Moral Tradition Quotes

Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral tradition, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end. For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life.

People need religion. It's a vehicle for a moral tradition. A crucial role. Nothing can take its place.

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

To engage in war is always to pick a wild card. And war must always be a last resort, not a first choice. I truly must question the judgment of any president who can say that a massive unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50 percent children is ‘in the highest moral traditions of our country.'

Families are not merely constructs of outdated convention, and traditional marriage laws were not based on animosity toward homosexuals. Rather, I believe that the traditional family structure - centered on a lawful union between one man and one woman - comports with nature and with our Judeo-Christian moral tradition.

I was nurtured in the church; I went to a Catholic school; I was an altar boy; I went to a Catholic university; I was steeped in the moral tradition of the Catholic Church. My Catholicism plays a very strong role. But I thought President John F.Kennedy answered rather well when he said that ultimately my conduct as a public official does not come ex cathedra from Rome; it comes from my conscience.

The most important advance that the West has yet made is to develop a secularist moral tradition

Our nation must defend the sanctity of marriage. The outcome of this debate is important-and so is the way we conduct it. The same moral tradition that defines marriage also teaches that each individual has dignity and value in God's sight.