Morality

In many ways, our impulse towards ethical perfectibility is a legacy from our own adolescence.
~ William C. ("Bill") Ayers, A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court (1997).

If we do not act promptly, they (the avant-gardists) will triumphally thrust their pagan gods and hollow creeds on us, and then assure us that it is for the well-being of mankind that these lustful barbarians dismantle the noble heritage of the West.
~ William Bentley Ball, In Search of a National Morality (1992).

Those of us who experienced the public schools of half a century ago know that it is incontestably true that the mere presence in them of traditional theistic values rendered them morally superior to the schools of today. And that, in turn, yielded an enormous benefit to the nation. The "social decomposition" which William J. Bennett warns may be overtaking us is due, most of all, to the forced eradication of the inculcation of traditional moral values in the schools attended by the vast majority of our children. But nature abhors a vacuum and rushes in to fill it. ... The vacuum has quite naturally attracted a rush of efforts to respond to the religious and moral needs of children. The kid's hopes, problems, questions, anxieties go on. The public school teachers' hands are judicially tied to nonreligious conformity. The need among public educators for substitute values, once God had been ousted, has led to the adoption of substitute religions.
~ William Bentley Ball, Testimony to the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution. U.S. House of Representatives (8 June 1995).

If you want to put it in one sentence, ethics is the science of behaviour.
~ William Barclay, Ethics in a Permissive Society (1971).

For children to take morality seriously they must be in the presence of adults who take morality seriously. And with their own eyes they must see adults take morality seriously.
~ William J. Bennett, The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories (1993).

In America, morality is central to our politics and attitudes in a way that is not the case with Europe, and precisely this moral streak is what is best about us. ... Europeans may have something to teach us about, say, wine or haute couture. But on the matter of morality in politics, America has much to teach Europe.
~ William J. Bennett, The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals (January 1998).

I've gambled all my life, and it's never been a moral issue with me. I liked church bingo when I was growing up. I've been a poker player.
~ William John Bennett, in Newsweek magazine (2 May 2003). The Man of Virtues Has a Vice

Moorings and anchors come in handy in life; moral anchors and moorings have never been more necessary.
~ William John Bennett, The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories (1993). Introduction

Much of life is a moral and spiritual journey, and we undertake it, at least in large part, to find our way morally and spiritually. Thus it makes no sense to send young people forth on such an endeavor having offered them only some timid, vacillating opinions or options about conduct in the hope that in the course of their wanderings, they will stumble onto some more definite personal preferences which will become their "values." We must give our children better equipment than that. We must raise them as moral and spiritual beings by offering them unequivocal, reliable standards of right and wrong, noble and base, just and unjust.
~ William John Bennett, The Moral Compass: Stories for a Life's Journey (1995). Introduction

Sex involves men and women in all their complexity; it involves their emotions, desires, and the often contradictory intentions that they bring with them, whether they mean to or not. It is, in other words, a quintessentially moral activity.
~ William John Bennett, in National Review (3 July 1987). Why Johnny Can't Abstain

What I fear is the erosion of moral clarity, and the spread of indifference and confusion, as a thousand voices discourse with energy and zeal on the questionable nature, if not the outright illegitimacy, of our methods or our cause.
~ William John Bennett, Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism (2002).

Past sins will take plentiful care of themselves in their consequences; morality would collapse were it otherwise.
~ William Hume Blake, A Fisherman's Creed (1923).

We are moral scavengers, netting the very sewers.
~ William Booth (describing the Salvation Army in 1880), in The Life of General William Booth: The founder of the Salvation Army (1920).

The foundation upon which democracy rests is faith in the moral instincts of the people.
~ William Edgar Borah (in reference to the treaty to ratify the League of Nations), Remarks in the U.S. Senate (19 November 1919). "Little American" speech

Morality is the power of endurance in man.
~ William Jennings Bryan, The Prince of Peace (lecture delivered on the Chautauqua circuit, starting in 1900).

I profoundly believe that it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.
~ William F. Buckley, Jr., The Jeweler's Eye (1968).

