Quotes about morale
page 22

“A lot of nonsense is spoken about morality. The world is full of people who have had affairs and most marriages, if you look at the statistics, break down, and does that make people evil? It's they've made bad decisions. It diminishes the situation to say someone is 'morally bankrupt' because they've had an affair.”

Paul Bettany (1971) British actor

Article http://www.paulbettany.net/articles/press.php?p=herald2

Marriage, People, World, Decision

“Vainly you talk about voting it down. When you have cast your millions of ballots, you have not reached the evil. It has fastened its root deep into the heart of the nation, and nothing but God’s truth and love can cleanse the land. We must change the moral sentiment.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country (October 22, 1847), Delivered at Market Hall, New York City, New York.
1840s, Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country (1847)

Love, God, Truth, Evil

“The question poses itself whether we should look on with folded arms while those Germans of the Baltic countries who, despite all the persecution, all the misery and all the difficulties have stuck to the German language and German culture, are being slaughtered…It would be incomprehensible if we, who have exerted ourselves for the freedom of ethnically foreign nations, failed to let our hearts beat first of all for the Balts, who are our own flesh and blood…If to-day you go to Riga or Mitau, you will be confronted by such a pure, unadulterated Germanism that sometimes you would wish it could be united with Germany…When, in addition to Courland, we have also occupied Latvia and Estonia, then I hope that the day will also come when this old German soil will lie under the protection of the great Reich…This does not mean annexation of these territories. But it does mean a free Baltic in close dependence on Germany, under our military, moral, political, and cultural protection. I think it would be one of the finest aims of this world war if we could merge this piece of loyal Germanism with ourselves as intimately as it desires to be merged…The Baltic Germans have completely preserved their German culture: a shining example for the Americanized grandchildren of German grandfathers.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Speech in the Reichstag (19 February 1918), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), pp. 149-150.
1910s

War, Lie, World, Hope

“There is a radical dualism between the empirical nature of man and its moral nature.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

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

Nature

“Beauty vanishes like a vapor,
Preach the men of musty morals.”

Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford (1835–1921) American author

Evanescence (1900).

Men, Beauty

“A free society is a community of free beings, bound by the laws of sympathy and by the obligations of family love. It is not a society of people released from all moral constraint–for that is precisely the opposite of a society. Without moral constraint there can be no cooperation, no family commitment, no long-term prospects, no hope of economic, let alone social, order.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"The Limits of Liberty," http://spectator.org/42528_back-basics/ The American Spectator (December 2008).

Love, People, Family, Law

“Those who argue for a nonpolitical reading of Paul can point out that one of the first things he addresses in the beginning of the letter to the Romans is sexual perversion—usually seen as a moral rather than a political issue. Through must of its history, the church has picked up this concern and focused on morality instead of politics. Everything changes, however, if we realize that we are presented here with a false dichotomy, now as then. In Paul's world, it would have been understood that sexuality was tied up with power since one of the prerogatives of the powerful was sexual penetration. Certain homosexual activities in Paul's time could thus be considered displays of the inequality of power. Equally important, the sexual escapades of the emperor were well known to the people. In Romans 1:31 Paul reproaches rebelliousness against parents; most of his readers would have been aware of Emperor Nero's incestuous relations with his mother. Not even sexuality and politics can be separated in Paul's thinking.”

Joerg Rieger (1963) divinity school scholar

Source: Christ and Empire (2007), pp. 45-46

People, World, History, Thinking

“The theory that Divine Providence does not extend to man, and that there is no difference between man and other animals, implies very bad notions about God; it disturbs all social order, removes and destroys all the moral and intellectual virtues of man.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.17

God, Animals

“I heard my mother remark occasionally: 'A man who accepts a job under anyone is a slave.' That impression became so indelibly fixed that even after my marriage I refused all positions. I met expenses by investing my family endowment in land. Moral: Good and positive suggestions should instruct the sensitive ears of children. Their early ideas long remain sharply etched.”

Yukteswar Giri (1855–1936) Indian yogi and guru

Autobiography of a Yogi (1946)

Marriage, Children, Family, Idea

“While posing as the pursuer of thieves, and the restorer of stolen goods, the government is actually the biggest thief of all. In fact, progressives have turned a large body of Americans—basically, Democratic voters—into accessories of theft by convincing them that they are doing something just and moral by picking their fellow citizens' pockets.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, America: Imagine a World without Her (2014), Ch. 14

“Suetonius, in holding up a mirror to those Caesars of diverting legend, reflects not only them but ourselves: half-tamed creatures, whose great moral task is to hold in balance the angel and the monster within – for we are both, and to ignore this duality is to invite disaster.”

Sueton (70–126) Roman historian

Gore Vidal, On Our Own Now (London, 1976), p. 72.
Criticism

Angels

“Savage – There is only one way fit for a man – Heroism, or Master-Morality, or Violence. All the other people in between are ploughing the sand.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Pilgrim’s Regress 100
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

People, Way

“It’s quite simple, all who have worked with known predators should do 3 simple things. 1) Believe survivors 2) Apologize for putting your careers and wallets before what was right. 3) Grab a spine and denounce. If you do not do these things you are still moral cowards.”

Rose McGowan (1973) American actress

16 November 2017 https://twitter.com/rosemcgowan/status/931338274542460928

“Historically, moves to new ways of moral decision making depend on and occur in pockets of people of good will, who can explore with each other novel ways of relating without threatening or being threatened.”

R. Edward Freeman (1951) American academic

Source: A stakeholder approach to strategic management, 1984, p. 64 as cited in: George Cheney, Steve May, Debashish Munshi (2010) Handbook of Communication Ethics. p. 108

People, Way, Decision, Dependency

“Hegel’s … deepest objections to the view of knowledge as method and power, as “controlling knowledge” (Scheler, Tillich) or “the logic of domination” (Marcuse), are moral. He agrees with Schiller that “utility is the great idol of the times.””

