John Greenleaf Whittier Quotes

All systems of morality are fine. The gospel alone has exhibited a complete assemblage of the principles of morality, divested of all absurdity. It is not composed, like your creed, of a few common-place sentences put into bad verse. Do you wish to see that which is really sublime? Repeat the Lord's Prayer.

The relationship between the films and the individual Commandments [is] a tentative one. The films should be influenced by the individual Commandments to the same degree that the Commandments influence our daily lives.

Morally considered, laughter is next to the Ten Commandments.

As she read the ten commandments for the first time, a Chinese woman said, "I don't see how anyone can very well get on without them."

I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn't. You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one's aims are, that's the trouble, specially if you're British.

Official morality has always been oppressive and negative: it has said "thou shalt not," and has not troubled to investigate the effect of activities not forbidden by the code.

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction.... In its horror of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, which has been gradually compromised away into one of legality. It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life - in this falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish character.... It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found established.

Moral standards cannot be changed by battle and cannot be changed by ballot.

Renunciation is the very basis upon which ethics stands. There never was an ethical code preached which had not renunciation for its basis.

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.

The road by precepts is tedious, by example, short and efficacious.

Conscience is merely our own judgment of the right or wrong of our actions, and so can never be a safe guide unless enlightened by the word of God.

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

Morals and lights are our first necessities.

Ethics are pre-determined and a matter of discovery, not a evolved concept.

The Ten Commandments don't tell you what you ought to do: They only put ideas into your head.

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.

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

Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that.

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

A man may not transgress the bounds of major morals, but may make errors in minor morals.

A different vision of ethics is that of a collection of resources people can use to act better. The resources might be firm rules that could always be relied on. Or they might be ideals that could often be followed without thinking but that sometimes conflicted with one another.

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

Human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth.