Quotes about morale (3983 quotes, page 7)

“There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

As quoted in Dictionary of Foreign Quotations (1980) by Mary Collison, Robert L. Collison, p. 235

“The moral truth here is obvious: anyone who feels that the interests of a blastocyst just might supersede the interests of a child with a spinal cord injury has had his moral sense blinded by religious metaphysics.”

Sam Harris Letter to a Christian Nation

Source: 2000s, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), p. 32

Truth , Feeling , Sense

“The combination of physical strength and moral sincerity combined with tenderness of heart is exactly what is wanted in a husband.--Ameila Peabody”

Elizabeth Peters (1927–2013) American author and egyptologist

Heart , Sincerity

“This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it, from the moral point of view.”

William James Is Life Worth Living?

"Is Life Worth Living?"
1890s, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Life

“People need to be educated so that they can make intelligent moral choices”

Gary L. Francione (1954) American legal scholar

People , Education , Intelligence

“I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it.”

Anne Brontë (1820–1849) British novelist and poet

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Volume I

Truth

“The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Suffering

“As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to William Short (31 October 1819)
1810s
Source: Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“To be the object of desire is to be defined in the passive case.
To exist in the passive case is to die in the passive case – that is, to be killed.
This is the moral of the fairy tale about the perfect woman.”

Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist

Source: The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography

Perfection

“Morality is truth in full bloom.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Truth

“A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed cormulas about good and evil.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)

Life , Sense , Evil

“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.”

Immanuel Kant book Critique of Practical Reason

Variant: Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
Source: Critique of Practical Reason (1788)
Context: Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within. I have not to search for them and conjecture them as though they were veiled in darkness or were in the transcendent region beyond my horizon; I see them before me and connect them directly with the consciousness of my existence. The former begins from the place I occupy in the external world of sense, and enlarges my connection therein to an unbounded extent with worlds upon worlds and systems of systems, and moreover into limitless times of their periodic motion, its beginning and continuance. The second begins from my invisible self, my personality, and exhibits me in a world which has true infinity, but which is traceable only by the understanding, and with which I discern that I am not in a merely contingent but in a universal and necessary connection, as I am also thereby with all those visible worlds. The former view of a countless multitude of worlds annihilates as it were my importance as an animal creature, which after it has been for a short time provided with vital power, one knows not how, must again give back the matter of which it was formed to the planet it inhabits (a mere speck in the universe). The second, on the contrary, infinitely elevates my worth as an intelligence by my personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life independent of animality and even of the whole sensible world, at least so far as may be inferred from the destination assigned to my existence by this law, a destination not restricted to conditions and limits of this life, but reaching into the infinite.

Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott

Law

“Thankfully I’m not most women. I don’t get off on danger. I get off on a man with strong moral fiber. The closest Barrons ever gets to fiber is walking down the cereal aisle at the grocery store.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Bloodfever

Women , Strong

“The greatest gift is the passion for reading.
It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites,
it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind.
It is a moral illumination.”

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) Novelist, short story writer, literary critic

World , Knowledge , Passion , Reading

“There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as 'moral indignation,' which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Source: Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics

Hate , Feeling , Envy

“The loss of these tastes [for poetry and music] is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

Source: The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–82

Music , Nature , Loss , Parting

“Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will. Slavery was one of them and the people who best served that age were the ones who called it as it was — which was ungodly and inhuman. Ben Franklin called it what it was when he became president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

PENN Address (2004)
Source: U2 By U2

Children , People , Age

“Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Men , Imagination , Thinking

“In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence..”

David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Source: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Imagination

“Guilt's just your ego's way of tricking you into thinking that you're making moral progress. Don't fall for it, my dear.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Way , Thinking

“If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.”

Peter Singer (1946) Australian philosopher

“The world is not that black and white, Rachel. There are no moral absolutes. It is complex.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

World

“I get off on a man with strong moral fiber. The closest Barrons ever gets to fiber is walking down the cereal aisle at the grocery store.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Bloodfever

Strong

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

“Stop the Madness,” Interview with Rupert Cornwell, Toronto Globe and Mail (6 July 2002) (see http://wist.info/galbraith-john-kenneth/7463/ )

For Men , Exercises , Search , Selfishness

“Fashion is neither moral or immoral, but it is for rebuilding the morale.”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

Fashion

“Added to the moral solitude of the murderer comes the solitude of the artist, which can acknowledge no authority, save that of another artist.”

