“Unless morality comes to public life, politics will remain what it is all over the world. My only interest in remaining in politics is to bring in morality. I’ve chosen the path of action and bhakti.”

Morarji Desai speaks about life and celibacy

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Unless morality comes to public life, politics will remain what it is all over the world. My only interest in remaining…" by Morarji Desai?
Morarji Desai photo
Morarji Desai 50
Former Indian Finance Minister, Freedom Fighters, Former pr… 1896–1995

Related quotes

Morarji Desai photo

“My only interest in remaining in politics is to bring in morality.”

Morarji Desai (1896–1995) Former Indian Finance Minister, Freedom Fighters, Former prime minister

Source: As quoted in My only interest in remaining in politics is to bring in morality: Morarji Desai https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/indiascope/voices/story/19801015-morarji-desai-my-only-interest-in-remaining-in-politics-is-to-bring-in-morality-821528-2014-01-08, India Today (15 October 1980).

Hans Morgenthau photo

“Political realism is aware of the moral significance of political action. It is also aware of the ineluctable tension between the moral command and the requirements of successful political action.”

Six Principles of Political Realism, § 4.
Politics Among Nations (1948)
Context: Political realism is aware of the moral significance of political action. It is also aware of the ineluctable tension between the moral command and the requirements of successful political action. And it is unwilling to gloss over and obliterate that tension and thus to obfuscate both the moral and the political issue by making it appear as though the stark facts of politics were morally more satisfying than they actually are, and the moral law less exacting than it actually is.

Vladimir Lenin photo

“There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Original: Морали в политике нет, а есть только целесообразность.
Source: As quoted in S. D. Mstislavskii (1925), Memoirs. https://twitter.com/DrRadchenko/status/1475027465588416512

Ivan Illich photo

“I do not believe that friendship today can flower out — can come out — of political life. I do believe that if there is something like a political life to be — to remain for us, in this world of technology — then it begins with friendship.”

Ivan Illich (1926–2002) austrian philosopher and theologist

We the People interview (1996)
Context: I do not believe that friendship today can flower out — can come out — of political life. I do believe that if there is something like a political life to be — to remain for us, in this world of technology — then it begins with friendship.
Therefore my task is to cultivate disciplined, self-denying, careful, tasteful friendships. Mutual friendships always. I-and-you and, I hope, a third one, out of which perhaps community can grow. Because perhaps here we can find what the good is.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo

“Thus only is he fully conscious; thus only is he a partaker of morality of a just and moral social and political life. For Truth is the Unity of the universal and subjective Will”

Lectures on the History of History Vol 1 p. 40-41 John Sibree translation (1857), 1914
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 1
Context: Subjective volition Passion is that which sets men in activity, that which effects" practical" realization. The Idea is the inner spring of action; the State is the actually existing, realized moral life. For it is the Unity of the universal, essential Will, with that of the individual; and this is “Morality." The Individual living in this unity has a moral "life; possesses a value that consists in this substantiality alone. Sophocles in his Antigone, says, "The divine commands are not of yesterday, nor of to-day; no, they have an infinite existence, and no one could say whence they came." The laws of morality are not accidental, but are the essentially Rational. It is the very object of the State that what is essential in the practical activity of men, and in their dispositions, should be duly recognized; that it should have a manifest existence, and maintain its position. It is the absolute interest of Reason that this moral Whole should exist; and herein lies the justification and merit of heroes who have founded states, however rude these may have been. In the history of the World, only those peoples can come under our notice which form a state. For it must be understood that this latter is the realization of Freedom, i. e. of the absolute final aim, and that it exists for its own sake. It must further be understood that all the worth which the human being possesses all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State. For his spiritual reality consists in this, that his own essence Reason is objectively present to him, that it possesses objective immediate existence for him. Thus only is he fully conscious; thus only is he a partaker of morality of a just and moral social and political life. For Truth is the Unity of the universal and subjective Will; and the Universal is to be found in the State, in its laws, its universal and rational arrangements. The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on Earth. We have in it, therefore, the object of History in a more definite shape than before; that in which Freedom obtains objectivity, and lives in the enjoyment of this objectivity. For Law is the objectivity of Spirit; volition in its true form. Only that will which obeys law, is free; for it obeys itself; it is independent and so free. When the State or our country constitutes a community of existence; when the subjective will of man submits to laws, the contradiction between Liberty and Necessity vanishes. The Rational has necessary existence, as being the reality and substance of things, and we are free in recognizing it as law, and following it as the substance of our own being. The objective and the subjective will are then reconciled, and present one identical homogeneous whole.

Pope Benedict XVI photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
African Spir photo

“Only a moral education based on free inner discipline can bring to bear a salutary action and lead to a true morality.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 59.

Related topics