Moral Urgency Quotes

Art's task is to save the soul of mankind.. anything less is a dithering while Rome burns.

If you real desire is to be good, there is no need to wait for the money before you do it; you can do it now, this very moment, and just where you are.

Let us realize the state we are in. Let us learn what needs to be learnt. Religion and God demand it.

I feel that the time is always right to do what is right. Where progress for the Negro in America is concerned, there is a tragic misconception of time among whites. They seem to cherish a strange, irrational notion that something in the very flow of time will cure all ills.

The sight of preventable evil is painful ... he who preaches patience and reliance upon natural progress is thought callous.

Be quick to do good. If you are slow, the mind, delighting in mischief, will catch you.

My style is confrontational: when I see evil, I want to remove it right away.

We should live our lives as though Christ were coming this afternoon.

One does not become an atheist out of a desire for hassle-free Sunday mornings. People come to atheism because they have a problem with organized religion - usually a problem they consider to be of moral urgency.

We sometimes emphasize the danger in a crisis without focusing on the opportunities that are there. We should feel a great sense of urgency because it is the most dangerous crisis we have ever faced, by far. But it also provides us with opportunities to do a lot of things we ought to be doing for other reasons anyway. And to solve this crisis we can develop a shared sense of moral purpose.

When a house is on fire and you know that there are people in it, it is a sin to straighten pictures in that house. When the world about you is in great danger, works that are in themselves not sinful can be quite wrong.

Let's not do that. Let's love people. Let's care about people. Let's repeal it now while we can.

We cannot play at preaching. We preach for eternity.

I do not understand those who take little or no interest in the subject of religion. If religion embodies a truth, it is certainly the most important truth of human existence. If it is largely error, then it is one of monumentally tragic proportions—and should be vigorously opposed.

God save us from living in comfort while sinners are sinking into hell!

People talk about apathy, especially in developed countries. We're kind of lulled into these tranquil lives, and we are pursuing our own thing and there is so much suffering on a mass scale around the world that you kind of become fatalistic. You might think suffering is inevitable, you kind of lose your sense of moral urgency. But there is always something you can do for someone in the world.

In the past 20 years alone, it adds up to more death than were caused by all the civil and international wars adn government repression of the entire twentieth century, the century of Hitler and Stalin. How much would we give to prevent those horrors? Yet how little are we doing to prevent today's even larger toll and all the misery that it involves? I believe that if you read this book to the end, and look honestly and carefully at our situation, assessing both the facts and the ethical arguments, you will agree that we must act.

If you know that a thing is unrighteous, then use all dispatch in putting an end to it--why wait till next year?

The Word of fire burns today On the lips of our prophets in an evil age.

All of us living in today's world are facing an enormous crisis - arguably the greatest that humanity has ever faced - in the form of man-made global warming; one can't be neutral at such a moment. It's like claiming to be neutral if you're living in Germany in 1933.

You blame me for weeping, but how can I help it when you will not weep for yourselves, though your immortal souls are on the verge of destruction.

Oh that I may never loiter on my heavenly journey.

All you decent, well-meaning gentlemen, let me ask you, have you any idea what sort of place the world is becoming all around you? The days when you could act out of your noble instincts are over. Except of course, you here in Europe don't yet seem to know it.

We now know from a Princeton study that Superfund sites are causing higher rates of birth defects. We now know that there's no excusing the lack of moral urgency to do something about this environmental crisis. We see Flint, Michigan, for example, and the attention it's gotten, but what most Americans don't seem to realize is that this lead problem is not confined to just Flint. There are over 3,000 jurisdictions that have twice the lead levels in people's blood than Flint does. We're now seeing more people being exposed to the truth about environmental injustice in our country.