Ethical Imperative Quotes

The TEN Commandments are not prefaced with "If you're in the mood".

I am certainly an ought and not a must.

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.

In the cruel and terrible time in which our generation has been condemned to live on this earth, we must never make peace with evil. We must never become indifferent to others or undemanding of ourselves.

Holiness is not a luxury for the few; it is not just for some people. It is meant for you and for me and for all of us. It is a simple duty, because if we learn to love, we learn to be holy.

We should demand his blood not from the Arabs of Gaza but from ourselves. Let us make our reckoning today.

If an artist is driven primarily by social responsibility, I think the art probably suffers because, again, just as leadership has a rather defined end point or purpose, social responsibility would seem to have a very clear moral context.

You have to be holy in your position as you are, and I have to be holy in the position that God has put me. So it is nothing extraordinary to be holy. Holiness is not the luxury of the few. Holiness is a simple duty for you and for me. We have been created for that.

The essential function of art is moral. But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind.

On climate change, there is a clear, definitive and ineluctable ethical imperative to act.

I don't fight fascists because I'll win. I fight fascists because they are fascists.

The term is piqua nevish [?] it means to save a soul, to save a life. And that commandment supersedes all others. It means literally you may violate almost everything except, I think, three commandments of the heart, 613, - you may do anything, violate any commandment and the injunction simply to save a human life. And there are enough lives to be saved in - in Tibet.

Our responsibility is much greater than we might have supposed, because it involves all mankind.

We cannot avert our eyes without staining our souls.

The line between good and evil is permeable and almost anyone can be induced to cross it when pressured by situational forces.

The first and fundamental law of Nature, which is, to seek peace and follow it.

Whatever is morally necessary must be made politically possible.

Ministers have received their wages, and some have their minds too much on their wages. They labor for wages, and lose sight of the sacredness and importance of the work.

It should be lifted above partisanship because it's a question of survival. It's a moral issue.

Does not the possibility or the power to do something about the situation at hand confer on one the responsibility to do it?

Do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or noble to do so; do nothing because it seems good to do so; do only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way.

If we believe a thing to be bad, and if we have a right to prevent it, it is our duty to prevent it and to damn the consequences.

Every civilization is founded on sins - every single one. Dispossession, violence, appropriation. What distinguishes civilizations are the ones who rise above it.

Must not I then entertain the saints because I must keep my conscience.

Sometimes you have to go above the law.