Merold Westphal (1940)

Source: History and Truth in Hegel’s Phenomenology (1979), p. 4

Knowledge, Time

“In today's wars, there are no morals. We believe the worst thieves in the world today and the worst terrorists are the Americans. We do not have to differentiate between military or civilian. As far as we are concerned, they are all targets.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

As quoted in "The Most Wanted Man in the World" http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101010924/wosama.html (16 September 2001), Time magazine profile. 2000s, 2001

War, World

“On every hand we hear that the quality of immigration is not what it used to be. This is unwisely construed as meaning that we must withdraw our faith in mankind and raise rigid barriers always. Such a confession would declare the weakness of our institutions and undermine our faith in the principles on which the government is founded. The continuance of our faith is not interrupted by our intense conviction that there is no room in our midst for those whose direct purpose is political, social, or economic mischief, and whose presence jeopardizes the physical or moral health of the community. Certain laws of supply and demand take care, in normal times, of the coming and going of the alien. But it may be that today conditions abroad are so intolerable that men and women run chances in coming over without knowing the actual conditions they must face. Wise immigration laws would deal with such a pressure.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)

Women, Men, Health, Faith

“The Helsinki Treaty confirms yet again the principle of freedom of conscience. However, a stern and relentless struggle will have to be carried on if the contents of this treaty are to be given reality. In the Soviet Union today many thousands of people are persecuted because of their convictions, both by judicial and by non-judicial organs, for the sake of their religious beliefs and for their desire to bring their children up in the spirit of religion, for reading and disseminating - often only to a few acquaintances - literature which is unwelcome to the State, but which in accordance with ordinary democratic practice is absolutely legitimate, e. g. religious literature, and for attempts to leave the country. On the moral plane the persecution of persons who have defended other victims of unjust treatment, who have worked to publish and in particular to distribute information regarding the persecution and trials of persons with deviant opinions, and of conditions in places of internment, is particularly important.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Nobel Peace Prize Speech (1975)

Children, People, Religion, Literature

“Men and women grow older in this world of ours, and as the years advance they change. Of all the changes that they undergo those of their moral natures are the most painful to watch. The boy changes into the man, and there is something lost which never seems to come back again. It is like the first glow of the morning that passes away — like the bloom on the blossom that never is restored. Your grown-up boy is wise in bad things which he used to know nothing about. His life no longer sounds with a perfectly clear ring, or shines with a perfectly white lustre. He is no longer unspotted.”

Phillips Brooks (1835–1893) American clergyman and author

"Unspotted from the World"

Life, Women, Men, Pain

“The Prophet is essentially a one-sided man. A certain moral idea fills his whole being, masters his every feeling and sensation, engrosses his whole attention. He can only see the world through the mirror of his idea; he desires nothing, strives for nothing, except to make every phase of the life around him an embodiment of that idea in its perfect form. His whole life is spent in fighting for this ideal with all his strength; for its sake he lays waste his powers, unsparing of himself, regardless of the conditions of life and the demands of the general harmony. His gaze is fixed always on what ought to be in accordance with his own convictions; never on what can be consistently with the general condition of things outside himself.”

Ahad Ha'am (1856–1927) Hebrew essayist and thinker

Source: Selected Essays (1904), "Priest and Prophet" (1893), p. 130

Life, World, Feeling, Idea

“Roswell Gardiner has never wavered in his faith, from the time when his feelings were awakened by the just view of his own insignificance, as compared to the power of God! He then learned the first, great lesson in religious belief, that of humility; without which no man can be truly penitent, or truly a Christian. He no longer thought of measuring the Deity with his narrow faculties, or of setting up his blind conclusions, in the face of positive revelations. He saw that all must be accepted, or none; and there was too much evidence, too much inherent truth, a morality too divine, to allow a mind like his to reject the gospel altogether. With Mary at his side, he has continued to worship the Trinity, accepting its mysteries in an humble reliance on the words of inspired men.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

The Sea Lions or The Lost Sealers (1849)

Men, God, Truth, Faith

“Whenever kingship approaches tyranny it is near its end, for by this it becomes ripe for division, change of dynasty, or total destruction, especially in a temperate climate … where men are habitually, morally and naturally free.”

Nicole Oresme (1323–1382) French philosopher

Source: De Moneta (c. 1360), Ch. 25: That a Tyrant cannot be lasting

Men, Nature, Change

“The hordes of words that fill our books proclaim our ignorance, reveal the obscurities that flood our knowledge. If we were perfectly enlightened, our moral books would contain only maxims and our books on physics and spirituality would contain only axioms and facts. Everything else is clutter and shows no more than our gropings, our efforts, and our difficulties.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Books, Knowledge, Effort

“I do reproach a school of modern philosophers for wishing to force, so to speak, impersonal philosophy, a moral science, indifferent nature, to speak the same language as our aspirations and our passions — even, I grant, our generous aspirations, our noble passions. Our innate and psychic tendencies (in the moral, social, and religious realms) are phenomena for science to record and authenticate, not to justify or legitimize. The epoch of scholasticism ought to be left behind for good and all.”

Albert Schinz (1870–1943) American writer

Anti-Pragmatism; an Examination into the Respective Rights of Intellectual Aristocracy and Social Democracy (1909), pp. xvii-xviii.

School, Nature, Passion, Science

“My views may seem to ignore a moral imperative that businesses should follow virtuous principles, whether or not it is most profitable for them to do so. Instead I prefer to recognize that, throughout human history, […] government regulation has arisen precisely because it was found to be necessary for the enforcement of moral principles. Invocation of moral principles is a necessary first step for eliciting virtuous behavior, but that alone is not a sufficient step.”

Jared Diamond book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Source: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), Chapter "Big businesses and the environment: different conditions, different outcomes", section "Businesses and the public" (Penguin Books, 2011, pages 484-485, ISBN 978-0-241-95868-1.

Behavior, History, Business

“That one man can run faster than another is no reason to prevent the latter from entering the race. Indeed, until the race is run, how do we know who can run faster? In comparing the known inequalities among whites to the alleged inequalities between blacks and whites, Wilson illuminates the logical and moral irrelevance of the distinction of the races in considering the principles of republican government. Nevertheless, this topic could not be addressed in the pure light of reason and nature, because public opinion, North or South, would not permit it.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

Source: 2000s, A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (2000), pp. 228–229

Nature, Light

“Dialogue in Hell:
First Dialogue

Machiavelli:…I am less preoccupied by what is good and moral than by what is useful and necessary.
…I will tell you that, as a witness in my homeland of the fickleness and the cowardice of the populace, of its innate taste for slavery, of its incapacity to conceive and to respect the conditions of free life; it is to my eyes a blind force which dissolves itself sooner or later, if it is not in the hands of a single man that it would never be able to administer, nor to judge, nor to make war….”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Life, War, Hell

“[Mussolini] forcibly denounced those socialists who thought religion a matter for individual conscience or had their children baptized. Science had proved that God did not exist and the Jesus of history was an ignorant Jew whose family thought him mad, and who was a pigmy compared to the Buddha. Religion, he said, was a disease of the psyche, an epidemic to be cured by psychiatrists, and Christianity in particular was vitiated by preaching the senseless virtues of resignation and cowardice, whereas the new socialist morality should celebrate violence and rebellion.”

