Moral Quotes

“Does truth have a moral?”
― Rick Riordan, The Sea of Monsters

“Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Ring of Endless Light

“The question is not, "Can they reason?" nor, "Can they talk?" but "Can they suffer?”
― Jeremy Bentham (An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Philosophical Classics), The Principles of Morals and Legislation

“I like the relaxed way in which the Japanese approach religion. I think of myself as basically a moral person, but I'm definitely not religious, and I'm very tired of the preachiness and obsession with other people's behavior characteristic of many religious people in the United States. As far as I could tell, there's nothing preachy about Buddhism. I was in a lot of temples, and I still don't know what Buddhists believe, except that at one point Kunio said 'If you do bad things, you will be reborn as an ox.'

This makes as much sense to me as anything I ever heard from, for example, the Reverend Pat Robertson.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry Does Japan

“Hermes smiled. "I knew a boy once ... oh, younger than you by far. A mere baby, really."
Here we go again, George said. Always talking about himself.
Quiet! Martha snapped. Do you want to get set on vibrate?
Hermes ignored them. "One night, when this boy's mother wasn't watching, he sneaked out of their cave and stole some cattle that belonged to Apollo."
"Did he get blasted to tiny pieces?" I asked.
"Hmm ... no. Actually, everything turned out quite well. To make up for his theft, the boy gave Apollo an instrument he'd invented-a lyre. Apollo was so enchanted with the music that he forgot all about being angry."
So what's the moral?"
"The moral?" Hermes asked. "Goodness, you act like it's a fable. It's a true story. Does truth have a moral?"
"Um ..."
"How about this: stealing is not always bad?"
"I don't think my mom would like that moral."
Rats are delicious, suggested George.
What does that have to do with the story? Martha demanded.
Nothing, George said. But I'm hungry.
"I've got it," Hermes said. "Young people don't always do what they're told, but if they can pull it off and do something wonderful, sometimes they escape punishment. How's that?”
― Rick Riordan, The Sea of Monsters

“True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.”
― François de La Rochefoucauld

“The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles.”
― Jeff Cooper, The Art of the Rifle

“Envy, after all, comes from wanting something that isn't yours. But grief comes from losing something you've already had.”
― Jodi Picoult, Perfect Match

“Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Sometimes carrying the burden of an upsetting truth, and hiding it, is actually a gift you give to someone else. You bear that burden, so they don’t have to, in a situation where telling them will change nothing.”
― Cassandra Clare

“Rumours should be juicy and gossips must be mouth-watering, since they have to uplift and make people feel better. Tittle-tattle can have a swift ripple effect and when the ball is rolling very fast, it kick-starts a flood of moral destruction. “Schadenfreude” can, then, be fully enjoyed. (“Juicy rumours”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“The instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our personalities derives from it. Anything that conflicts with the survival instinct acts sooner or later to eliminate the individual and thereby fails to show up in future generations. . . . A scientifically verifiable theory of morals must be rooted in the individual's instinct to survive--and nowhere else!--and must correctly describe the hierarchy of survival, note the motivations at each level, and resolve all conflicts.
We have such a theory now; we can solve any moral problem, on any level. Self-interest, love of family, duty to country, responsibility toward the human race . . . .
The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“Life, it turns out, goes on. There is no cosmic rule that grants you immunity from the details just because you have come face-to-face with a catastrophe. The garbage can still overflow, the bills arrive in the mail, telemarketers, interrupt dinner.”
― Jodi Picoult, Perfect Match

“And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.”
― Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

“Observe how many people evade, rationalize and drive their minds into a state of blind stupor, in dread of discovering that those they deal with- their "loved ones" or friends or business associates or political rulers- are not merely mistaken, but evil. Observe that this dread leads them to sanction, to help and to spread the very evil whose existence they fear to acknowledge.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.”
― Francis Bacon, The Collected Works of Sir Francis Bacon (Unexpurgated Edition)

“I may do some good before I am dead--be a sort of success as a frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral story.”
― Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

“Stories can justify anything. It doesn’t matter if the boy with the heart of stone is a hero or a villain; it doesn’t matter if he got what he deserved or if he didn’t. No one can reward him or punish him, save the storyteller.”
― Holly Black, How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories

“A truly good person will speak truth, act with truth, and stand for Truth. A truly good person is not afraid to think from their heart; therefore, allowing nonconformist decisions, viewpoints, and perspectives to lead their life. By following their heart, they stand with their conscience, and only with God.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“You keep waiting for the moral of your life to become obvious, but it never does. Work, work, work: No moral. No plot. No eureka! Just production schedules and days. You might as well be living inside a photocopier. Your lives are all they're ever going to be.”
― Douglas Coupland, Player One: What Is to Become of Us

“It doesn’t seem right? Another part of him wondered, Since when do I worry about what’s right?”
― Rick Riordan, The Blood of Olympus

“We should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find free play.”
― Muhammad Ali Jinnah

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

“When you decide something's right, there's nothing that can stop you from doing it.”
― Caragh M. O'Brien, Birthmarked

“In business 'professionalism' is not a tactic but a moral value.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Ketidakjujuran adalah isyarat ketidakbebasan hati”
― Goenawan Mohamad, CATATAN PINGGIR 2

“The task of the moral philosopher-thinker is to support and strengthen the voice of human conscience, to recognize what is good or what is bad for people, whether they are good or bad for society in a period of evolution. May be a "voice crying in the wilderness", but only if that voice remains lively and uncompromising, it is possible to transform the desert into fertile land.”
― Erich Fromm, Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics

“What if the one I choose to discount is one who has been truly hurt?”
― Jodi Picoult

“And now dear little children, who may this story read,
To idle, silly flattering words, I pray you ne'er give heed:
Unto an evil counsellor, close heart and ear and eye,
And take a lesson from this tale, of the Spider and the Fly.”
― Mary Howitt, The Spider and the Fly