Jean Genet book Querelle of Brest

Source: Querelle of Brest

Solitude

“Bright was the light of my last martini on my moral horizon”

Norman Mailer book Harlot's Ghost

Source: Harlot's Ghost

Light

“At the foundation of moral thinking lie beliefs in statements the truth of which no further reason can be given.”

Alasdair MacIntyre (1929) Scottish philosopher

Source: After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory

Truth , Lie , Thinking

“We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

World , Happiness

“My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Life , Happiness

“Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts which in us would be called moral.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter III: "Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals — continued", pages 100-101 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=113&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image
The Descent of Man (1871)
Context: As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. If, indeed, such men are separated from him by great differences in appearance or habits, experience unfortunately shews us how long it is before we look at them as our fellow-creatures. Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions. It is apparently unfelt by savages, except towards their pets. How little the old Romans knew of it is shewn by their abhorrent gladiatorial exhibitions. The very idea of humanity, as far as I could observe, was new to most of the Gauchos of the Pampas. This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. As soon as this virtue is honoured and practised by some few men, it spreads through instruction and example to the young, and eventually through public opinion.

Love , Animals

“Further, an excess of legislation defeats its own ends. It makes the whole population criminals, and turns them all into police and police spies. The moral health of such a people is ruined for ever; only revolution can save it.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Source: Cocaine: Impressions & Opinions

People , Health

“There can be no beauty if it is paid for by human injustice, nor truth that passes over injustice in silence, nor moral virtue that condones it.”

Tadeusz Borowski book This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

Source: This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

Truth , Beauty , Silence

“Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion and the beginning of morality”

Ian McEwan (1948) British author

Imagination

“That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.”

Neal Stephenson (1959) American science fiction writer

Source: The Diamond Age: or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

“Destiny is a lie. Destiny is justification for atrocity. It is the means by which murderers armour themselves against reprimand. It is a word intended to stand in place of ethics, denying all moral context.”

Steven Erikson book Midnight Tides

Source: Midnight Tides (2004)

Lie

“One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

The Tables Turned, st. 6 (1798).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

Evil

“Morality, too, is a question of time.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Source: Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Question , Time

“Force always attracts men of low morality.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

The World As I See It, Einstein, Citadel Press (reprint 2006; originally published in 1934), p. 5
1930s

Men

“Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography
Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929), Ch. 57.
Context: Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales. … Knowing nothing and fearing everything, they rant and rave and riot like so many maniacs. The subject does not matter. Any idea which gives them an excuse of getting excited will serve. They look for a victim to chivy, and howl him down, and finally lynch him in a sheer storm of sexual frenzy which they honestly imagine to be moral indignation, patriotic passion or some equally avowable emotion. It may be an innocent Negro, a Jew like Leo Frank, a harmless half-witted German; a Christ-like idealist of the type of Debs, an enthusiastic reformer like Emma Goldman or even a doctor whose views displease the Medial Trust.

People , Nature , Fight

“Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.”

Philip Pullman (1946) English author

Religion , Feeling , Freedom , Evil

“Cash is always the deciding factor in such matters of moral politics; nothing ever gets done unless motivated by commerce or greed.”

Jasper Fforde book The Eyre Affair

Source: The Eyre Affair

Motivation

“In terms of morals there is no such thing as ‘state.’ Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Source: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Men

“You are so afraid of losing your moral sense that you are not willing to take it through anything more dangerous than a mud-puddle.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Sense

“it is just as wrong, or even perhaps more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.”

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

1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Variant: I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.
Context: I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.

“His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Funny , Education

“Style is not neutral; it gives moral directions.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Novelists in Interview (1985) edited by John Haffenden

“Morality is a matter of money. Poor people cannot afford to have morals. So they have religion.”