Denis Mack Smith (1920–2017) British historian

Source: Mussolini, 1983, p. 8

God, Children, Disease, Family

“It contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Introduction: The Custom-House
The Scarlet Letter (1850)

Health

“Statism is but socialized dishonesty; it is feathering the nests of some with feathers coercively plucked from others - on the grand scale. There is no moral — only a legal — distinction between petty thievery and political Robin Hoodism, which is to say, there is no moral difference between the act of a pickpocket and the progressive income tax or any other piece of socialization.”

Leonard E. Read (1898–1983) American academic

Anything That's Peaceful https://books.google.com/books?id=4wWA1vexxdsC&pg=PA74&lpg=PA74&dq=%22is+but+socialized+dishonesty;+it+is+feathering+the+nests+of+some+with+feathers+coercively+plucked+from+others+-+on+the+grand+scale.%22&source=bl&ots=1I89gu9Jmo&sig=8jpm9FnYbB87c8BB_twGQw8CC7o&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjIuZ_58vLTAhXD4SYKHbHVAncQ6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q=%22is%20but%20socialized%20dishonesty%3B%20it%20is%20feathering%20the%20nests%20of%20some%20with%20feathers%20coercively%20plucked%20from%20others%20-%20on%20the%20grand%20scale.%22&f=false Anything That's Peaceful (1964)

“Immorality is the morality of those who are having a better time. You will never convince the average farmer's mare that the late Maud S. was not dreadfully immoral.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

Time

“As governor, I experienced the vitality of life in a booming and free Asian city, saw routinely the best and worst aspects of human nature, and was made to revisit some of the principles in which I have always believed but to which I had rarely given much thought previously. In the darker hours of occasionally fretful nights I found myself face to face with the moral dimensions of political action to a greater extent than ever before.”

Chris Patten book East and West

Chris Patten, East and West: The Last Governor of Hong Kong on Power, Freedom and the Future, Pan Books, second edition, 1999, page 3.

Life, Nature, Night

“I told you so. Seems like I'm out here a lot saying that to you people, right? I know it seems like a lot, but the truth is i said that i would beat Jeff, and i did. I told you so. I said that i would get rid of Jeff Hardy FOREVER, and i did. I told you so. And then i said i would make The Undertaker tap out to the Anaconda Vice, and you laughed! But then i did just that. And contrary to what you people believe, i didn't come out here to brag about becoming the first and ONLY man in history to make the Phenom, The Undertaker, tap out. I came out here to confront The Undertaker. I came out here to confront The Undertaker in MY ring, or my yard, if you will. I came out here to stick MY World Heavyweight Championship in his face, and look him in the eye, and say to him, I TOLD YOU SO! But, of course, he's conveniently not here right now, so instead, i think i'll address all of you people. It's come to my attention that you people think I have been preaching to you. Alright, we'll call a space a spade. The truth is, YES i have. Because you people need a good preaching to. You people need somebody you can look up to, you need a leader who isn't morally corrupt, and you need someone that's righteous, not self-righteous. And i know what your all gonna do next, your gonna do exactly what your hero, the Undertaker, did, your gonna give up! Hell, by the looks at half of you, you already have. I mean, what kind of life is it that you live? What kind of existence do you have where you wake up in the morning and you have to pop a pill to help crawl out of bed? And then, then you ravage your body with pitchers of beer, and that's supposed to somehow heal your broken self-worth. And then you just make excuses about inhaling poison into your lungs just to calm your nerves. And then, at the end of your sad, pathetic, lonely day, your in need of another pill to make you forget everything. You need a pill to help you sleep. (The crowd boos as Punk mouths "you make me sick") You are all just a legion of inebriated zombies, waiting in line at the pharmacy with your hand out, begging and pleading for that newest anti-depressant that you think is going to put an artificial smile on your face. You scratch and you claw for scapegoats for all of your inadequacies, and believe me, you have a LOT of inadequacies. And don't tell me that you self medicate yourself to forget about it all, don't tell me you don't self medicate to hide from all your inadequacies, don't tell me you don't do it. Because if you do, well then your a liar too. Your lying to yourself, your lying to yourselves right now. Your lying to the person next to you, you go home and you lie to your family, and it's insulting because right now your lying to ME. And i can see right through all of you people and your lies, because i am not a liar. I am a man who means what he says and says what he means. What i am is a prophet, i am the choice of a new generation, i am a champion that everybody can finally be proud of, i am the first and only straight-edge World Heavyweight Champion in history. And if your not straight-edge like me, well, that just means i'm better than you!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

September 18, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Life, People, Truth, Lie

“The matriarchal society is thus the decadent and broken. The strongly matriarchal character of Negro life is due to the moral failure of Negro men, their failure to be responsible, to support the family, or to provide authority. The same is true of American Indian tribes which are also matriarchal today.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), p. 203

Life, Men, Family, Failure

“All men of enlightened understandings, who acknowledge the moral government of God, must also acknowledge, that vice must offend and virtue delight him. In short they must, more or less, assent to the Scripture declaration, “without holiness no man shall see the Lord.””

William Wilberforce (1759–1833) English politician

Source: Real Christianity (1797), p. 237.

Men, God, Understanding

“For Immanuel Kant, the term anthropology embraced all the human sciences, and laid the foundation of familiar knowledge we need, to build solidly grounded ideas about the moral and political demands of human life. Margaret Mead saw mid-twentieth-century anthropology as engaged in a project no less ambitious than Kant's own, and her Terry Lectures on Continuities in Cultural Evolution provide an excellent point to enter into her reflections.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1960s, Continuities in Cultural Evolution (1964), p. xii

Life, Idea, Knowledge, Science

“Good will is obviously present also in the case where the innocently goodhearted person acts beneficently because she enjoys it. As already mentioned, certain moral psychologies even encourage us to think that this innocent good-heartedness is the only thing we could possibly mean by a “good will.” Kant’s claim is that it is not, and that the true value of good will “shines forth more brightly” when it is found in the contrasting case, where it must struggle to overcome adversity. This claim certainly has an air of paradox about it, because it means that what is most essentially deserving of moral esteem is found only in cases where the moral agent is faced with conflicting motivations, or at least with an absence of any natural, spontaneous motivation to do the right thing.”

