Quotes about morale

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Source: City of Bones

Source: 1960s, The Medium is the Message (1967), p. 26
Source: The Medium is the Massage

1964 Memorial Edition, p. 266 http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations/Profiles-in-Courage-quotations.aspx <br class="br">Variant: A man does what he must — in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures — and that is the basis of all human morality. <br class="br">Source: Pre-1960, Profiles in Courage (1956) <br class="br">Context: The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. A man does what he must — in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers, and pressures — and that is the basis of all human morality. In whatever area in life one may meet the challenges of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows his conscience — the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men — each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past courage can define that ingredient — they can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul. <br class="br">Context: For without belittling the courage with which men have died, we should not forget those acts of courage with which men — such as the subjects of this book — have lived. The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. A man does what he must — in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers, and pressures — and that is the basis of all human morality. In whatever area in life one may meet the challenges of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows his conscience — the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men — each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past courage can define that ingredient — they can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul.

Source: Ever After

Source: The Sea of Monsters

Source: River Marked

Source: American Assassin

To his wife, Alice Gibbons James (1878)
1920s, The Letters of William James (1920)
Source: The Principles of Psychology
Context: I have often thought that the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: "This is the real me!"

Source: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion

Source: Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life

Source: Clockwork Angel

Starship Troopers (1959)

Source: Seven Words of Jesus and Mary: Lessons from Cana and Calvary

Pieces of Eight (1982)
Source: Pieces Of Eight

Source: "Reflections on Containment", Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 3 (June 1994), p. 130

Source: The Unconscious Civilization

Variant: The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.
Source: A Clockwork Orange

Source: Catch-22

"Einstein's Reply to Criticisms" (1949), The World As I See It (1949)
Context: A man's value to the community depends primarily on how far his feelings, thoughts, and actions are directed towards promoting the good of his fellows. We call him good or bad according to how he stands in this matter. It looks at first sight as if our estimate of a man depended entirely on his social qualities.
And yet such an attitude would be wrong. It is clear that all the valuable things, material, spiritual, and moral, which we receive from society can be traced back through countless generations to certain creative individuals. The use of fire, the cultivation of edible plants, the steam engine — each was discovered by one man.
Only the individual can think, and thereby create new values for society — nay, even set up new moral standards to which the life of the community conforms. Without creative, independently thinking and judging personalities the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community.
The health of society thus depends quite as much on the independence of the individuals composing it as on their close political cohesion.

Source: The Cider House Rules

Source: Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty

Source: The English Patient

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), as quoted in Milan Kundera (2003) by Harold Bloom, [//books.google.it/books?id=SXDojRJFMPIC&pg=PA91 p. 91]
Context: True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude toward those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.

Source: Pygmalion

Source: When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden: What the Government Should Be Telling Us to Help Fight the War on Terrorism

Source: Atlas Shrugged

1950s, Three Ways of Meeting Oppression (1958)
Context: To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor. Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. The oppressed must never allow the conscience of the oppressor to slumber. Religion reminds every man that he is his brother's keeper. To accept injustice or segregation passively is to say to the oppressor that his actions are morally right. It is a way of allowing his conscience to fall asleep. At this moment the oppressed fails to be his brother's keeper. So acquiescence-while often the easier way-is not the moral way. It is the way of the coward.

Source: The Hero of Ages

Source: Club Dead

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Venus in Furs (1870)
Context: "And the moral of the story?" I said to Severin when I put the manuscript down on the table.
"That I was a donkey," he exclaimed without turning around, for he seemed to be embarrassed. "If only I had beaten her!"
"A curious remedy," I exclaimed, "which might answer with your peasant-women-"
"Oh, they are used to it," he replied eagerly, "but imagine the effect upon one of our delicate, nervous, hysterical ladies--"
"But the moral?"
"That woman, as nature has created her and as man is at present educating her, is his enemy. She can only be his slave or his despot, but never his companion. This she can become only when she has the same rights as he, and is his equal in education and work."
"At present we have only the choice of being hammer or anvil, and I was the kind of donkey who let a woman make a slave of him, do you understand?"
"The moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped."

Source: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

Remarks at the dedication of the Hubert H. Humphrey Building, November 1, 1977, Congressional Record, November 4, 1977, vol 123, p. 37287.

June 21, 1852
Journals (1838-1859)

"Physics and Reality" in the Journal of the Franklin Institute Vol. 221, Issue 3 (March 1936), Pages 349-382
1930s
Context: It has often been said, and certainly not without justification, that the man of science is a poor philosopher. Why then should it not be the right thing for the physicist to let the philosopher do the philosophizing? Such might indeed be the right thing to do at a time when the physicist believes he has at his disposal a rigid system of fundamental laws which are so well established that waves of doubt can't reach them; but it cannot be right at a time when the very foundations of physics itself have become problematic as they are now. At a time like the present, when experience forces us to seek a newer and more solid foundation, the physicist cannot simply surrender to the philosopher the critical contemplation of theoretical foundations; for he himself knows best and feels more surely where the shoe pinches. In looking for an new foundation, he must try to make clear in his own mind just how far the concepts which he uses are justified, and are necessities.

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

Autobiographical Notes (1952)
Context: I don't like people who like me because I'm a Negro; neither do I like people who find in the same accident grounds for contempt. I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one's own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright. I consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get my work done.
I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

Source: Moonlight Mile

From Peter Engel, &quot;An Interview With Stanislaw Lem&quot;: The Missouri Review, Volume VII, Number 2 (1984) http://www.missourireview.org/index.php?genre=Interviews&amp;title=An+Interview+with+Stanislaw+Lem <br class="br">Context: For moral reasons I am an atheist — for moral reasons. I am of the opinion that you would recognize a creator by his creation, and the world appears to me to be put together in such a painful way that I prefer to believe that it was not created by anyone than to think that somebody created this intentionally.

1963, Speech at Amherst College

"Credo" (1991); also in Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds! : Collected Essays, 1934-1998 (1999), p. 360
1990s

Of Studies
Essays (1625)
Source: The Collected Works of Sir Francis Bacon

Source: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012)

Source: The Great Gatsby

But I'm Not Wrong (2010)
Source: Does Anybody Have a Problem With That? The Best of Politically Incorrect

Atlas Shrugged

Source: The Tent

Source: Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance

Source: The Man in the High Castle (1962)

Source: Speaker for the Dead

Source: On Liberty

Source: There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

Source: Letter from the Birmingham Jail

Source: Starship Troopers

Variant: When Will says 'enterprising', he means 'morally deficient.'"
"No, I mean enterprising," said Will. "When I mean morally deficient, I say, 'Now, that's something I would have done.
Source: The Mortal Instruments

Source: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: Letter to a Christian Nation

Source: Last Sacrifice

Source: Invisible Monsters

Source: The Setting Sun

Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Source: Last Sacrifice

Source: A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays

Source: Hitch-22: A Memoir

General Prologue, l. 305 - 310
Source: The Canterbury Tales
Context: Of studie took he most cure and most hede.
Noght o word spak he more than was nede,
And that was seyd in forme and reverence,
And short and quik, and ful of hy sentence.
Souninge in moral vertu was his speche,
And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.

Source: This World We Live In

Source: The Round House

Source: Dune

Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Source: Magic Burns