Morally Quotes
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Whether you wish to admit it or not, when you approve, morally, of the bombing of foreign targets by the U.S. military, you are approving of acts morally equivalent to the bombing in Oklahoma City.
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More Morally Quotes
Proving that profit is economically and morally justifiable, rather then the result of exploitation, has been a central preoccupation of neoclassical economists.
jim stanford— Part 1, Chapter 4, The Politics of Economics, p. 57
"[President George W. Bush] has a vision which can be described with two other words: Manichaean paranoia... the notion that he is leading the forces of good against the empire of evil, that in that setting, the fact that we are morally superior justifies us committing immoral acts. And that is a very dangerous posture for the country that is the number one global power. ... The fact is he squandered our credibility, our legitimacy, and even respect for our power."
zbigniew brzezinski— The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, March 14, 2007.
The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment.We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought.
— 1990 Speech,1 Jan.
It was an elevating, transforming vision: a new, fresh, vigorous, and above all morally regenerate people rising from the obscurity to defend the battlements of liberty and then in triumph standing forth, heartening and sustaining the cause of freedom everywhere.
bernard bailyn— Chapter V, TRANSFORMATION, p. 160
Having removed all misconception, foretelling of the future, explicit or implicit invocation of the devil, the use of animal magnetism (Hypnosis) is indeed merely an act of making use of physical media that are otherwise licit and hence it is not morally forbidden, provided it does not tend toward an illicit end or toward anything depraved.
— Roman Curia (Sacred Congregation of the Holy office) decreed on July 28, 1847, in “History of hypnosis International Medical and Dental Hypnotherapy Assoctation”
Around me, around them [the dissidents], the total, all- eclipsing Soviet world, which renders any other world powerless and far away, had become profoundly, morally hostile.
— 1983 Among the Russians (published in the US asWhere the Nights are Longest).
All along the line, physically, mentally, morally, alcohol is a weakening and deadening force, and it is worth a great deal to save women and girls from its influence.
(Martha) Beatrice ne e Potter Webb— 1917 Health ofWorking Girls, ch.10.
"Naturally, since I am not concerned with normative allegations, I cannot be concerned here with the invocation of the overtone series as a 'natural' phenomenon, and that application of equivocation which then would label as 'un-natural' (in the sense, it would appear, of morally perverse) music which is not 'founded' on it. Now, what music, in what sense, ever had been founded on it?"
milton babbitt— Quoted in Maus, Fred Everett (2004). "Sexual and Musical Categories", The Pleasure of Modernist Music, p.158. ISBN 1580461433.
I can spare a dime, brother, but in these morally inflationary times, a dime goes a lot farther if it's demanding work rather than adding to the indignity of relief.
phil ochs— Interview with Michael Ross (1969)
All those traitors who were morally against fascism during the shameful forty-five days following July 25 must inexorably be wiped out.
alessandro pavolini— Quoted in "Mussolini Orders Arrest Of Critics" - "New York Times" article - October 8, 1943
Have fired 500 rounds at the Germans, at my command, been shelled, didn't run away thank the Lord and never lost a man. Probably shouldn't have told you but you'll not worry any more if you know I'm in it than if you think I am. Have had the most strenuous work of my life, am very tired but otherwise absolutely in good condition physically mentally and morally.
harry s. truman— Letter to Bess Wallace (1 September 1918)
I think that argument is completely morally bankrupt, and I think people know that when they make it. There's a very big difference between having a sincere, passionate interest in a topic and being a paid shill ... Particularly for PR firms, it's something they should really very strongly avoid: ever touching an article.
jimmy wales— PRWeek (30 Jan 2007) In response to suggestions Wikipedia might change policies to allow PR firms to edit the site without breaking a rule called "WP:AUTO".
Maybe the growth of "God" signifies the existence of God. That is: if history naturally pushes people toward moral improvement, toward moral growth, and their God, as they conceive their God, grows accordingly, becoming morally richer, then maybe this growth is evidence of some higher purpose, and maybe — conceivably — the source of that purpose is worthy of the name divinity.
robert wright— The Evolution of God. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009, p. 286.
