Confucius Quotes

Morality's not practical. Morality's a gesture. A complicated gesture learnt from books.

Morality is the thing upon which your friends smile, and immorality is the thing upon which they frown

Ignoring moralities is always undesirable, but doing so systematically is reallyworrisome.

The very essence of our civilization is that we give a paramount place to morality in all our affairs, public or private.

There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition. There are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.

We don't claim to have perfect morals, but at least we have a huge area of things that, while legal, are beneath us. We won't do them. Currently, there's a culture in Americathat says that anything that won't send you to prison is OK.

Ethics is a code of values which guide our choices and actions and determine the purpose and course of our lives.

Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat, When it's so lucrative to cheat.

The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.

The importance of a high moral code, which is at the foundation of the Scout movement, cannot be stressed too highly.

Absolute morality is the regulation of conduct in such a way that pain shall not be inflicted.

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.

Morals - all correct moral laws - derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level.

The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman.

I am, as I have always been, of the opinion that while the niceties of normal moral constraints should be our guides, they must not be our masters.

Morality represents for everybody a thoroughly definite and ascertained idea: the idea of human conduct regulated in a certain manner.

Morality is always higher than law and we cannot forget this ever.

I don't want to do anything that violates my own personal code of ethics and morals.

Morally considered, laughter is next to the Ten Commandments.

The rules of prudence, like the laws of the stone tables, are for the most part prohibitive. "Thou shalt not" is their characteristic formula.

moral, adj. Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right. Having the quality of general expediency.

I have my own rules and adhere to them. The rule is simple but inflexible. A James Stewart picture must have two vital ingredients. It will be clean and it will involve the triumph of the underdog over the bully.

"On my honor" - what an ennobling phrase! Three short words, nine letters, but the summation of all we call character. From the Boy Scout's Oath.

If the Coastal Republic had believed in the existence of virtue, it could at least have aspired to hypocrisy.

That which is selfish is immoral, and that which is unselfish is moral.