Allen W. Wood (1942) academic

Kantian Ethics (2008)

Motivation, Nature, Thinking, Personality

“The idea that the citizen owes loyalty to a country, a territory, a jurisdiction and all those who reside within it — the root assumption of democratic politics, and one that depends upon the nation as its moral foundation - that idea has no place in the minds and hearts of many who now call themselves citizens of European states.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

England and the Need for Nations (2006)

Idea, Heart, Dependency, Loyalty

“Opinions upon moral questions are more often the expression of strongly felt expediency than of careful ethical reasoning; and the opinions so formed by one generation become the conscientious convictions or the sacred instincts of the next.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Saturday Review, 29, 1865, p. 532
1860s

Question

“A Moral Reckoning is, among its other faults, a 352-page exercise in intellectual bad manners. Reading it is like listening for three days to Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe.”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Jesus, Jews and the Shoah: A Moral Reckoning by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (2003)

Shoe, Exercises, Reading

“Anybody who claims that people don’t cherry-pick their morality from the Bible, choosing that which comports with their extra-Biblical notions of what’s good and bad, is simply blind.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" Readers’ beefs of the week http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/09/13/readers-beefs-of-the-week-3/" September 13, 2014

People

“It may be from some moral obliquity in myself, or from some strange disease; but for me, and I should think too for every human being in whose breast a human heart is beating, to know that one single creature is in that dreadful place would make a hell of heaven itself. And they have hearts in heaven, for they love there.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Letter II
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Love, Disease, Hell, Thinking

“The essential difference between that knowledge which is, and that which is not conclusive evidence of Christian character, lies in this: the object of the one is the agreement of the several parts of a theological proposition; the object of the other is moral beauty, the intrinsic loveliness of God and Divine things. The sinner sees and hates; the saint sees and loves.”

Gardiner Spring (1785–1873) American clergyman

Quote reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 365.

Love, God, Hate, Beauty

“When I got back to Ornans, I spent a few days hunting. I quite like the subject of violent exercise... It makes the most surprising painting you can imagine. There are thirty life-size figures in it. It is the moral and physical history of my studio”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

Quote from a letter of Courbet to Bruyas, (December 1854); as cited in 'Courbet Speaks', 'Courbet-dossier', Musée-dOrsay http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/courbet-dossier/courbet-speaks.html 1840s - 1850s

Life, Exercises, Imagination, History

“We might perhaps be more tolerant of rulers turning preachers if they were moral giants. But what citizen looks at the government today thinking how wise and virtuous it is? Public respect for politicians has long been declining, even as the population at large has been seduced into responding to each new problem by demanding that the government should act. That we should be constantly demanding that an institution we rather despise should solve large problems argues a notable lack of logic in the demos. The statesmen of times past have been replaced by a set of barely competent social workers eager to help 'ordinary people' solve daily problems in their lives. This strange aspiration is a very large change in public life. The electorates of earlier times would have responded with derision to politicians seeking power in order to solve our problems. Today, the demos votes for them.”

Kenneth Minogue (1930–2013) Australian political theorist

Introduction, p. 3
The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life

Life, People, Problem, Thinking

“The industrial animal factory offers a nightmarish glimpse of what capitalism is capable of in the absence of any moral or regulatory constraint whatsoever.”

Michael Pollan book The Omnivore's Dilemma

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (New York: The Penguin Press, 2006), p. 318.

Animals

“We all have the drum major instinct. We all want to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade. … And the great issue of life is to harness the drum major instinct. It is a good instinct if you don't distort it and pervert it. Don't give it up. Keep feeling the need for being important. Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be the first in love. I want you to be the first in moral excellence. I want you to be the first in generosity.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Drum Major Instinct (1968)

Love, Life, Feeling

“We are apt… to forget that the moral force of Christianity was usually only one factor in producing such a change as the abolition of slavery or piracy, and that over against the benign influences of the Church must be set the malign and divisive influences which she created by persecuting zeal, intellectual intolerance, or religious wars. In short, we must soberly face the fact that a good many deductions have to be made from the popular panegyrics, and that the Church has not accomplished all that is often claimed for her.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 149

War, Change, Forgetting

“It is a dreadful picture—this picture of Italy under the rule of the oligarchy. There was nothing to bridge over or soften the fatal contrast between the world of the beggars and the world of the rich. The more clearly and painfully this contrast was felt on both sides—the giddier the height to which riches rose, the deeper the abyss of poverty yawned—the more frequently, amidst that changeful world of speculation and playing at hazard, were individuals tossed from the bottom to the top and again from the top to the bottom. The wider the chasm by which the two worlds were externally divided, the more completely they coincided in the like annihilation of family life—which is yet the germ and core of all nationality—in the like laziness and luxury, the like unsubstantial economy, the like unmanly dependence, the like corruption differing only in its tariff, the like criminal demoralization, the like longing to begin the war with property. Riches and misery in close league drove the Italians out of Italy, and filled the peninsula partly with swarms of slaves, partly with awful silence. It is a terrible picture, but not one peculiar to Italy; wherever the government of capitalists in a slave-state has fully developed itself, it has desolated God's fair world in the same way as rivers glisten in different colours, but a common sewer everywhere looks like itself, so the Italy of the Ciceronian epoch resembles substantially the Hellas of Polybius and still more decidedly the Carthage of Hannibal's time, where in exactly similar fashion the all-powerful rule of capital ruined the middle class, raised trade and estate-farming to the highest prosperity, and ultimately led to a— hypocritically whitewashed—moral and political corruption of the nation. All the arrant sins that capital has been guilty of against nation and civilization in the modern world, remain as far inferior to the abominations of the ancient capitalist-states as the free man, be he ever so poor, remains superior to the slave; and not until the dragon-seed of North America ripens, will the world have again similar fruits to reap.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Italy under the Oligarchy
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Life, God, War, World

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1930s, Second inaugural address (1937)

“If the subjectivist view hold true, thinking cannot be of any help in determining the desirability of any goal in itself. The acceptability of ideals, the criteria for our actions and beliefs, the leading principles of ethics and politics, all our ultimate decisions are made to depend upon factors other than reason. They are supposed to be matters of choice and predilection, and it has become meaningless to speak of truth in making practical, moral or esthetic decisions.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Source: Eclipse of Reason (1947), pp. 7-8.

Truth, Thinking, Decision, Help

“A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter IV, "Intellect", p. 385.

