46 Morality And Ethics Quotes

In a world constantly grappling with right and wrong, morality and ethics serve as our compass, guiding us toward lives of integrity and compassion. These principles shape our decisions, influence our behaviors, and define our interactions with others. In this collection, we've curated 46 thought-provoking quotes that delve into the essence of morality and ethics. Whether you're seeking wisdom for personal reflection or insights to spark meaningful conversations, these quotes from philosophers, leaders, and thinkers across the ages offer timeless lessons on the human condition. Join us on this journey through the poignant words that remind us why ethical living remains at the heart of a conscientious society.

1. “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” - Mahatma Gandhi

2. “So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.” - Ernest Hemingway

3. “If the story-tellers could ha' got decency and good morals from true stories, who'd have troubled to invent parables?” - Thomas Hardy

4. “If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say "give them up," for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

5. “The distinction between pretending you are better than you are and beginning to be better in reality is finer than moral sleuth hounds conceive.” - C.S. Lewis

6. “Of course it is,’ said the Duchess, who seemed ready to agree to everythingthat Alice said; ‘there’s a large mustard-mine near here. And the moralof that is– “The more there is of mine, the less there is of yours.” - Lewis Carroll

7. “Respect for ourselves guides our morals; respect for others guides our manners” - Laurence Sterne

8. “Survival," I said softly. "It's selfish, and it's dark, and we've always been a species willing to do anything to satisfy our needs. Individuals have morals. Mobs have appetites.” - Rachel Caine

9. “Am I right in suggesting that ordinary life is a mean between these extremes, that the noble man devotes his material wealth to lofty ends, the advancement of science, or art, or some such true ideal; and that the base man does the opposite by concentrating all his abilities on the amassing of wealth?'Exactly; that is the real distinction between the artist and the bourgeois, or, if you prefer it, between the gentleman and the cad. Money, and the things money can buy, have no value, for there is no question of creation, but only of exchange. Houses, lands, gold, jewels, even existing works of art, may be tossed about from one hand to another; they are so, constantly. But neither you nor I can write a sonnet; and what we have, our appreciation of art, we did not buy. We inherited the germ of it, and we developed it by the sweat of our brows. The possession of money helped us, but only by giving us time and opportunity and the means of travel. Anyhow, the principle is clear; one must sacrifice the lower to the higher, and, as the Greeks did with their oxen, one must fatten and bedeck the lower, so that it may be the worthier offering.” - Aleister Crowley

10. “Since its appearance the view that prostitution is a product of capitalism has gained ground enormously. And as, in addition, preachers still complain that the good old morals have decayed, and accuse modern culture of having led to loose living, everyone is convinced that all sexual wrongs represent a symptom of decadence peculiar to our age.” - Ludwig Von Mises

11. “Nowadays most men lead lives of noisy desperation.” - James Thurber

12. “A moral system valid for all is basically immoral.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

13. “But whether the risks to which liberty exposes us are moral or physical our right to liberty involves the right to run them. A man who is not free to risk his neck as an aviator or his soul as a heretic is not free at all; and the right to liberty begins, not at the age of 21 years but 21 seconds.” - George Bernard Shaw

14. “To see evil and call it good, mocks God. Worse, it makes goodness meaningless. A word without meaning is an abomination, for when the word passes beyond understanding the very thing the word stands for passes out of the world and cannot be recalled.” - Stephen R. Lawhead

15. “All attempts at law, all religion, all ethical norms might be nothing more than attempts by the weak to restrain the strong. Then, within the law, arise the new strong, who subvert the law for their own ends of power and family interest, leaving the old strong outside their circle to pursue the waiting possibilities which they call crime. The weak, the cowardly, the decent ones, live between these groups.” - George Zebrowski

16. “Only sometimes when we pick and choose among the rules we discover later that we have set aside something precious in the process.” - Helen Simonson

17. “Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base though.” - Richard Dawkins

18. “To my way of thinking, the slavery issue is just an excuse to allow some people to do hateful things and feel righteous about it.” - Joan Lowery Nixon

19. “Don't let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth - don't let that get swallowed up by the great chewing complacency.” - Aesop

20. “People need a moral code, to help them make decisions. All this bio-yogurt virtue and financial self-righteousness are just filling the gap in the market. But the problem is that it's all backwards. It's not that you do the right thing and hope it pays off; the morally right thing is by definition the thing that gives the biggest payoff.” - Tana French

21. “Referring to Jumper the spider, who needs to hide himself in human form, and he's learning to act like a human."I'm sure I can learn to walk faster than that," he said desperately."But you'll also need to learn the nuances of human behavior. Such as not going around naked.""What's wrong with being natural?" he demanded."Humans aren't natural. They are girt about by all manner of conventions. It will take time for you to catch up with them all.” - Piers Anthony

22. “Understanding comes hard to persons of high rank who are accustomed to phony lifestyles that involve no daily work.” - Kenzaburō Ōe

23. “Thomas More: Will, I'd trust you with my life. But not your principles. You see, we speak of being anchored to our principles. But if the weather turns nasty you up with an anchor and let it down where there's less wind, and the fishing's better. And "Look," we say, "look, I'm anchored! To my principles!” - Robert Bolt