Khushwant Singh Train to Pakistan

Variant: Maorality is a matter of money. Poor people cannot afford to have morals. So they have religion
Source: Train to Pakistan

Money , People , Religion

“If one should desire to know whether a kingdom is well governed, if its morals are good or bad, the quality of its music will furnish the answer.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Music

“When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.”

Shirley Chisholm (1924–2005) American politician

Source: Unbought and Unbossed (1970), p. 108.

“An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Book IV, Part 1, Section 1, “The Christian religion as a natural religion”
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793)
Context: He [Jesus] combines all duties (1) in one universal rule (which includes within itself both the inner and the outer moral relations of men), namely: Perform your duty for no motive other than unconditioned esteem for duty itself, i. e., love God (the Legislator of all duties) above all else; and (2) in a particular rule, that, namely, which concerns man’s external relation to other men as universal duty: Love every one as yourself, i. e., further his welfare from good-will that is immediate and not derived from motives of self-advantage. These commands are not mere laws of virtue but precepts of holiness which we ought to pursue, and the very pursuit of them is called virtue. Accordingly he destroys the hope of all who intend to wait upon this moral goodness quite passively, with their hands in their laps, as though it were a heavenly gift which descends from on high. He who leaves unused the natural predisposition to goodness which lies in human nature (like a talent entrusted to him) in lazy confidence that a higher moral influence will no doubt supply the moral character and completeness which he lacks, is confronted with the threat that even the good which, by virtue of his natural predisposition, he may have done, will not be allowed to stand him in stead because of this neglect (XXV, 29).

“We are like chameleons; we take our hue and the color of our moral character from those who are around us.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

Attributed to Locke on various quotes sites and on social media, this quotation is a false rendering of "We are all a sort of chameleons, that still take a tincture from things near us: nor is it to be wondered at in children, who better understand what they see, than what they hear" from Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693).
Misattributed

Color

“How can one be well… when one suffers morally?”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

Suffering

“No messages. Morale losing altitude.”

Dyan Sheldon American novelist

One or Two Things I Learned About Love

“He could smell her morality, the sweet rot of corruption”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“Someone said that patriotism is the last refuge of cowards; those without moral principles usually wrap a flag around themselves, and those bastards always talk about the purity of race.”

Umberto Eco book The Prague Cemetery

Source: The Prague Cemetery

“Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

School , Football

“On second thought she hoped she never met a woman that attractive.. If she did, she would be morally obligated to run her over with her car.." Bride”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Night Play

Hope , Cars

“What is morality, she asked.
Judgement to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, and courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Truth , Courage

“Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Money , People , Sex

“The fundamental basis of this nation’s laws was given to Moses on the Mount…If we don’t have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Law

“True beauty is not related to what color your hair is or what color your eyes are. True beauty is about who you are as a human being, your principles, your moral compass.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Source: Seriously... I'm Kidding

Beauty , Beauty , Color

“The only way to show a true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God’s existence.”

Karen Armstrong book A History of God

A History of God (1993)
Source: A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

God , Way

“Those who are most moral are farthest from the problem.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

Problem

“The most moral activity of all is the creation of space for life to move around.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Lila: An Inquiry into Morals

Lila (1991)

Life

“… a man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.”

George Bernard Shaw Caesar and Cleopatra

Source: Caesar and Cleopatra

Courage , Sense

“The highest stage in moral culture at which we can arrive, is when we recognise that we ought to control our thoughts.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter III: "Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals — continued", page 101 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=114&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image
The Descent of Man (1871)

“The confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Source: 1900s, Man and Superman (1903), p. 121

Marriage , Error

“Science and technology are what we can do; morality is what we agree we should or should not do.”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

Source: The Future Of Life

Science

“Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22 (1961)

Exercises , Freedom , Country

“… morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

"The Reasons for My Involvement in the Peace Movement" (1972) http://www.shalomctr.org/node/61; later included in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity (1996)
Context: There is immense silent agony in the world, and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor, to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation of our dream of honesty.
The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the Prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.

Feeling , Suffering , Evil , Indifference

“One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

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

1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Source: Letter from the Birmingham Jail
Context: One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

Law

“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”

Isaac Asimov book Foundation

Part IV, The Traders, section 1; originally published as “The Wedge” in Astounding (October 1944)
Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation (1951)

Wise , Sense

“I get so tired of moral bookkeeping.”

Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist

“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.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

For Men , Personality

“I will accept the rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966)

“I’ve never been certain whether the moral of the Icarus story should only be, as is generally accepted, ‘don’t try to fly too high,’ or whether it might also be thought of as ‘forget the wax and feathers, and do a better job on the wings.”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

Flying , Forgetting

“He wasn't evil as much as magnificently innocent of any kind of morality.”

Jim Butcher book Death Masks

Source: Death Masks

Evil

“All a child's life depends on the ideal it has of its parents. Destroy that and everything goes - morals, behavior, everything. Absolute trust in someone else is the essence of education.”

E.M. Forster book Where Angels Fear to Tread

Source: Where Angels Fear to Tread

Life , Education , Behavior , Parent

“MORAL: If it were not for the presents, an elopement would be preferable.”

George Ade (1866–1944) American writer, newspaper columnist and playwright

The Fable of the General Manager of the Love Affair Who Demanded a Furlough http://books.google.com/books?id=2_ssAAAAYAAJ&q=%22MORAL+If+it+were+not+for+the+presents+an+elopement+would+be+preferable%22&pg=PA218#v=onepage, Forty Modern Fables (1901)

“It is not the terrible occurrences that no one is spared, — a husband’s death, the moral ruin of a beloved child, long, torturing illness, or the shattering of a fondly nourished hope, — it is none of these that undermine the woman’s health and strength, but the little daily recurring, body and soul devouring care s. How many millions of good housewives have cooked and scrubbed their love of life away! How many have sacrificed their rosy checks and their dimples in domestic service, until they became wrinkled, withered, broken mummies. The everlasting question: ‘what shall I cook today,’ the ever recurring necessity of sweeping and dusting and scrubbing and dish-washing, is the steadily falling drop that slowly but surely wears out her body and mind. The cooking stove is the place where accounts are sadly balanced between income and expense, and where the most oppressing observations are made concerning the increased cost of living and the growing difficulty in making both ends meet. Upon the flaming altar where the pots are boiling, youth and freedom from care, beauty and light-heartedness are being sacrificed. In the old cook whose eyes are dim and whose back is bent with toil, no one would recognize the blushing bride of yore, beautiful, merry and modestly coquettish in the finery of her bridal garb.”

Dagobert von Gerhardt (1831–1910) German writer

To the ancients the hearth was sacred; beside the hearth they erected their lares and household-gods. Let us also hold the hearth sacred, where the conscientious German housewife slowly sacrifices her life, to keep the home comfortable, the table well supplied, and the family healthy."
"von Gerhardt, using the pen-name Gerhard von Amyntor in", A Commentary to the Book of Life. Quote taken from August Bebel, Woman and Socialism, Chapter X. Marriage as a Means of Support.

Love , Life , Death , God

“Jordan also takes seriously our moral obligations to others. Despite scarce resources, the people of Jordan have opened their arms to refugees fleeing regional violence. Jordan has taken in thousands of Iraqi Christians over the past year. This is in addition to giving shelter to 1.4 million Syrian refugees, which is 20 per cent of the population, over the past few years. This is more than the equivalent of France hosting the entire population of Belgium. My small country is now the world’s third-largest refugee host and I thank all of you who are helping us to uphold this global responsibility.”

Abdullah II of Jordan (1962) King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

Address to the European Parliament (2015)

People , World , Past , Help

“The most natural Beauty in the World is Honesty, and Moral Truth. For all Beauty is Truth. True Features make the Beauty of a Face; and true Proportions the Beauty of Architecture; as true Measures that of Harmony and Musick.”

