Morality is a private and costly luxury.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.

People must have righteous principals in the first, and then they will not fail to perform virtuous actions.

It is perfectly possible to live a very moral life without a belief in God, and I think it’s perfectly possible to live a life peppered with ill-doing and believe in God.

The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.

To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.

The rise of capitalist practice and morality brought with it a radical revision of how the commons are treated, and also of how they are conceived.

Where there is no opposition to evil, it multiplies.

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

Honor is simply the morality of superior men.

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.

Morality which depends upon the helplessness of a man or woman has not much to recommend it. Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts.

You cannot make a sinner into a saint by killing him. He who does not live as a saint here will never live as a saint hereafter.

Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies.

For my part, I desire to see the time when education – and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry – shall become much more general than at present, and should be gratified to have it in my power to contribute something to the advancement of any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate the happy period.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

There is a moral obligation that those who have should give to those who don’t.

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts.

On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, ‚Is it safe?‘ Expediency asks the question, ‚Is it politic?‘ And Vanity comes along and asks the question, ‚Is it popular?‘ But Conscience asks the question, ‚Is it right?‘

Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.

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

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 word ‚good‘ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.

May be is very well, but Must is the master. It is my duty to show justice without recompense.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

People don’t want to hear about me having leather walls or gold toilets.

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

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

If you’re not going to be rewarded for your virtues, and instead you’re going to be punished for them, then what’s your motivation to continue?

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.

I’ve been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that’s kind of a religious belief. I mean, it’s at least a moral belief.

We tell lies, yet it is easy to show that lying is immoral.

I think God’s justice is making wrongs right.

Evil is whatever distracts.

Morality arose largely as an empirical defence of the individual and society. Ever since intelligent beings began to be in contact, and consequently in friction, they have felt the need to guard themselves against each other’s encroachments.

I would rather die than do something which I know to be a sin, or to be against God’s will.

Comfort and luxury are usually the chief requirements of life for your ego – its top priorities tend to be accumulations, achievements, and the approval of others.

Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

Morality is contraband in war.

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.

I have a nice office. I have a nice house… So I’m not denying myself some great things. I just don’t happen to have expensive hobbies.

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

Morality is of the highest importance – but for us, not for God.

Force always attracts men of low morality.

What is permissible is not always honorable.

There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.