become a far-off abstraction utterly separated from his active life.
JANE ADDAMS
Twenty Years at Hull House
Moral virtues are so many sweet flowers strewed over a dead corpse, which hide the loathsomeness of it, but inspire not life into it.
JOHN FLAVEL
The Whole Works of the Reverend Mr. John Flavel
Most thoughtful people would agree that morality in the absence of policing is somehow more truly moral than the kind of false morality that vanishes as soon as the police go on strike or the spy camera is switched off, whether the spy camera is a real one monitored in the police station or an imaginary one in heaven.
RICHARD DAWKINS
The God Delusion
A choice is the root of all morality. Without choice, one can have no moral code. In a vacuum bereft of alternatives, there can be no values. And without values, there can be no reason for a code of ethics. What gives our lives meaning is which alternatives we choose. If we have no options, if we can take but one path, we are by definition slaves.
DAVE GALANTER
Troublesome Minds
There is in every moral being a faculty or sense by which he is enabled to distinguish right from wrong.
GEORGE SHARSWOOD
Commentaries on the Laws of England
We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.
MACAULAY
On Moore's Life of Lord Byron
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
H. G. WELLS
The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman
Until the mind can love, and admire, and trust, and hope, and endure, reasoned principles of moral conduct are seeds cast upon the highway of life which the unconscious passenger tramples into dust.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Prometheus Unbound