For most of the situations of life, especially for most of the crises of life, the only preparedness of prime worth is a moral preparedness.
~ William H. Burnham, from Hygiene and War: Suggestions for Makers of Text-books and for Use in Schools (1917). An Introductory Statement

The only possible ethic is to do what one wants to do.
~ William S. Burroughs, in The Letters of William S. Burroughs: Volume I: 1945-1959, Book 2 (1994).

No calculations of interest, no schemes of policy, can do the work of love, of the spirit of human brotherhood. There can be no peace without, but through peace within.
~ William Ellery Channing, Lecture on War (1838).

[N]o decision of the state absolves us from the moral law. It is no excuse for our wrong-doing that the artificial organization called society has done wrong.
~ William Ellery Channing, The Duty of the Free States: or, Remarks Suggested by the Case of the Creole (1842).

The temptation to moralize is strong; it is emotionally satisfying to have enemies rather than problems, to seek out culprits rather than the flaws in the system. God knows it is emotionally satisfying to be righteous with that righteousness that nourishes itself on the blood of sinners. But God also knows that what is emotionally satisfying can be spiritually devastating.
~ Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., The Courage to Love (1982).

A cornerstone of all the mainstream models of psychotherapy since Freud has been the substitution of scientific and clinical ideas for moral ideas.
~ William J. ("Bill") Doherty, Soul Searching: Why Psychotherapy Must Promote Moral Responsibility (1996). Chapter I: Psychotherapy and Moral Responsibility

[L]iterature should not be surpressed merely because it affects the moral code of the censor.
~ William Orville Douglas (dissenting opinion), Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957).

A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.
~ William James "Will" Durant

Life, from the point of view of morals, seems to be divided into two periods; in the first, we indulge, in the second, we preach.
~ William James "Will" Durant, The Mansions of Philosophy: A Survey Of Human Life And Destiny (1929). Chapter V. Our Changing Morals

Moral codes ... adjust themselves to historical and environmental conditions.
~ William James "Will" Durant (with Ariel Durant), The Lessons of History (1968).

Moral progress in history lies not so much in the improvement of the moral code as in the enlargement of the area within which it is applied.
~ William James "Will" Durant, The Story of Civilization, Volume I (1935). Our Oriental Heritage

[T]he central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.
~ William Empson, Milton's God (1961).

Ethics thought out is religious thought; ethics felt out is religious feeling; ethics lived out is religious life.
~ William Channing Gannett, Discourse Before The Illinois Unitarian Conference, Geneva (1885). The Faith of Ethics

Once it was the skeptic, the critic of the status quo, who had to make a great effort. Today the skeptic is the status quo. The one who must make the effort is the man who seeks to create a new moral order.
~ John William Gardner, Self-Renewal: The Individ­ual and the Innovative Society (1963).

Vice inevitably produces punishment, and virtue necessarily brings rewards and happiness.
~ William Gaskell, Sermon, Cross Street Chapel in Manchester, England (1878).

The law knows of no greater folly than the notion that the police are the custodians or conservers of the private morals of the community, or could be made such with any safety whatever, or with any possibility of uplifting morals instead of debasing them. The moral growth of a community depends on its churches, schools, and teachers, and the influence of a healthy and comfortable home life, and not on the police.
~ William Jay Gaynor, in People v. Summers, New York Supreme Court (April 1903).

Morality is nothing else but that system which teaches us to contribute, upon all occasions, to the extent of our power, to the well-being and happiness of every intellectual and sensitive existence.
~ William Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793). Book II, Chapter V. Of Rights

No principle of morality can be more just, than that which teaches us to regard every faculty we possess as a power intrusted to us for the benefit of others as well as of ourselves, and which therefore we are bound to employ in the way which shall best conduce to the general advantage.
~ William Godwin, Thoughts on Man, His Nature, Productions and Discoveries (1831). Essay XVI. Of Frankness and Reserve

The most fundamental of all principles of morality is the consideration and deference that man owes to man; nor is the helplessness of childhood by any means unentitled to the benefit of this principle. The neglect of it among mankind at large, is the principal source of all the injustice, the revenge, the bloodshed and the wars, that have so long stained the face of nature.
~ William Godwin, The Enquirer: Reflections on Education, Manners and Literature in a Series of Essays (1797). Part I. Essay X: Of Cohabitation

The foundation of morality is justice.
~ William Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793). Book III, Chapter III. Of Promises

The world today, it seems to me, suffers not only from a lack of rugged convictions, but also from our timidity in expressing those convictions we do have.
~ Billy Graham, in Reader's Digest (July 1964). A Time for Moral Courage

Ethics is the science of the laws which govern our actions as moral agents.
~ Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet, in Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic (1858-60). Volume I. Metaphysics. Lecture III. The Nature and Comprehension of Philosophy

Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.
~ William Hazlitt, Characteristics: in the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims (1823).