Religion, Beauty, Success

“Touching the secrets of the heart and the successions of time, doth make a just and sound difference between the manner of the exposition of the Scriptures and all other books. For it is an excellent observation which hath been made upon the answers of our Saviour Christ to many of the questions which were propounded to Him, how that they are impertinent to the state of the question demanded: the reason whereof is, because not being like man, which knows man’s thoughts by his words, but knowing man’s thoughts immediately, He never answered their words, but their thoughts. Much in the like manner it is with the Scriptures, which being written to the thoughts of men, and to the succession of all ages, with a foresight of all heresies, contradictions, differing estates of the Church, yea, and particularly of the elect, are not to be interpreted only according to the latitude of the proper sense of the place, and respectively towards that present occasion whereupon the words were uttered, or in precise congruity or contexture with the words before or after, or in contemplation of the principal scope of the place; but have in themselves, not only totally or collectively, but distributively in clauses and words, infinite springs and streams of doctrine to water the Church in every part. And therefore as the literal sense is, as it were, the main stream or river, so the moral sense chiefly, and sometimes the allegorical or typical, are they whereof the Church hath most use; not that I wish men to be bold in allegories, or indulgent or light in allusions: but that I do much condemn that interpretation of the Scripture which is only after the manner as men use to interpret a profane book.”

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

XXV. (17)
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

Men, Secret, Books, Age

“Now, what about this negro equality of which we hear so much, in and out of Congress? It is claimed by the Democrats of today, that Jefferson has uttered an untruth in the declaration of principles which underlie our government. I still abide by the democracy of Jefferson, and avow my belief that all men are created equal. Equal how? Not in physical strength, not in symmetry of form and proportion, not in graceful of motion, or loveliness of feature, not in mental endowment, moral susceptibility, and emotional power. Not socially equal, not of necessity politically equal. Not this, but every human being equally entitled to his life, his liberty, and the fruit of his toil. The Democratic Party deny this fundamental doctrine of our government, and say that there is a certain class of human beings which have no rights. If you maliciously kill them, it is no murder. If you take away their liberty, it is no crime. If you deprive them of their earnings, it is no theft. No rights which another is bound to regard. Was there ever so much diabolism compressed into one sentence? Why do |the Democrats come to us with their complaints about the negroes? I for one feel no responsibility in the matter. I did not create them; was not consulted.”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838&ndash;64 https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA177 (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 177 1850s, The Fanaticism of the Democratic Party (February 1859)

Life, Men, Feeling, Democracy

“After our victory in Afghanistan and the defeat of the oppressors who had killed millions of Muslims, the legend about the invincibility of the superpowers vanished. Our boys no longer viewed America as a superpower. So, when they left Afghanistan, they went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war. They had thought that the Americans were like the Russians, so they trained and prepared. They were stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American soldier. America had entered with 30,000 soldiers in addition to thousands of soldiers from different countries in the world. … As I said, our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

1990s, ABC interview (1998)

War, World, Boy, Victory

“Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Letter to the downthrown Czechoslovak Communist Party chairman Alexander Dubček (August 1969), as translated in Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 5 : The Politics of Hope, p. 115

Hope, Time

“Our visions of an immigrant community and an immigrant experience are highly moralistic. I feel like our reality is William Gibson meets Toni Morrison, yet the way we’re interpreting the morality of immigrants is Chaucer.”

Junot Díaz (1968) Dominican-American writer

Lunch with the FT interview (July 2014) https://www.ft.com/content/a438f98e-01f4-11e4-bb71-00144feab7de

Way, Feeling, Communication, Reality

“You have to have some kind of morality,” he said.
“Sure. Like you have to have motives for doing anything at all. Still, I think we’re beyond that smug sort of code which proclaimed crusades and burned heretics and threw dissenters into concentration camps. We need more personal and less public honor.”

Poul Anderson book Brain Wave

Source: Brain Wave (1954), Chapter 20 (p. 152)

Motivation, Thinking, Personality

“Economics, we learn in the history of thought, only became a science by escaping from the casuistry and moralizing of medieval thought.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1970s, Economics As a Science, 1970, p. 117

History, Learning, Science

“Every decade or so, the world is tested by a crisis so grave that it breaks the mould: one so horrific and inhumane that the response of politicians to it becomes emblematic of their generation —their moral leadership or cowardice, their resolution or incompetence. It is how history judges us.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

Don’t leave Syria to become a graveyard — this generation’s responsibility to the world (13 October 2015)

World, History

“The economic success of the Western world is a product of its moral philosophy and practice. The economic results are better because the moral philosophy is superior. It is superior because it starts with the individual, with his uniqueness, his responsibility, and his capacity to choose. Surely this is infinitely preferable to the Socialist-statist philosophy which sets up a centralised economic system to which the individual must conform, which subjugates him, directs him and denies him the right to free choice. Choice is the essence of ethics: if there were no choice, there would be no ethics, no good, no evil; good and evil have meaning only insofar as man is free to choose.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to the Zurich Economic Society “The New Renaissance” (14 March 1977) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103336 Leader of the Opposition

World, Evil, Success

“War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to 'a war against' whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off. This is puerile, misleading, and degrading. In stories, it evades any solution but violence and offers the reader mere infantile reassurance. All too often the heroes of such fantasies behave exactly as the villains do, acting with mindless violence, but the hero is on the “right” side and therefore will win. Right makes might.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Afterword to the 2012 edition.
Earthsea Books, A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)

Life, War, World

“Why does a man refuse to believe? Because he has confidence in himself; because he has not a sense of his own sins; because he has not love in his heart to his Lord and Saviour. Unbelief men are responsible for. Unbelief is criminal because it is a moral act — an act of the whole nature. Belief or unbelief is a test of a man's whole spiritual condition, just because it is the whole being, affections, will, conscience, and all, as well as the understanding, which are concerned in it.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 608.

Love, Men, Confidence, Understanding

“The idea of liberty, or the liberty which is a blessing, being an emancipation of the passions from moral restraint had no place in the constitutional doctrine of the novus ordo seclorum. The liberty which is a blessing must be good for the one who possesses it. It must therefore be a good in the sight of God, who is the source of blessings. Such a good must point to felicity, whether in this world or the next, as its consummation. By calling the advantages of liberty "blessings," the Constitution, which in certain respects makes perhaps the most radical break in all human history with all that has gone before it, nonetheless, in its understanding of the connection between happiness and virtue, aligns itself decisively with traditional moral philosophy and moral theology.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The American Founding as the Best Regime (2002)

God, Happiness, World, History

“The fact is that it is the land that has made us all Americans, and the moral is that it is the land which must be preserved to save our Americanism. Soil erosion, forest exploitation, and wildlife destruction are more insidious anti-American activities than Communism, Fascism, or foreign propagandizing.”

Howard Zahniser (1906–1964) American environmentalist

"Indoors and Out", Nature Magazine number 33 (May 1940) p. 255, quoted in Mark Harvey, Wilderness Forever (2005) p. 45

Communication

“Why do the voters let all this happen? It is because Westerners like to be ‘good’ people and believe that their fellow men are equally good people. It is because they have humane values.” “It is because the moral and ethical values of Western man have made him helpless in the face of wickedness and immorality.”

