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.

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.

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

I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

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

Teach us that wealth is not elegance, that profusion is not magnificence, that splendor is not beauty.

I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.

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.

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.

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

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

Effective action is always unjust.

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

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

If an individual wants to be a leader and isn’t controversial, that means he never stood for anything.

I know of only one duty, and that is to love.

Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.

There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

The thing I really care about is the mission, making the world open.

Many a man will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is asked to die is an unworthy one.

Ordinary morality is innate in my view.

And whether you’re an honest man, or whether you’re a thief, depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.

It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.

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

Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?

We need to have business leaders who live by deep, strong principles.

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

We moralize among ruins.

It has always been my belief that a man should do his best, regardless of how much he receives for his services, or the number of people he may be serving or the class of people served.

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

We all have the duty to do good.

Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.

You start to become successful, and everybody starts to drive your money train to the bank, and they’re not thinking anymore about what you want as an artist or if any of that even matters to you. It genuinely upsets people in my life that I don’t care about money, and that’s not my problem.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

I think God gives every one of us our own will, and unfortunately, some people choose to do evil things with it.

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.

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

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.

I worked in ad sales. I would call up local businesses and try to get them to buy ads in the paper. The whole time, I felt like I was just scamming people.

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.

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.

Justice means minding one’s own business and not meddling with other men’s concerns.

I will never say something I don’t agree with or believe in… even if the reward is massive!

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

Doing what’s right isn’t the problem. It is knowing what’s right.

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

I have only one yardstick by which I test every major problem – and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?

Unless we place our religion and our treasure in the same thing, religion will always be sacrificed.

I would never do a commercial if I thought it was offensive to anyone.

True wealth is not of the pocket, but of the heart and of the mind.