What passes in the world for talent, or dexterity, or enterprise, is often only a want of moral principle. We may succeed where others fail, not from a greater share of invention, but from not being nice in the choice of expedients.
~ William Hazlitt, Characteristics: in the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims (1823).

If there is to be social and political regeneration in our Republic and in the rest of the world, it must be by tremendous regeneration of moral ideals.
~ Dr. J. William Hudson

[A]ll moral growth and culture spring solely and immediately from the inner life of the soul, and can only be induced in human nature, and never produced by mere external and artificial contrivances.
~ Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Sphere and Duties of Government (1854 translation of 'The Limits of State Action' written in 1791). Chapter VII. Religion

For morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Lecture II: Circumscription of the Topic

I personally just give up the Absolute. I just take my moral holidays; or else as a professional philosopher, I try to justify them by some other principle.
~ William James, from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907). Lecture II. What Pragmatism Means

I recommend this matter to your serious pondering, for it is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Lectures XIV and XV: The Value of Saintliness

If your heart does not want a world of moral reality, your head will assuredly never make you believe in one.
~ William James, An Address to the Philosophical Clubs of Yale and Brown Universities (published in the New World; June 1896). The Will to Believe

The question of having moral beliefs at all or not having them is decided by our will.
~ William James, An Address to the Philosophical Clubs of Yale and Brown Universities (published in the New World; June 1896). The Will to Believe

The most characteristically and peculiarly moral judgments that a man is ever called on to make are in unprecedented cases and lonely emergencies, where no popular rhetorical maxims can avail, and the hidden oracle alone can speak; and it speaks often in favor of conduct quite unusual, and suicidal as far as gaining popular approbation goes.
~ William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890). Vol. 2. Chapter XXVIII: Necessary Truths and the Effects of Experience

We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if she were full of special designs; lay plans as if we were to be immortal; and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Lecture III: The Reality of the Unseen

[W]ere there left but one rock with two loving souls upon it, that rock would have as thoroughly moral a constitution as any possible world which the eternities and immensities could harbor.
~ William James, An address to the Yale Philosophical Club (first published in the International Journal of Ethics; April 1891). The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life

No man has a moral right to use his property, a creature of God, against the children of God. Racial discrimination even in the use of purely private property, is immoral at least as transgressing the supreme law of charity.
~ William J. Kenealy, The New Negro (1961).

[E]verything of a moral nature which ought to be done, can be done.
~ William Ladd, An Essay on a Congress of Nations (1840). Chapter XI

Moral Truth and Moral Progress, -- what more important than these?
~ William McCall, The Elements of Individualism: A Series of Lectures (1847). Lecture XXXI. The Relation of Sects and Parties to Truth and Progress

The great moral discovery in a combat zone is that of one's own limitless capacity for malice, and, by extrapolation, the unsuspected depths and pervasive nature of human depravity.
~ William P. Mahedy, Some Theological Perspectives on PTSD

God has so framed us as to make freedom of choice and action the very basis of all moral improvement, and all our faculties, mental and moral, resent and revolt against the idea of virtue by coercion.
~ William Mathews, from The Great Conversers, And Other Essays (1874). VI. Compulsory Morality

The study of Ethics is part and parcel of the study of Nature; for man must learn his place in the world before he can act rightly and reasonably.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, from A Writer's Notebook (1949). 1901 entry

Thousands of moralists have solemnly repeated the old saw that only he can command who has learnt to obey. It would be nearer the truth to say that only he can command who has the courage and initiative to disobey.
~ William McDougall, Character and the Conduct of Life (1927).

History shows that morality works and immorality doesn't.
~ William D. Montapert, The Omega Strategy (1982).