Jussi Halla-aho (1971) Finnish Slavic linguist, blogger and a politician

Jussi Halla-aho (2006), translation published in the blog Multicultural Discourse in Finland and Sweden http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.ch/2006/08/multicultural-discourse-in-finland-and.html, August 30, 2006 2005-09

Men, People

“Morals: They’re nothing but a coded survival instinct!”

Theodore Sturgeon book More Than Human

Source: More Than Human (1953), Chapter 3, p. 175

“What interests me about fascism is that it is a black hole of free will. It is a system which isn’t necessarily unique, but it absolves brutality, it absolves the lack of morals and it absolves people of their own decisions. When they tell you ‘you can kill these people because they are Jews, reds or homosexuals, or whatever!’ In this world you can permit a brutal action on the base of collective advice; that is what scares me.”

Guillermo del Toro (1964) Mexican film director

Lo que me interesa del fascismo es justamente que es un hoyo negro de la voluntad. Es un sistema que no necesariamente es único, pero absuelve la brutalidad, absuelve la falta de moral y absuelve la decisión propia. Cuando te dicen “Tú puedes matar a esta gente porque que son judíos, rojos o homosexuales, ¡lo que sea!” En ese mundo puedes permitir una acción brutal en base a un consejo colectivo, eso es lo que me asusta. Interview with Guillermo del Toro on 10/23/2006. http://www.fantasymundo.com/articulo.php?articulo=467

People, World, Decision

“THERE is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blameable, than, in philosophical disputes, to endeavour the refutation of any hypothesis, by a pretence of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality.”

David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Of Liberty and Necessity, Part II (http://www.bartleby.com/37/3/12.html)
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)
Context: THERE is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blameable, than, in philosophical disputes, to endeavour the refutation of any hypothesis, by a pretence of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality. When any opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly false; but it is not certain that an opinion is false, because it is of dangerous consequence. Such topics, therefore, ought entirely to be forborne; as serving nothing to the discovery of truth, but only to make the person of an antagonist odious.

Religion

“We cannot point to a single definitive solution of any one of the problems that confront us — political, economic, social or moral, that is, having to do with the conduct of life. We are still beginners, and for that reason may hope to improve. To deride the hope of progress is the ultimate fatuity, the last word in poverty of spirit and meanness of mind. There is no need to be dismayed by the fact that we cannot yet envisage a definitive solution of our problems, a resting-place beyond which we need not try to go.”

Peter Medawar (1915–1987) scientist

1960s, Presidential Address, 1969

Life, Hope, Problem

“The U. S. could seek to acquire the moral authority to act as a healing presence in the world. Our role could be to adjudicate disputes, support "all-win" solutions to international problems, and make our resources available to people, groups and governments that were willing to help themselves. … We could seek to play a catalytic, rather than a dominant, role in the Third World. We could pay more attention to what the poor themselves want. We could concentrate less on funding massive projects, and more on building up the capacity of indigenous institutions to do for themselves. We could pay more attention to the context in which our aid is given. This may be a highly unconventional approach to foreign aid. But it could also be highly popular. It combines the traditional left's emphasis on equity and the traditional right's emphasis on self-help.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Source: New Options for America (1991), Chapter 17, "Siding With the World's Poor," p. 136.

People, World, Support, Problem

“These Peripatetics accordingly made careful investigations into the nature of all things, so as to determine which I should be avoided as evil, discounted as useless, sought after as good, or preferred as better, and finally which are called "good" or "bad" according to circumstances. There thus developed two branches of philosophy, natural and moral, which are also called ethics and physics. But, through lack of scientific skill in argumentative reasoning, many absurdities were concluded. Thus Epicurus would have the world originate from atoms and a void, and would dispense with God as its author; whereas the Stoics asserted that matter is coeternal with God, and held that all sins are equally grave. p. 76”

John of Salisbury English philosopher and theologian

The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury (1159)

God, World, Nature, Evil

“Today the doses of madness that keep us sane are supplied by new technologies. Anyone online has a limitless supply of virtual sex and violence. But what will happen when we run out of new vices? How will satiety and idleness be staved off when designer sex, drugs and violence no longer sell? At that point, we may be sure, morality will come back into fashion. We may not be far from a time when 'morality' is marketed as a new brand of transgression.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

Non-Progress: A Billion Balconies Facing the Sun (p. 165-6)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Sex, Fashion, Time, Madness

“Does any man have the right to dispose of his own life? This is the ultimate question of moral entitlement, and relevant only if right is relevant in this context, and it is not. A suicidal man cannot be concerned - and nor should he be - with questions of moral entitlement.”

Antonella Gambotto-Burke book The Eclipse: A Memoir of Suicide

Source: The Eclipse: A Memoir of Suicide (2004), P. 53.

Life, Question, Suicide

“President Bush owes more than one apology. On the list of those he let down are the young soldiers who are themselves apparently culpable, but who were clearly put into a moral cesspool. The perpetrators as well as the victims were both placed in their relationship to one another by the policies of George W. Bush.
How dare the incompetent and willful members of this Bush/Cheney Administration humiliate our nation and our people in the eyes of the world and in the conscience of our own people. How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace. How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes, NYU Speech (2004)

People, World

“He took particular delight in neutralizing those who desperately needed to be neutralized, those overblown, self-important, arrogant half-wits who were always running about dictating behavior, morals, and theology to everyone else. And he never looked back.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 11 (p. 180)

Behavior

“She got convinced in her crazy head that I had sex with this girl in Columbus, Ohio…and I did, and I'll tell you why. When you enter into a monogamous relationship with somebody, you usually do it at a point in the relationship when you're having a lot of sex. So you're willing to sign the papers. "I'll only have sex with you, ever-ever-ever…ever." Well, if that person stops having sex altogether… why, you find yourself in quite a pickle. I'm a pretty good dog, but if you don't pet me every once in awhile, it's hard to keep me under the porch. I'm not as flexible as real dog. And I'll tell you what happened, too. I was in Columbus, Ohio, and I haven't been laid in three months. Three months! You can't go three months without having sex with me. I'll go have sex with somebody else. I know, I've seen me do it. I did a show one night. I came offstage, there's gorgeous woman, maybe 35, 40 years old, long black dress, slit up to her waist, GORGEOUS. Gimme a second. Just…And I walk off stage, she goes, "I thought you were hilarious. I wanna buy you a drink." I'm like, "I can't do that, I'm married." And she says, "I didn't ask if you wanna have sex, big boy. I asked if you wanna have a drink at my place."…Alright. Now, you know of that little guy that sits on your shoulder and reminds you of your prior commitments and your moral fortitude? I didn't hear a peep out of that guy. He hadn't been laid in 3 months either. He was speechless for like 20 minutes then he was like, "Suck her titty!"…"I was gonna!" I was having a 3-way with my conscience. Soon as the whole thing's over, he's back at his post, saying, "That was wrong, mister!" "Hey! 15 minutes ago, you were beating off on my shoulder, monkey boy!"”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

