Secular Ethics Quotes

Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.

Religion gets its morality from us. We don't get our morality from religion.

There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

Does history warrant the conclusion that religion is necessary to morality - that a natural ethic is too weak to withstand the savagery that lurks under civilization and emerges in our dreams, crimes and wars? ... There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.

I was raised with no religious training or influence. Except the influence was to be a moral and ethical person at the secular level. And to be a peace marcher, an activist for civil rights, peace and justice.

There must be a way of promoting human values without involving religion, based on common sense, experience and recent scientific findings.

The only way to show a true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God’s existence.

Religious belief is not a precondition either of ethical conduct or of happiness.

In contemporary society secular humanism has been singled out by critics and proponents alike as a position sharply distinguishable from any religious formulation. Religious fundamentalists in the United States have waged a campaign against secular humanism, claiming that it is a rival "religion" and seeking to root it out from American public life. Secular humanism is avowedly non-religious. It is a eupraxsophy (good practical wisdom), which draws its basic principles and ethical values from science, ethics, and philosophy.

We need an approach to ethics which makes no recourse to religion and can be equally acceptable to those with faith and those without.

It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living.

Name a moral statement or action, uttered or performed by a religious person that could not have been uttered or performed by an unbeliever.

The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion. However valuable-even necessary-that may have been in enforcing good behavior on primitive peoples, their association is now counterproductive. Yet at the very moment when they should be decoupled, sanctimonious nitwits are calling for a return to morals based on superstition.

Morality is more than possible without God, it is entirely independent of him.

I think it's a problem that people are considered immoral if they're not religious. That's just not true. If you do something for a religious reason, you do it because you'll be rewarded in an afterlife or in this world. That's not quite as good as something you do for purely generous reasons.

The life of West, Nietzsche said, is based on Christianity. The values of the West are based on Christianity. Some of these values seem to have taken a life of their own, and this gives us the illusion that we can get rid of Christianity and keep the values. This, Nietzsche says, is an illusion...Remove the Christian foundation, and the values must go too.

Morality comes from humanism and is stolen by religion for its own purposes.

I am honorary President of the American Humanist Society, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that utterly functionless capacity. We Humanists behave as well as we can, without any rewards or punishments in an Afterlife.

I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether.

Any simple claim that you need religion to be good is flat wrong.

Humans impart meaning and purpose to almost all aspects of life. This sense of meaning and purpose gives us a road map for how to live a good life. This guidance emerges spontaneously from the interactions of human beings living in societies and thinking together about how best to get along. It doesn't require a god or sacred text.

I was brought up an atheist and have always remained so. But at no time was I led to believe that morality was unimportant or that good and bad did not exist. I believe passionately in the need to distinguish between right and wrong and am somewhat confounded by being told I need God, Jesus or a clergyman to help me to do so.

Religion attacks us in our deepest integrity by saying we wouldn't be able to make a moral decision without it.

In the past, the respect people had for religion meant that ethical practice was maintained through a majority following one religion or another. But this is no longer the case. We must therefore find some other way of establishing basic ethical principles.