I do tend to gravitate toward what guiding light we have. ... If I read something that's got those ethics in it, then I go towards it. We live in such a corporate world where everyone is passing the buck, it seems to me. Therefore I like stories where the individual takes responsibility for BEING the individual, and not just for himself, but for his comrades, his society and ultimately for his country. Ultimately, we can all learn a lesson from that and not be browbeaten by the corporate world which is taking over.
~ Liam Neeson, Film Monthly, K-19: The Windowmaker Interview (17 July 2002). Liam Neeson Returns to Work Following Motorcycle Accident

In Los Angeles, it's like they jog for two hours a day and then they think they're morally right. That's when you want to choke people, you know?
~ Liam Neeson

Fear is the mother of morality.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

It quite often happens that the old man is subject to the delusion of a great moral renewal and rebirth, and from this experience he passes judgments on the work and course of his life, as if he had only now become clear-sighted; and yet the inspiration behind this feeling of well-being and these confident judgements is not wisdom, but weariness.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Dawn (a.k.a. Daybreak): Thoughts on the prejudices of morality (1881).

Master-morality and slave-morality.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Bose (1886)

Merchant and pirate were for a long period one and the same person. Even today mercantile morality is really nothing but a refinement of piratical morality.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human. First Sequel: Mixed Opinions and Maxims (March 1879).

Moral sensibilities are nowadays at such cross-purposes that to one man a morality is proved by its utility, while to another its utility refutes it.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Dawn (a.k.a. Daybreak): Thoughts on the prejudices of morality (1881).

Morality is primarily a means of preserving the community and saving it from destruction. Next it is a means of maintaining the community on a certain plane and in a certain degree of benevolence.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (1878).

Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882).

Morals, however, remain invaluable: they reveal, at least for those who know, the most valuable realities of cultures which did not know enough to "understand" themselves. At all times they have wanted to "improve" men: this above all was called morality.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The "masters" have been done away with; the morality of the vulgar man has triumphed.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (1887).

There are no moral phenomena at all, but only moral interpretation of phenomena.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1885-86).

You have to be moral just to be a good human being. Being immoral means acting less than human.
~ William J. O'Malley, Speech, Annual Conference of the Christus Theological Conference, Mobile AL (1996). Building Your Own Conscience: Ethics and the Adolescent

Questions of ethics or morality at base have to do with wisdom and virtue and are not only concerned with the best way of doing something but with what is worth doing. When wisdom and virtuous principle are well understood, our most important and efficacious institutions and activities can be related to these.
~ William G. O'Neill, in National Defense University Press Joint Force Quarterly (JFQ; Spring 1996). Moral Obligation Versus "Beeper Ethics": A Review Essay

Whatever is expedient is right. It is the utility of any moral rule alone which constitutes the obligation of it.
~ William Paley, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785). Book I. Chapter VI: Utility

If the firm does not have a moral reference point, it has the potential to contribute to the bankruptcy of the human soul. ... Today it is popular to talk about "ethics in business." But the issue is not just ethics in business. It is ethics in life.
~ C. William Pollard, The Soul of the Firm (December 1996).

A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience. Therefore let us have the moral first and be done with it.
~ William Sydney Porter (O. Henry), Strictly Business: More Stories of the Four Million (1910). The Gold That Glittered

Where there is no free agency, there can be no morality. Where there is no temptation, there can be little claim to virtue. Where the routine is rigorously prescribed by law, the law, and not the man, must have the credit of the conduct.
~ William Hickling Prescott, History of the Conquest of Peru (1847). Book I, Chapter V

The history of morals is the extension of the reciprocal or selfish virtues from the clan to the tribe, from the tribe to the nation, from the nation to all communities living under the same government, civil or religious, then people of the same colour, and finally to all mankind.
~ W. (William) Winwood Reade, The Martyrdom of Man (1872). Chapter IV: Intellect

Whatever contributes to the happiness and welfare of the human race, and of its individual members, is right and moral; whatever contributes to its unhappiness and suffering is wrong and immoral.
~ William Josephus Robinson, Practical Eugenics: Four Means Of Improving The Human Race (1912). Introduction

If you laugh loudly, you are bound to weep bitterly.
~ William Saroyan, Three Times Three (1936).

We do not need the laws of Church and State, nor the findings of science and psychiatry, to tell us the simple rules of ethics and morality.
~ William Seifriz, Perspectives on a Troubled Decade (1950).

