Robert Burns Quotes

What is morality, she asked. Judgement to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, and courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price.

If you say morality is just what you like, you lose the metaphysical level of what in the history of philosophy is called 'categorical imperative.'

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

Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair' before you can say Jack Robinson.

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.

Morality is truth in full bloom.

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

Today it would be progress if everyone would stop talking about values. Instead, let us talk, as the Founders did, about virtues.

All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength.

To say murder is wrong is as much a statement of faith as 'I believe that God said murder is wrong' is a statement of faith

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

Right and wrong are not simply matters of evolutionary impacts and what is natural.

I had taken a course in Ethics. I read a thick textbook, heard the class discussions and came out of it saying I hadn't learned a thing I didn't know before about morals and what is right or wrong in human conduct.

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

If you are following the dharma no matter what you do it is moral.

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

There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition. There are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.

Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.

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

I think that moral philosophy is useful for framing questions, but terrible at answering them. I think moral psychology is booming right now, and we're making a lot of progress on understanding how we actually work, what our moral nature is.

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

[T]here is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists . . . an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.

Moral Teleology supplies the deficiency in physical Teleology , and first establishes a Theology ; because the latter, if it did not borrow from the former without being observed, but were to proceed consistently, could only found a Demonology , which is incapable of any definite concept.

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