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) English politician and Earl

Vol. 1, p. 77; "Sensus Communis".
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711)

Truth , World , Beauty , Nature

“This situation [alienation] can therefore [according to Durkheim] be remedied by providing the individual with a moral awareness of the social importance of his particular role in the division of labour. He is then no longer an alienated automaton. but is a useful part of an organic whole: ‘from that time, as special and uniform as his activity may be, it is that of an intelligent being, for it has direction, and he is aware of it.’ This is entirely consistent with Durkheim’s general account of the growth of the division of labour, and its relationship to human freedom. It is only through moral acceptance in his particular role in the division of labour that the individual is able to achieve a high degree of autonomy as a self-conscious being, and can escape both the tyranny of rigid moral conformity demanded in undifferentiated societies on the one hand and the tyranny of unrealisable desires on the other.
Not the moral integration of the individual within a differentiated division of labour but the effective dissolution of the division of labour as an organising principle of human social intercourse, is the premise of Marx’s conception. Marx nowhere specifies in detail how this future society would be organised socially, but, at any rate,. this perspective differs decisively from that of Durkheim. The vision of a highly differentiated division of labour integrated upon the basis of moral norms of individual obligation and corporate solidarity. is quite at variance with Marx’s anticipation of the future form of society.
According to Durkheim’s standpoint. the criteria underlying Marx’s hopes for the elimination of technological alienation represent a reversion to moral principles which are no longer appropriate to the modern form of society. This is exactly the problem which Durkheim poses at the opening of The Division of Labour: ‘Is it our duty to seek to become a thorough and complete human being. one quite sufficient unto himself; or, on the contrary, to be only a part of a whole, the organ of an organism?’ The analysis contained in the work, in Durkheim’s view, demonstrates conclusively that organic solidarity is the ‘normal’ type in modern societies, and consequently that the era of the ‘universal man’ is finished. The latter ideal, which predominated up to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in western Europe is incompatible with the diversity of the contemporary order. In preserving this ideal. by contrast. Marx argues the obverse: that the tendencies which are leading to the destruction of capitalism are themselves capable of effecting a recovery of the ‘universal’ properties of man. which are shared by every individual.”

Anthony Giddens (1938) British sociologist

Source: Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), pp. 230-231.

Hope , Intelligence , Problem , Decision

“It is remarkable, that almost all speakers and writers feel it to be incumbent on them, sooner or later, to prove or to acknowledge the personality of God. … In reading a work on agriculture, we have to skip the author's moral reflections, and the words "Providence" and "He" scattered along the page, to come at the profitable level of what he has to say. What he calls his religion is for the most part offensive to the nostrils. … There is more religion in men's science than there is science in their religion.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

Men , God , Religion , Feeling

“We are talking here about the future: about the lives of people in the world without wars, without social oppression, without national inequality, without suppression of human’s abilities. In other word, it is about the future that we all call Communism. We strive to imagine (and show to the viewer) the reality of the 21st century - the life of future humans developing, solving their difficulties and problems but being already on the new levels of cognition and morality. But the foundation of that future is being laid now. We strive to represent the future people as vivid and free, in the unity of their joys and cares, poetry and prose of their life. We are in no way satisfied with the primitive and unconvincing image of "people of the future", which can be observed in some works of literature and cinema. At the same time, we consider our work to be polemical with the many books and movies produced by the bourgeois world, which tend to see the future in an apocalyptic or technocratic way, affirming a sort of disbelief in the strength and capabilities of a human being.”

Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) Soviet and Russian film-maker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director

Letter to the central committee of the CPSU (Communist Party of Soviet Union) https://varjag2007su.livejournal.com/2591915.html?utm_source=fbsharing&utm_medium=social (20 October 1970).

Life , War , People , Books

“The penalty for apostasy is death. We would do well to linger over this fact for a moment, because it is the black pearl of intolerance that no liberal exegesis will ever fully digest….. As a source of objective morality, the Bible is one of the worst books we have. It might be the very worst, in fact—if we didn’t also happen to have the Qur’an.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris - http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=sharris_26_3 The Myth of Secular Moral Chaos - The Council for Secular Humanism https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Quotations_on_Islam_from_Notable_Non-Muslims
2010s

Death , Books , Penalty

“Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure — but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and the invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This law is not subject to the will of those, who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community, and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles. It is the first and supreme necessity only, a necessity that is not chosen, but chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits no discussion, and demands no evidence, which alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no exception to the rule; because this necessity itself is a part too of that moral and physical disposition of things, to which man must be obedient by consent or force: but if that which is only submission to necessity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Pleasure , World , Peace , Law

“Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say.”

