Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
Source: Letter from the Birmingham Jail
“You're so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.”
— Sinclair Lewis, book Babbitt
Source: Babbitt
Last update June 3, 2021. History
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Sinclair Lewis136
American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright 1885–1951Related quotes
“I think that moral earnestness is a good thing for any times, but particularly for these times.”
Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright
Program notes for a Pasadena Playhouse production of Stairs to the Roof (1947)
Context: When I look back at Stairs to the Roof... I see its faults very plainly, as plainly as you may see them, but still I do not feel apologetic about this play. Unskilled and awkward as I was at this initial period of my playwriting, I certainly had a moral earnestness which I cannot boast of today, and I think that moral earnestness is a good thing for any times, but particularly for these times. I wish I still had the idealistic passion of Benjamin Murphy! You may smile as I do at the sometimes sophomoric aspect of his excitement, but I hope you will respect, as I do, the purity of his feeling and the honest concern which he had in his heart for the basic problem of mankind, which is to dignify our lives with a certain freedom.
Kiefer Sutherland (1966) English-Canadian actor, director, producer, voice actor
Interview in The Observer http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,1429594,00.html (6 March 2005).
Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician
Gypsy
Song lyrics, Saint Dominic's Preview (1972)
Louis Zamperini (1917–2014) Italian-American middle distance runner
Variant: I think the hardest thing in life is to forgive. Hate is self destructive. If you hate somebody, you're not hurting the person you hate, you're hurting yourself. It's healing, actually, it's real healing...
Forgiveness.
Curtis LeMay (1906–1990) American general and politician
On the morality of the firebombing campaign http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/peopleevents/pandeAMEX61.html)
“Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine.”
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis
“How does something immoral, when done privately, become moral when it is done collectively?”
Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic
1980s, All It Takes is Guts: A Minority View (1987)
Context: How does something immoral, when done privately, become moral when it is done collectively? Furthermore, does legality establish morality? Slavery was legal; apartheid is legal; Stalinist, Nazi, and Maoist purges were legal. Clearly, the fact of legality does not justify these crimes. Legality, alone, cannot be the talisman of moral people.