C. S. Lewis Quotes

Morality is truth in full bloom.

The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.

Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, when they have no greater occasions than the journey of a wit to his home town: yet such pleasures and such pains make up the general mass of life; and as nothing is little to him that feels it with gre

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

My work is based on the assumption that clarity and consistency in our moral thinking is likely, in the long run, to lead us to hold better views on ethical issues.

There are a few dogmas and double standards and really regrettable exports from philosophy that have confounded the thinking of scientists on the subject of morality.

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

The science of morality is about maximizing psychological and social health. It's really no more inflammatory than that.

Contemporary moral philosophy has found an original way of being boring, which is by not discussing moral issues at all.

True knowledge gives a moral standing and moral strength.

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

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.

What is the real relation between happiness and goodness? It is only within a few generations that men have found courage to say that there is none.

The moral earth, too, is round! The moral earth, too, has its antipodes! The antipodes, too, have their right to exist! There is still another world to be discovered--and more than one! Set sail, you philosophers!

Moralism doesn't produce morality; it produces immorality.

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

We have never stopped sin by passing laws; and in the same way, we are not going to take a great moral ideal and achieve it merely by law.

The moral sense is the first excellence of well-organized man.

...virtue is not merely a state in conformity with the right principle, but one that implies the right principle; and the right principle in moral conduct is prudence.

The characteristic feature of all ethics is to consider human life as a game that can be won or lost and to teach man the means of winning.

If one is not virtuous he becomes vicious.

It is not good for one's morals to see bad acting

Every wicked man is in ignorance as to what he ought to do, and from what to abstain, and it is because of error such as this that men become unjust and, in a word, wicked.

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

Some of you read with me 40 years ago a portion of Aristotle's Ethics, a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well.