Havelock Ellis Quotes

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.

Virtue, though she gets her beginning from nature, yet receives her finishing touches from learning.

The advantages found in history seem to be of three kinds, as it amuses the fancy, as it improves the understanding, and as it strengthens virtue.

One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.

The natural desire of good men is knowledge.

Tutors who make youth learned do not always make them virtuous.

The sciences have ever been the surest guides to virtue.

Intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.

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

Morality can muddle mystical understanding and virtue is only necessary in so far as it favours success. All wisdom must be encompassed in order to achieve enlightenment.

Little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it.

Right conduct can never, except by some rare accident, be promoted by ignorance or hindered by knowledge.

The innocence which is simply ignorance is not virtue.

The end of knowledge is wisdom The end of culture is perfection The end of wisdom is freedom The end of education is character. And character consists of eagerness to renounce one's selfish greed.

Our moral traditions developed concurrently with our reason, not as its product.

Ethics is the activity of man directed to secure the inner perfection of his own personality.

For me, the only sources of moral values are the pursuit of understanding and the pursuit of happiness.

We have found that morals are not, like bacon, to be cured by hanging; nor, like wine, to be improved by sea voyages; nor, like honey, to be preserved in cells.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

If you do not know the laws of right conduct, you cannot form your character.

Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.

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

The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values.

Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to choose between the two.

All are agreed, that the increase of learning and good morals are great blessings to society.