Jonathan Haidt (1963) American psychologist

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

Fate , People , World , Fight

“Unfortunately, too many academics retreat into narrow specialisms, allow themselves to become adjuncts of the corporation, or align themselves with dominant interests that serve largely to consolidate authority rather than to critique its abuses. Refusing to take positions on controversial issues or to examine the role they might play in lessening human suffering, such academics become models of moral indifference and examples of what it means to disconnect learning from public life. This is a form of education, as Howard Zinn notes, where scholars “publish while others perish.” Even many leftist and liberal academics have retreated into arcane discourses that offer them the safe ground of the professional recluse.”

Henry Giroux (1943) American academic

"Higher Education Under Siege: Implications for Public Intellectuals," Thought and Action (Fall 2006), p. 64

Life , Education , Suffering , Learning

“The great moral lesson which Saul's history leaves for the instruction of mankind is this: That without true piety the finest qualities of character and the highest position in society will utterly fail to make a true and noble man. If Saul's heart had been true to God, he would have been one of the grandest specimens of humanity; but, lacking this true obedience to God, he made his life an utter failure, and his character amoral wreck.”

William Mackergo Taylor (1829–1895) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 453.

Life , God , History , Failure

“As to the notion that the Brazilian nation see the criminality of slave trade and have for ever abjured it such a notion is too childish for a grown man really to entertain, however it may suit the Brazilians to endeavour to make it accepted. The plain truth is that the Portuguese are of all European nations the lowest in the moral state and the Brazilians are degenerate Portuguese, demoralized by slavery and slave trade, and all the degrading and corrupting influences connected with both… I have laboured indefatigably all the time I was at the Foreign Office to put an end to the slave trade, and though not with entire at all events with some considerable success and nothing shall induce me to load my conscience with the guilt of having been a party to promoting its revival. I am afraid Bright has been at you upon these Brazilian matters. He has always professed great horror of slave trade and has invariably opposed the employment of any and every means by which it could be made to cease.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to John Russell (5 October 1864), quoted in Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London: Constable, 1970), p. 544.
1860s

Truth , Time , Success

“Nothing, that is morally wrong, can be politically right.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

No citation to Gladstone found. Hannah More https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_More in 1837 in Hints Towards Forming the Character of a Young Princess https://books.google.com/books?id=lv5JAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA179&lpg=PA179&dq=%E2%80%9CNothing+that+is+morally+wrong+can+be+politically+right.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=ne_BjY9onV&sig=8RyZJKi_o7AvvR3N9WcQUU5Q0TI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=84mhVIufIoahyASOrYCoAw&ved=0CEMQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CNothing%20that%20is%20morally%20wrong%20can%20be%20politically%20right.%E2%80%9D&f=false, The Works of Hannah More, Vol. 4, said the following on p. 179: "On the Whole, we need not hesitate to assert, that in the long course of events, nothing, that is morally wrong, can be politically right. Nothing, that is inequitable, can be finally successful."
Misattributed

“When I behold the scientific and so-called philosophers full of selfish feelings, and of a tenency to war against circumstances and Providence, I say to myself: They are not true priests, they are but half prophets — it not absolutely false ones. They have read the great page simply with the physical eye, and with none of the spirit within. The intellectual, the moral, the religious seem to me all naturally bound up and interlinked together in one great and harmonious whole… That God is one, and that all the works and the feelings He has called into existence are ONE; this is a truth (a biblical and scriptural truth too) not in my opinion developed to the apprehension of most people in its really deep and unfanthomable meaning. There is too much tendency to making separate and independent bundles of both the physical and the moral facts of the universe. Whereas, all and everything is naturally related and interconnected. A volume could I write you on this subject.”

Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) English mathematician, considered the first computer programmer

In a letter to Andrew Crosse, as quoted in Eugen Kölbing's Englische Studien, Volume 19 https://archive.org/stream/englischestudien19leipuoft#page/158/mode/1up (1894), Leipzig; O.R. Reisland, "Byron's Daughter", p. 158.

God , War , People , Truth