Theodore Sturgeon Quotes

Morals were restrictive, but they were grounded on human experience.

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

Morals consist of political morals, commercial morals, ecclesiastical morals, and morals.

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

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

For many people, morality means a set of rules governing the disposition on one's genital organs; or a set of injunctions against lying, stealing, or killing except when such acts are sanctioned by church or state.

The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.

What we call “morals” is simply blind obedience to words of command.

Laws are often made to express collective ethical principles, to establish a climate of opinion …

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

Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good, and evil, in the conversation, and society of mankind. Good, and evil, are names that signify our appetites, and aversions; which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different.

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

All good moral philosophy is ... but the handmaid to religion.

The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.

In the past, the respect people had for religion meant that ethical practice was maintained through a majority following one religion or another. But this is no longer the case. We must therefore find some other way of establishing basic ethical principles.

Men think they may justly do that for which they have a precedent.

There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules

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

The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.

The law functions as formal embodiment of a moral code, not as free-standing substitute for it.

Morality is the Science of harmonious relations between intelligent beings.

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

Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple and doesn't require religion at all.

All the good of which humanity is capable is comprised in obedience.