This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The free man acts morally because he has a moral idea. He does not act in order that morality may come into being. A moral idea, born of intuition without compulsion, inner or outer, would be at one and the same time the highest motive and the highest driving force in man.
P. T. Forsyth, fully Peter Taylor Forsyth
Peace at any price can be the abnegation of morality entirely, the refusal of even a negative contribution to righteousness.
Morality | Peace | Price | Righteousness |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding out the true path for ourselves and in fearlessly following it.
Moral ambiguity creates mental cramps of various sorts, which lead to reflection, discussion, and argument… Morality resists theoretical unification under either a set of special-purpose rules or single general-purpose rule or principle, such as the categorical imperative or the principle of unity. If this is right, and if it is right because the ends of moral life are plural and heterogeneous in kind and because our practices of moral education rightly reflect this, then we have some greater purchase on why the project of finding a single theoretically satisfying moral theory has failed.
Ambiguity | Argument | Discussion | Education | Ends | Life | Life | Morality | Purpose | Purpose | Reflection | Right | Rule | Unity | Theoretical |
Amitai Etzioni, born Welker Falk
We need to recognize that both the society and the individual are essential to a morality which we can use in the next century. If we could enter the next century with a wider recognition of the balance - and get away form either collectivistic excesses or the celebration of radical individualism - I think we’d be better for it.
Balance | Better | Individual | Morality | Need | Society | Society | Think |
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
In humans, social conditioning establishes acceptable versus unacceptable behaviors and belief systems. Pejorative denunciations and condemnations are institutionalized, and judgmentalism is supported and encouraged. Behaviors are identified with morality and ethics and simply classified as good versus bad or right versus wrong.
I never… believed there was one code of morality for a public, and another for a private man.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
There is no morality in politics; there is only expediency.
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
Throw away holiness and wisdom and people will be a hundred times happier. Throw away morality and justice, and people will do the right thing. Throw away industry and profit, and there won’t be any thieves.
Industry | Justice | Morality | People | Right | Will | Wisdom |
In the so-called Western secular democracy… a divorce has been effected between politics and religion, and as a result of this secularization, the society and particularly its politically active elements have ceased to attach much or any importance to morality or ethics.
Democracy | Ethics | Morality | Politics | Religion | Society | Society |
The purpose of the Holy Life does not consist in acquiring alms [or] honor... nor in gaining morality [or] concentration... That unshakable deliverance of the heart: that indeed, is the object of the Holy Life, that is its essence, that is its goal.
Alms | Heart | Honor | Life | Life | Morality | Object | Purpose | Purpose |
Whereas the old morality saw things as so simple that moral judgment was always easy, the new morality sees things so complicated that moral judgment becomes practically impossible.
Power can be invested with a sense of direction only by moral principles. It is the function of morality to command the use of power, to forbid it, to limit it.
Morality | Power | Principles | Sense |