I hate him. He smokes pot. He burned a hole in my other jacket.
They Call Me Tater Salad

Hate, Dogs, Sex, Way

“Rachel was looking into the mirror at an angle of 45°, and so had a view of the face turned toward the room and the face on the other side, reflected in the mirror; here were time and reverse-time, co-existing, cancelling one another exactly out. Were there many such reference points, scattered throughout the world, perhaps only at nodes like this room which housed a transient population of the imperfect, the dissatisfied; did real time plus virtual or mirror-time equal zero and thus serve some half-understood moral purpose? Or was it only the mirror world that counted; only a promise of a kind that the inward bow of a nose-bridge or a promontory of extra cartilage at the chin meant a reversal of ill fortune such that the world of the altered would thenceforth run on mirror-time; work and love by mirror-light and be only, till death stopped the heart's ticking (metronome's music) quietly as light ceases to vibrate, an imp's dance under the century's own chandeliers….”

Thomas Pynchon book V.

Source: V. (1963), Chapter Two, Part I

Love, Death, World, Music

“The concept of Blood and Soil gives us the moral right to take back as much land in the East as is necessary to establish a harmony between the body of our Volk and the geopolitical space.”

Richard Walther Darré (1895–1953) Nazi SS General

Quoted in "Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience" - Page 19 - by Janet Biehl, Peter Staudenmaier - 1995

“If we would succeed in works of the imagination, we must offer a mild morality in the midst of rigid manners; but where the manners are corrupt, we must consistently hold up to view an austere morality.”

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël (1766–1817) Swiss author

The Influence of Literature upon Society (1800), Pt. 2, ch. 5

Imagination

“The moral precept to adopt…is: Judge, and be prepared to be judged.”

Ayn Rand book The Virtue of Selfishness

The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

“When the prophets conceived Jehovah as the special vindicator of these voiceless classes it was another way of saying that it is the chief duty in religious morality to stand for the rights of the helpless.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.1 The Historical Roots of Christianity the Hebrew Prophets, p. 12

Way

“To be effective, morality has to be reasoned (or worked out). To want ("vouloir", Fr.) to repress evil only by coercion, and to obtain morality by a sort of training with the help of constraint, without motivating it from within, is to make it an unnatural result, devoided of lastind value.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

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

Motivation, Evil, Help, Training

“Moral training which does not encourage critical examination of popular ideas of what is right and good, does not tend to make men better, but only of one mind.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 183

Men, Idea, Training

“What was new about Hitler and Stalin was what Friedrich Meinecke, in an attempt shortly after World War II to express his horror at Hitler’s moral nihilism, called a ‘Machiavellianism of the masses.”

François Furet (1927–1997) French historian

Source: The Passing of an Illusion, The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century (1999), p.191

War, World

“[The Kellog Pact is] a mighty moral bulwark against war - and we must never underestimate the effectiveness of moral bulwarks with no bayonet nor bludgeon behind them. The entry of the United States into the Permanent Court of International Justice, the growing confidence in the court, and the increase in the number of nations who have signed the Optional Clause mark definite and, I believe, irrevocable steps in the displacement of military power by judicial process in the settlement of international disputes. Public servants like us will fail in our duty if we do not diminish military power in proportion to the increase of political security…I dare affirm that, in the naval programme of the leading naval powers, there is a margin between real security needs and actual or projected strength, and the world expects this Conference to eliminate that margin.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech as chairman of the London Naval Conference (January 1930), quoted in David Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald (Metro, 1997), p. 510
1930s

War, World, Justice, Confidence

“I think that what drives the American public, which is like a huge, lumbering beast, is anger; and the other thing that drives it is self–interest. What I'm trying to do in my books is different from other people writing about child abuse. I'm not trying to engender sympathy so much as to say to the public, 'Today's victim is tomorrow's predator.' The things that you fear have a genesis, and the price of being safe in this world is early intervention. It costs you something to look away, not just in moral terms, but in practical terms.”

Andrew Vachss (1942) American writer and lawyer

Crime Times, Nov./Dec. 1988

People, Books, World, Fear

“If the new harmony glimpsed in the moments of insight is to be achieved, the old order of habits must be renounced. Moral intuitions result in a redemption of our loyalties and a remaking of our personalities.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Personality, Loyalty

“A parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, but also that the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so. But the parent should have the legal right not to feed the child, i. e., to allow it to die. The law, therefore, may not properly compel the parent to feed a child or to keep it alive. (Again, whether or not a parent has a moral rather than a legally enforceable obligation to keep his child alive is a completely separate question.) This rule allows us to solve such vexing questions as: should a parent have the right to allow a deformed baby to die (e. g., by not feeding it)? The answer is of course yes, following a fortiori from the larger right to allow any baby, whether deformed or not, to die.”

Murray N. Rothbard book The Ethics of Liberty

Though, as we shall see below, in a libertarian society the existence of a free baby market will bring such "neglect" down to a minimum.
Children and rights, p. 100
The Ethics of Liberty (1982)

Children, Education, Law, Question

“Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown out any logically based dissension, it is usually the American soldier that is given the order to carry out some ill-conceived mission.”

Chelsea Manning (1987) United States Army soldier and whistleblower

Letter to Barack Obama (2013)

Question, Cry

“…the splitting up of mankind into a multitude of infinitesimal governments, in accordance with their actual differences of dialect or their presumed differences of race, would be to undo the work of civilisation and renounce all the benefits which the slow and painful process of consolidation has procured for mankind…It is the agglomeration and not the comminution of states to which civilisation is constantly tending; it is the fusion and not the isolation of races by which the physical and moral excellence of the species is advanced. There are races, as there are trees, which cannot stand erect by themselves, and which, if their growth is not hindered by artificial constraints, are all the healthier for twining round some robuster stem.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Source: 'English Politics and Parties', Bentley's Quarterly Review, 1, (1859), p. 22

Pain, Tree

“I think that virtuosity is the first sign of morality in a musician. It means you're serious enough to practice.”

