Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger

The average person thinks that morality can be applied as directly to the conduct of states to each other as it can to human relations. That is not always the case, because sometimes statesmen have to choose among evils.

Conduct | Morality |

Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives.

Conscience | Custom | Morality |

Horace Greeley

Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.

Faith | Liberty | Morality |

Immanuel Kant

So sharply and clearly marked are the boundaries of morality and self-love that even the commonest eye cannot fail to distinguish whether a thing belongs to the one or the other.

Distinguish | Love | Morality | Self | Self-love |

James Froude, fully James Anthony Froude

To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible.

Freedom | Morality | Will |

Immanuel Kant

Morality... must have the more power over the human heart the more purely it is exhibited. Whence it follows that, if the law of morality and the image of holiness and virtue are to exercise any influence at all on our souls, they can do so only so far as they are laid to heart in their purity as motives, unmixed with any view to prosperity, for it is in suffering that they display themselves most nobly.

Display | Heart | Influence | Law | Morality | Motives | Power | Prosperity | Purity | Suffering | Virtue | Virtue |

John Ruskin

Taste is not only a part and an index of morality - it is the only morality. The first, and last, and closest trial question to any living creature is, “What do you like?” Tell me what you like, an I’ll tell you what you are.

Morality | Question | Taste | Trial |

Joseph Addison

Discourses on morality and reflection on human nature are the best means we can make use of to improve our minds, gain a true knowledge of ourselves, and recover our souls out of the vice, ignorance, and prejudice which naturally cleave to them.

Human nature | Ignorance | Knowledge | Means | Morality | Nature | Prejudice | Reflection |

Joseph Addison

A person may be qualified to do greater good to mankind, and become more beneficial to the world, by morality without faith than by faith without morality.

Faith | Good | Mankind | Morality | World |

John Stuart Mill

The rules of ordinary international morality imply reciprocity. But barbarians will not reciprocate. They cannot be depended on for observing any rules. Their minds are not capable of so great an effort, nor their will sufficiently under the influence of distant motives. In the next place, nations which are still barbarous have not got beyond the period during which it is likely to be for their benefit that they should be conquered and held in subjection by foreigners.

Effort | Influence | Morality | Motives | Nations | Reciprocity | Will |

Judith A. Boss

Being morally good, for the majority of Americans, means following the norms and values of their society or culture - whether this be their peer culture, their church, their country, or a combination of these. The theory that morality is relative to societal norms is known in moral philosophy as cultural relativism. Many others claim that morality is relative to the individual and is different for every person depending on what they feel. This theory is known in philosophy as ethical subjectivism.

Church | Culture | Good | Individual | Majority | Means | Morality | Philosophy | Society | Society | Following |

Judith A. Boss

The naturalist fallacy draws a conclusion about what ought to be, based on what is. The fact that people believe something to be true, whether it be the flatness of the earth or the morality of slavery, does not make it true or moral.

Earth | Fallacy | Morality | People | Slavery |

Joseph Joubert

Know that morality is a curb, not a spur.

Morality |

Karl Barth

The morality of modern civilized man has turned out to be a terribly thin covering of ice over a sea of primitive barbarity.

Man | Morality |

Matthew Arnold

The true meaning of religion is not merely morality, but morality touched by emotion.

Meaning | Morality | Religion |

Noah Webster, fully Noah Webster, Jr.

It is alleged by men of loose principles, or defective views of the subject, that religion and morality are not necessary or important qualifications for political station. When a citizen gives his vote to a man of immorality, he abuses his civic responsibility. He sacrifices not only his own interest but that of his neighbor, and he betrays the interest of his country.

Important | Man | Men | Morality | Principles | Religion | Responsibility |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Our system of morality is a body of imperfect social generalizations expressed in terms of emotion.

Body | Morality | System |

Oscar Wilde, pen name for Fingal O'Flahertie Wills

Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one’s age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality.

Age | Culture | Man | Morality |

Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL

It is not strange at all that the spread of divorce in a society is accompanied by a diminishing of public morality in all sectors… True love does not exist if it is not faithful. And it cannot exist if it is not honest. Neither can it be in the concrete vocation of matrimony if there is no full promise that lasts until death. Only indissoluble matrimony will be firm and lasting support for the familial community.

Death | Love | Matrimony | Morality | Promise | Public | Society | Will | Society |