Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Quotes

If "Thou shalt not covet," and "Thou shalt not steal," were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.

I've no objection to morality, except that it's obsolete.

There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not always call itself by that name.

I've got confidence that most people in America still have a decent sense of manners, propriety, morality.

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

For many people, morality means a set of rules governing the disposition on one's genital organs; or a set of injunctions against lying, stealing, or killing except when such acts are sanctioned by church or state.

Well, I believe in the idea of 'normal' in the way that I believe in the idea of logic. Or the idea of character. All of these ethical constructs are just that: constructs.

We do not consider patriotism desirable if it contradicts civilized behavior.

Right and wrong as moral principles do not change. They are applicable and reliable determinants whether the situations with which we deal are simple or complicated. There is always a right and wrong to every question which requires our solution.

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.

Life doesn't require ideals. It requires standards of action.

There are two principles of established acceptance in morals; first, that self-interest is the mainspring of all of our actions, and secondly, that utility is the test of their value.

Real morality is possible when the sanctions for morality are also tangible and real. Therefore, atheism shifts the basis of morality from faith in god to obligations of social living. Moral conduct is not a passport to heaven; it is social necessity.

Ye must leave righteous ways behind, not to speak of unrighteous ways.

The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name.

There is not a single outward mark of courtesy that does not have a deep moral basis.

I do have traditional values: I believe in being a good person and being polite.

All that is good is not embodied in the law; and all that is evil is not proscribed by the law. A well-disciplined society needs few laws; but it needs strong mores.

Virtue and decency are so nearly related that it is difficult to separate them from each other but in our imagination.

Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty.

The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.

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

The so-called new morality is too often the old immorality condoned.

The law functions as formal embodiment of a moral code, not as free-standing substitute for it.

In reality, moral rules are directions for running the human machine. Every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain, or a friction, in the running of that machine. That is why these rules at first seem to be constantly interfering with our natural inclinations.