Wynton Marsalis (1961) American jazz musician

Attributed

Thinking

“By determining law — so far as it is the subject of a specific science of law — as norm, it is delimited against nature; and science of law against natural science. But in addition to legal norms, there are other norms regulating the behavior of men to each other, that is, social norms; and the science of law is therefore not the only discipline directed toward the cognition and description of social norms. There other social norms may be called “morals.” and the discipline directed toward their cognition and description, “ethics.” So far as justice is a postulate of morals, the relationship between justice and law is included in the relationship between morals and law.”

Hans Kelsen book Pure Theory of Law

Pure Theory of Law (revised ed., 1960), 7. Moral Norms as Social Norms

Men, Justice, Law, Behavior

“You don't wage civil war in kid gloves. The Spanish bishops know it so well that they have been obliged to refer to 'regrettable excesses' and 'inevitable abuses'. They seem to think that war is like Shrove Tuesday, that it's a jolly respite, as it were, from social morality, and that men can give themselves up to being cruel just as gay sparks at carnival-time indulge in bottom-pinching! Once the illuminations go out, we must welcome the dear lad home with a smile that's both knowing and fatherly. 'Don't worry, my dear boy. We can none of us resist a little fun sometimes. Think no more about it.”

Georges Bernanos book Les grands cimetières sous la lune

But, Your Excellencies, this is something more than a little fun!
Source: Les grands cimetieres sous la lune (A Diary of My Times) 1938, p.147

Men, War, Smile, Home

“The survival of our democracy and the unity and integrity of the nation depend upon the realisation that constitutional morality is no less essential than constitutional legality. Dharma lives in the hearts of public men; when it dies there, no Constitution, no law, no amendment, can save it.”

Nanabhoy Palkhivala (1920–2002) Indian jurist and economist

Privy Purse case Madhav Rao Jivaji Rao Scindia vs Union of India, (1971) 1 SCC 85 http://www.indiankanoon.org/doc/660275/

Men, Law, Democracy, Heart

“The disposition to consider intelligence a peril is an old Anglo-Saxon inheritance. Our ancestors have celebrated this disposition in verse and prose. Splendid as our literature is, it has not voiced all the aspirations of humanity, nor could it be expected to voice an aspiration that has not characteristically belonged to the English race; the praise of intelligence is not one of its characteristic glories. “Be good, sweet maid, and let who will he clever.” [Charles Kingsley, “A Farewell”] Here is the startling alternative which to the English, alone among great nations, has been not startling but a matter of course. Here is the casual assumption that a choice must be made between goodness and intelligence; that stupidity is first cousin to moral conduct, and cleverness the first step into mischief; that reason and God are not on good terms with each other; that the mind and the heart are rival buckets in the well of truth, inexorably balanced—full mind, starved heart—stout heart, weak head.”

John Erskine (1879–1951) American educator

Source: The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent (1915), p. 5

God, Truth, Stupidity, Intelligence

“Perhaps not only in his attitude towards truth, but in his attitude towards himself, Montaigne was a precursor. Perhaps here again he was ahead of his own time, ahead of our time also, since none of us would have the courage to imitate him. It may be that some future century will vindicate this unseemly performance; in the meanwhile it will be of interest to examine the reasons which he gives us for it. He says, in the first place, that he found this study of himself, this registering of his moods and imaginations, extremely amusing; it was an exploration of an unknown region, full of the queerest chimeras and monsters, a new art of discovery, in which he had become by practice “the cunningest man alive.” It was profitable also, for most people enjoy their pleasures without knowing it; they glide over them, and fix and feed their minds on the miseries of life. But to observe and record one’s pleasant experiences and imaginations, to associate one’s mind with them, not to let them dully and unfeelingly escape us, was to make them not only more delightful but more lasting. As life grows shorter we should endeavour, he says, to make it deeper and more full. But he found moral profit also in this self-study; for how, he asked, can we correct our vices if we do not know them, how cure the diseases of our soul if we never observe their symptoms? The man who has not learned to know himself is not the master, but the slave of life: he is the “explorer without knowledge, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and when all is done, the fool of the play.””

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

“Montaigne,” p. 6
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

Life, People, Pleasure, Truth

“Since fresh examples and proofs could always be found of the alleged relation between guilt and punishment: if you behave in such and such a way, it will go badly with you. Now, as it generally does go badly, the allegation was constantly confirmed; and thus popular morality, a pseudo- science on a level with popular medicine, continually gained ground.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 26 (cf. Daybreak, § 11)

Way, Science

“The Semitic religions are not religions in the Eastern sense of the term. Their thrust is towards outward expansion, not towards inward exploration. In fact, in the Eastern sense, they are not spiritualities, but are what Marx calls ideologies, tailored for political expansion and imperialist aggression. The two systems —Eastern and Semitic— differ widely in their outlook, perspective and approach. The former speaks in the language of Self or Atma, the latter in the language of external Gods; the former speaks of the Law, the rita, the inner, spiritual and moral law of being and action, the latter speak of Commandments of an external being. The two differ also in their concept of the deity. The god of Semitic religions is “jealous”; he can brook no other gods. He is the sole Lord of the world; therefore, he marches at the head of an army of believers to lay claim to his domain. Those who oppose him are rebels.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Ramakrishna Mission. (1986). Ramakrishna Mission: In search of a new identity.

God, World, Religion, Law

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Widely attributed to Gandhi, sometimes citing Ramachandra Krishna Prabhu, The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism (1959). (Cf. Ralph Keyes, The Quote Verifier (2006), p. 74.) However, it is not found in that essay http://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/moralbasis_vegetarianism.pdf nor in any of Gandhi's Complete works. http://animalsmattertogod.com/2013/09/13/mahatma-gandhi-hoax-quote-greatness-of-a-nation-and-its-moral-progress-can-be-judged-by-the-way-that-its-animals-are-treated/ The original quote seems to be by David Strauss, The Old Faith and the New (Der alte und der neue Glaube, 1872, trans. by M. Blind, New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1873), vol. II, ch. 71, p. 59 https://archive.org/stream/oldfaithnewconfe01stra#page/59/mode/2up: The manner in which a nation in the aggregate treats animals, is one chief measure of its real civilization. Similar quotes, not attributed to Gandhi, are found throughout the twentieth century: e.g. The great actress, Mrs Fiske, once said to me, "The civilization of any country can be told by the way it treats its animals" (Zoe Berkeley, "Zoe Berkeley's Corner", Salinas Index-Journal, 1933-07-01, p. 8). Attributed to Gandhi since at least 1980: The seal hunt truly is Canada's shame and we would do well to think of the words of Gandhi when he said, "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated" (Doris Potter, Letter to the editor, The Gazette (Montreal), 1980-03-18, p. 8). Disputed

Way, Animals

Quotes about morale page 22

Quotes about morale
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