Common experience shows how much rarer is moral courage than physical bravery. A thousand men will march to the mouth of the cannon where one man will dare espouse an unpopular cause. —Clarence Darrow More about this quote Tags: experience popularity courage bravery Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
As critic and moralist, Matthew Arnold attacked the philistinism of the British middle class of his time, upholding rather severe, even dismaying standards of intellectual rigor and moral seriousness. Shortly after his death Robert Louis Stevenson remarked, "Poor Matt. He's gone to Heaven, no doubt — but he won't like God. —The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Life is governed by a multitude of forces. It would be smooth sailing if one could determine the course of one's actions only by one general principle whose application at a given moment was too obvious to need even a moment's reflection. But I cannot recall a single act which could be so easily determined. —Mahatma Gandhi More about this quote Tags: life actions reflection Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out. —Thomas Babington Macaulay More about this quote Tags: character morality secrets Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
The stress laid on upward social mobility in the United States has tended to obscure the fact that there can be more than one kind of mobility and more than one direction in which it can go. There can be ethical mobility as well as financial, and it can go down as well as up. —Margaret Halsey More about this quote Tags: ethics USA finance class social mobility Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Feeling that morality has nothing to do with the way you use the resources of the world is an idea that can't persist much longer. If it does, then we won't. —Barbara Kingsolver More about this quote Tags: morality world Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind. —Albert Schweitzer More about this quote Tags: living ethics compassion depth mankind Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you anymore. —Franz Kafka More about this quote Tags: peace Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Those who are familiar with ancient folklore, or are up above the rest of us a moral notch or two, kill "respectfully" by offering prayers or apologies, in the hope that animals will "offer themselves" up to be voluntarily killed. However, it is a sad fact that no animal cares if those who might eat them invent reasons to justify their acts. —Bernd Heinrich More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
I am a vegetarian. I'm not strict. I eat fish. And duck, but they're nearly fish, aren't they? . . . And pigs, cows, sheep, anything that lives near water. I'm like a postmodern vegetarian. I eat meat ironically. —Bill Bailey More about this quote Tags: food irony vegetarianism water Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency. —W. Somerset Maugham More about this quote Tags: sacrifice principles speed expediency Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Children lack morality, but they also lack fake morality. —Mignon McLaughlin More about this quote Tags: children morality Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically — for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist — but then what isn't? —Quentin Crisp More about this quote Tags: truth shock manners lying Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stouter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once. —Logan Pearsall Smith More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am. —Joseph Baretti More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email