Force always attracts men of low morality.

A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this – that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made – not to understand – but to feel – as crime.

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.

Why are women… so much more interesting to men than men are to women?

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

The more people rationalize cheating, the more it becomes a culture of dishonesty. And that can become a vicious, downward cycle. Because suddenly, if everyone else is cheating, you feel a need to cheat, too.

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

Freedom is a man’s natural power of doing what he pleases, so far as he is not prevented by force or law.

People hate as they love, unreasonably.

Saints need sinners.

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

What I like about pop music, and why I’m still attracted to it, is that in the end it becomes our folk music.

I do not think psychoanalysis has a scientific basis. If we can’t explain why a cockroach decides to turn left, how can we explain why a human being decides to do something?

Successful people make money. It’s not that people who make money become successful, but that successful people attract money. They bring success to what they do.

Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.

The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.

The flesh, or human nature, is generally lazy and self-centered.

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

Thoughts are mental energy; they’re the currency that you have to attract what you desire. Learn to stop spending that currency on thoughts you don’t want.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

It seems to me that terrestrial beings, as they become more autonomous, psychologically richer, shut themselves up in a way against one another, and at the same time gradually become strangers to the cosmic environment and currents, impenetrable to one another, and incapable of exteriorizing themselves.

In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.

You quickly find, when you are a hand-reader as I am, that nothing interests people so much as themselves.

People react to fear, not love; they don’t teach that in Sunday School, but it’s true.

Honor is the reward of virtue.

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.

No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.

To rule children by force is the technique of Satan, not of the Savior.

Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.

When one has the feeling of dislike for evil, when one feels tranquil, one finds pleasure in listening to good teachings; when one has these feelings and appreciates them, one is free of fear.

People need motivation to do anything. I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

Man’s true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.

The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.

Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.

A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives; who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?

I think humans are just hard-wired to process people’s faces and understand meaning and expression at such a more granular level than other types of communication.

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.

The man of life upright has a guiltless heart, free from all dishonest deeds or thought of vanity.

A man’s delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.

Fear is the mother of morality.

The human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is apparently universal.

The magical, supernatural force that is with us every second is time. We can’t even comprehend it. It’s such an illusion, it’s such a strange thing.

I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.

Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.

Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.

You either believe that people respond to authority, or that they respond to kindness and inclusion. I’m obviously in the latter camp. I think that people respond better to reward than punishment.

I love reading people. I really enjoy watching, observing, and being able to figure out a person, the reason they wore that dress, the reason they smell the way they do.

Well, I’ll put it this way: you can certainly say belief in God makes people behave worse. That can be proved beyond a doubt.

My theory is 98 percent of all human endeavor is killing time.

What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

All cruelty springs from weakness.

He who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

We’re hardwired for connection. There’s no arguing with the bioscience. But we can want it so badly we’re trying to hot-wire it.

Sin is geographical.