'Tis all men's office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow,
But no man's virtue nor sufficiency
To be so moral when he shall endure
The like himself.
~ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing. Act V, scene i

We have found that morals are not, like bacon, to be cured by hanging; nor, like wine, to be improved by sea voyages; nor, like honey, to be preserved in cells.
~ William Cooke Taylor, (1849)

A restlessness in men's minds to be something they are not, and to have something they have not, is the root of all immorality.
~ Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet, in The Works of Sir William Temple, Bart., Vol. I (1720). Miscellanea, Part III. Heads, Designed For An Essay Upon The Different Conditions Of Life And Fortune

The function of morality is to regulate the activities of associated life so that all may have what we call fair play.
~ William Isaac "W.I." Thomas, Sex and Society: Studies in the Social Psychology of Sex (1907). Sex and Primitive Morality

[W]hen it is said Morality is founded on Will; it is not meant that every Will obliges, but that nothing but Will can.
~ William Warburton, Divine Legation of Moses (1738). Book I. Section IV

The pro-life groups are right about one thing: the location of the baby inside or outside the womb cannot make such a crucial moral difference. We cannot coherently hold that it is all right to kill a fetus a week before birth, but as soon as the baby is born everything must be done to keep it alive. The solution, however, is not to accept the pro-life view that the fetus is a human being with the same moral status as yours or mine. The solution is the very opposite: to abandon the idea that all human life is of equal worth.
~ William D. Watkins, The New Absolutes (1996). Death: What A Beautiful Choice

For 40 to 60 percent of the presidential office is not in administration but in morals, politics, and spiritual leadership.
~ William Allen White

A disquieting era of genetic manipulation is coming, one that may revolutionize human capacities, and notions of health. If we treat moral scruples impatiently, as inherently retrograde in a scientifically advancing civilization, we will not be in moral trim when, soon, our very humanity depends on our being in trim.
~ George F. Will, The Washington Post (20 January 2000). Scruples and Science

I say statecraft is soulcraft. Just as all education is moral education because learning conditions conduct, most legislation is moral legislation because it conditions the action and the thought of the nation in broad and important spheres in life.
~ George F. Will, Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does (1983).

The most primitive experiences of shame are connected with sight and being seen, but it has been interestingly suggested that guilt is rooted in hearing, the sound in oneself of the voice of judgment; it is the moral sentiment of the word.
~ Bernard Arthur Owen Williams, Shame and Necessity (1993).

Planning to prevent over-population of the earth must include the practice of euthanasia, either negative or positive. ... Therefore, since we must restrict the rate of population increase, we should also be giving careful consideration to the quality as well as the quantity of people generated.
~ Robert H. Williams, M.D., in Northwest Medicine (July 1970). Numbers, Types and Duration of Human Lives

I believe the moral losses of expediency always far outweigh the temporary gains.
~ Wendell Lewis Willkie, One World (1943).

This party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.
~ Harold Wilson, in The Times newspaper (2 October 1962). Labor Party Conference speech

The most remarkable change in the moral history of mankind has been the rise -- and occasionally the application -- of the view that all people, and not just one's own kind, as entitled to fair treatment.
~ James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense (1993). Part II. Chapter 9. The Universal Aspiration

We must be careful of what we think we are, because we may become that.
~ James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense (1993). Preface

[A]ll true glory rests,
All praise, all safety, and all happiness,
Upon the moral law.
~ William Wordsworth, The Excursion (1814). Book VIII: The Parsonage

The primal duties shine aloft -- like stars;
The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless,
Are scattered at the feet of Man -- like flowers.
~ William Wordsworth, The Excursion (1814). Book IX: Discourse of the Wanderer, and an Evening Visit to the Lake

To every natural form, rock, fruit, or flower,
Even the loose stones that cover the highway,
I gave a moral life -- I saw them feel,
Or linked them to some feeling. The great mass
Lay bedded in a quickening soul, and all
That I beheld respired with inward meaning.
~ William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805). Book III: Residence at Cambridge

Where, where but here have Pride and Truth,
That long to give themselves for wage,
To shake their wicked sides at youth
Restraining reckless middle age?
~ William Butler Yeats, On hearing that the Students of our New University have joined the Agitation against Immorral Literature (1910)