Morality quotes
690 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside morality — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"This is the crux of the moral pessimists: if they really wanted to promote their neighbor's redemption, then they would have to resolve themselves to spoiling existence for him, and thus to being his misfortune; out of pity, they would have to--become evil!"
"In morality, man treats himself not as individuum but as dividuum."
"Religion gets in the way of morality."
"From the period when I wrote La Nausea I wanted to create a morality. My evolution consists in my no longer dreaming of doing so."
"[Andre] Gide can say it to me: it is a writer's morality only addressed to a few privileged people. For that reason it no longer interests me."
"I believe that while art is always beyond morality, it is never above it."
"For a poet, style is the only morality."
"You can't run a society or cope with its problems if people are not held accountable for what they do."
"Strength and success; they are above morality, above criticism. It seems then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it."
"I believe in pursuing my own morality. That is all I have ever stuck by. It is my own morality that really matters."
"The greatest works of literature seem to embody both "art" and "morality"."
"Lacanian theory must be understood as a kind of “slave morality."
"Know that morality is a curb, not a spur."
"There is a very real evil consequent on ascribing supernatural origin to the received maxilms of morality. That origin consecrates the whole of them and protects them from being discussed or criticized."
"Morality does not depend on religion."
"There are many religions, but there is only one morality."
"There are always those who say legislation can't solve the problem. There is a half-truth involved here. It is true that legislation cannot solve the whole problem. It can solve some of the problem. It may be true that morality can't be legislated, but behavior can be regulated."
"[nonviolence] seeks to secure moral ends through moral means."
"Morality did not keep well; it required stable conditions; it was costly; it was subject to variations, and the market for it was uncertain."
"The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from Custom."
