Moral Progression Quotes

To give credit to Lincoln for moral progression seems beyond the facts and unnecessary for our appreciation of this arguably greatest of all American presidents.

Do the right thing, and then do the next right thing, and that will lead you to the next right thing after that.

There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, and, of its many rungs, three are the most important. People used to make human sacrifices to their god, perhaps even sacrificing those they loved the best ... Then, during the moral epoch of humanity, people sacrificed the strongest instincts they had, their 'nature,' to their god... Finally: what was left to be sacrificed? ... Didn't people have to sacrifice God himself and worship rocks, stupidity, gravity, fate, or nothingness out of sheer cruelty to themselves?

Feelings of right and wrong that at first have their locus within the family gradually develop into a pattern for the tribe or city, then spread to the much larger unit of the nation, and finally from the nation to mankind as a whole.

He that is good, will infallibly become better, and he that is bad, will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue and time are three things that never stand still.

When I was an animal I evolved through selfishness. Now that I am a man my evolution can be achieved only through self-sacrifice.

The history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.

I have a hundred times heard him say, that all ages and nations have represented their gods as wicked, in a constantly increasing progression; that mankind have gone on adding trait after trait till they reached the most perfect conception of wickedness which the human mind could devise, and have called this God, and prostrated themselves before it.

In my book, The Sins of Scripture, I traced the development of tribal religion, which included ideas like God's killing the Egyptians because they hated the chosen people. Then a God of love finally appears in the Book of Hosea, about the 8th century. A God of justice appears in the Book of Amos in the late 8th century or early 7th century.

Minor vices lead to major ones, but minor virtues stay put.