“We have a war on our moral fiber. We will not allow the godless few to destroy our moral foundation.”

Context: There is an extraordinary silence in the West. Basically, Christianity in the Middle East and in Africa is being wiped out – I mean not just ideologically but physically, and people are being enslaved and killed because they are Christians. And your country and my country (Wales) are doing nothing about it.... This is a unique age. We don't want to be judgmental. Every other age that's come before us has believed exactly the opposite. I mean, T. S. Eliot referred to 'the common pursuit of true judgement.' Yes, that's what it's about. Getting our judgments right, getting them accurate.... We have lost our moral compass completely, and unless we find it, we’re going to lose our civilization. I think we're going to lose Western European Christian civilization anyway.

Speech at the Oxford Union (February 1850), from H. A. Morrah, The Oxford Union. 1823-1923 (1923), p. 139
1850s

As quoted in The Gospel According to Disney : Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust (2004) by Mark I. Pinsky, p. 2
Context: We like to have a point of view in our stories, not an obvious moral, but a worthwhile theme. … All we are trying to do is give the public good entertainment. That is all they want.

reported in Donald T. Phillips, Run To Win: Vince Lombardi on Coaching and Leadership (2001), p. 16.

2009, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (December 2009)
Context: We do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached — their fundamental faith in human progress — that must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.
For if we lose that faith — if we dismiss it as silly or naïve; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace — then we lose what's best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass.
Like generations have before us, we must reject that future. As Dr. King said at this occasion so many years ago, "I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the 'isness' of man's present condition makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal 'oughtness' that forever confronts him."
Let us reach for the world that ought to be — that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls.

As quoted in "Religion : Go Ye and Relax?" in TIME magazine (20 April 1953)

Sean Kelly, America's Tyrant: The CIA and Mobutu of Zaire, p. 194

Mansfield Park (1814)
Works, Mansfield Park