...what's absolutely unforgivable is the financial benefit top management people get for laying off people. There is no excuse for it. No justification. This is morally and socially unforgivable, and we will pay a heavy price for it.
Peter Drucker— A cantankerous interview with Peter Drucker, Wired (August 1996)
If art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally.
george eliot— Letter to Charles Bray (5 July 1859)
I venture to say that every man who is not presumably incapacitated by some consideration of personal unfitness or of political danger is morally entitled to come within the pale of the Constitution.
william ewart gladstone— Speech in the House of Commons (11 May 1864)
What's to become of the morally sound? Left out in the cold, I suppose. We must heal the sick.
henrik ibsen— Dr. Rank, Act I
Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
william james— To W. Lutoslawski (6 May 1906)
Choose your allies carefully: it's highly unlikely that you'll ever be held morally, legally, or historically accountable for the actions of your enemies.
l. neil smith— "Some New Tactical Reflections"
Even if drugs are fully as destructive as they are usually claimed to be, it is morally wrong and demonstrably more destructive for government to deprive people of their unalienable, individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to make an utter mess of their own lives. Since human beings are inclined to learn more from the mistakes they make, rather than from their triumphs, the right to fail, for individuals and groups alike, may be even more important than the right to succeed, and it must be fiercely protected at almost any cost.
l. neil smith— "Some Random Thoughts About the War On Drugs"[40] 13 June 2010
Whether we had a (good) moral intuition more developed, we would be as much morally disgusted by the rapacity of those who try to benefit from, and monopolize (or secure or corner), having no consideration (regardless or irrespective of) for others ("autrui", Fr.), than we physically are by a sickening (or nauseating) smell.
african spir— p. 43 (Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937))
Although both the natural and moral sciences seek to understand the objects of their observation, in natural science the purpose of this is to be able to control them better, whereas in moral science it is, or ought to be, to be better able to leave them alone. The morally proper aim of psychology, then, is self-control.
thomas szasz— "Science and Scientism", p. 115
A man is morally free when... he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity. This is not just an aim but an obligation.
nassim nicholas taleb— p. 16 (Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012))
This whole theory [of John Law and Jean Terrasson], as dear to French financial schemers in the eighteenth century as to American " Greenbackers " in the nineteenth, had resulted, under the Orleans Regency and Louis XV, in ruin to France financially and morally, had culminated in the utter destruction of all prosperity, the rooting out of great numbers of the most important industries, and the grinding down of the working people even to starvation.
Andrew Dickson White— p.169-170 (Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915))
The powers of the placebo are so strong that it may be morally wrong to call homeopathy a lie because the moment you say it then a placebo falls to pieces and loses its power.
— Stephen Fry (2010) In: "Last Chance to Think" Interview by Kylie Sturgess in Skeptical Inquirer. Vol 34 (1)
"Isn't sarcasm the opiate of the masses?" "You're thinking of religion. Sarcasm is the Xanax of the morally bereft."
Cecily White— Prophecy Girl (2013)
I do not wish in any way to depart from the principle that a wrongdoing director, whether he be morally or legally wrong, should be made liable for the highest amount which could have been obtained from the property wrongly taken by him while it was in his hands.
— Webster, M.R., Shaw v. Holland (1900), L. R. 2 C. D.; C A. [1900], p. 310.
Even if drugs are fully as destructive as they are usually claimed to be, it is morally wrong and demonstrably more destructive for government to deprive people of their unalienable, individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to make an utter mess of their own lives. Since human beings are inclined to learn more from the mistakes they make, rather than from their triumphs, the right to fail, for individuals and groups alike, may be even more important than the right to succeed, and it must be fiercely protected at almost any cost.
— L. Neil Smith, "Some Random Thoughts About the War On Drugs," The Libertarian Enterprise (June 13, 2010).
Let's put it this way: if you need to ask a lawyer whether what you do is "right" or not, you are morally corrupt. Let's not go there. We don't base our morality on law.
— Linus Torvalds, Torvalds, Linus (2004-08-26). Message to linux-usb-devel mailing list. Retrieved on 2009-11-27.
