Pramoedya Ananta Toer Quotes

Morals are an acquirement -- like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis -- no man is born with them.

If you want young people to take right and wrong seriously, you must put them in the presence of people who take right and wrong seriously.

My parents are naive in their morality of things, and so, without realising it, I landed up being ethical and having strong opinions.

I'm pretty confident in who I am. I know that for parents everywhere, it's my job to be a role model, and I'm going to do the best I possibly can.

Nothing has ever moulded our conscience so strongly as our knowledge of what is good and what is evil.

For children to take morality seriously they must be in the presence of adults who take morality seriously. And with their own eyes they must see adults take morality seriously.

Everything we do as teachers has moral overtones.

Base thy life on principle, not on rules.

To do right is wonderful. To teach others to do right is even more wonderful--and much easier.

The good man is the teacher of the bad, And the bad is the material from which the good may learn. He who does not value the teacher, Or greatly care for the material, Is greatly deluded although he may be learned. Such is the essential mystery.

I give priority to up-bringing over education because the ultimate goal of up-bringing is morals, and we have a more urgent need for morals than for knowledge.

Through the imparting of moral principles, good behaviour, and education we must make the Chandala come up to the level of the Brahmana.

What is a good man? A teacher of a bad man. What is a bad man? A good man's charge?

We become moral when we are unhappy.

Bad company corrupts good character.

Children may be born angels, but with all the temptations out there in the world, it takes work to try to keep them that way.

Moral authority comes from following universal and timeless principles like honesty, integrity, treating people with respect.

Integrity is the core of our character. Without integrity, we have a weak foundation upon which to build other Christlike characteristics.

Put more trust in nobility of character than in an oath.

The minute we stop learning, we begin death, the process of dying. We learn from each other with every action we perform. We are teaching goodness or evil every time we step out of the house and into the street.

Education is the art of making man ethical.

Educate men without religion and you make of them but clever devils.

The child becomes largely what it is taught; hence we must watch what we teach it, and how we live before it.

A man is not honest simply because he never had a chance to steal