24. “More than a decade ago, a Supreme Court decision literally wiped off the books of fifty states statutes protecting the rights of unborn children. Abortion on demand now takes the lives of up to 1.5 million unborn children a year. Human life legislation ending this tragedy will some day pass the Congress, and you and I must never rest until it does. Unless and until it can be proven that the unborn child is not a living entity, then its right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must be protected.” - Ronald Reagan

25. “Strangers when you meet, strangers when you part -a gymnasium of bodies namelessly masturbating each other. People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or to love. So they became swingers. The dead fucking the dead. There was no gamble or humor in their game -it was corpse fucking corpse. Morals were restrictive, but they were grounded on human experience down through the centuries. Some morals tended to keep people slaves in factories, in churches and true to the State. Other morals simply made good sense. It was like a garden filled with poisoned fruit and good fruit. You had to know which to pick and eat, which to leave alone.” - Charles Bukowski

26. “The answer is that there is no good answer. So as parents, as doctors, as judges, and as a society, we fumble through and make decisions that allow us to sleep at night--because morals are more important than ethics, and love is more important than law.” - Jodi Picoult

27. “... what you think is right isn't the same as knowing what is right.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

28. “You can always tell the heart of man by what he do, and by what he don't do...” - Steven J. Carroll

29. “Some People Are Wise, And Some Are Otherwise.” - Unknown 9

30. “Charles is going to be fine," said Annie. "Yep," said Jack with a smile. "He never even knew that it was us who helped him." "That's the best way to help someone, I think," said Annie. "Why?" asked Jack. "Then you know you're not helping them just to get a lot of credit," said Annie. "You're helping because it's the right thing to do.” - Mary Pope Osborne

31. “Morality was probably the invention of unattractive men. Whom else does it benefit really” - Manu Joseph

32. “Is it possible that future generations will regard our present agribuisness and eating practices in much the same way we now view Nero's entertainments or Mengele's experiments? My own initial reaction is that such a comparison is hysterical, extreme - and yet the reason it seems extreme to me appears to be that I believe animals are less morally important than human behings; and when it comes to defending such a belief, even to myself, I have to acknowledge that (a) I have an obvious selfish interest in this belief, since I like to eat certain kinds of animals and want to be able to keep doing it, and (b) I haven't succeeded in working out any sort of personal ethical system in which the belief is truly defensible instead of just selfishly convenient.” - David Foster Wallace

33. “We continue to need exhortations to be sympathetic and just, even if we do not believe that there is a God who has a hand in wishing to make us so. We no longer have to be brought into line by the threat of hell or the promise of paradise; we merely have to be reminded that it is we ourselves -- that is, the most mature and reasonable parts of us (seldom present in the midst of our crises and obsessions) -- who want to lead the sort of life which we once imagined supernatural beings demanded of us. An adequate evolution of morality from superstition to reason should mean recognizing ourselves as the authors of our own moral commandments.” - Alain De Botton

34. “He sells his loyalties to the highest bidder. Shouldn’t even a mercenary have morals? That’s the textbook definition of a whore!” - Nadia Scrieva

35. “Morality and legality have nothing to do with one another. I'm more than fine with breaking a law if it disagrees with my values and morals.” - Ashly Lorenzana

36. “Uninhibited, they wallowed with zest in the filth and mire of their political conceptions and needs, among the very leaders of their society, but nevertheless the very dregs of human civilisation and moral standards. A historian who finds excuses for such conduct by references to the supposed spirit of the times, or by omission, or by silence, shows thereby that his account of events is not to be trusted.” - C.L.R. James

37. “[At the scene of a murder]The cats' bloodthirst was normal; it was the way God had made them. They were hunters, they killed for food and to train their young--well maybe sometimes for sport. But this violent act by some unknown human had nothing to do with hunting--for a human to brutally maim one of the own kind out of rage or sadism or greed was, to Joe and Dulcie (the cats), a shocking degradation of the human condition. To imagine that vicious abandon in a human deeply distressed Dulcie; she did not like thinking about humans that way.” - Shirley Rousseau Murphy

38. “That is why I often find myself at such cross-purposes with the modern world: I have been a converted Pagan living among apostate Puritans.” - C.S. Lewis

39. “Often,our immediate reaction to a sudden crisis help us save ourselves. Our response to gradual crises that creep up upon us, on the other hand,may be so adaptive as to ultimately lead to self-destruction.” - Amish Tripathi

40. “The Golden Rule is intolerable; if millions did to others whatever they wished others to do to them, few would be safe from molestation. The Golden Rule shows anything but moral genius, and the claim by which it is followed in the Sermon on the Mount -- 'this is the Law and the Prophets' -- makes little sense.” - Walter Kaufmann

41. “One may as well be asleep as to read for anything but to improve his mind and morals, and regulate his conduct.” - Sterne

42. “We middles see the world in shades of grey rather than in the clear blacks and whites of committed animal activists and their equally vociferous opponents” - Hal Herzog

43. “When you devalue ethics and morals by proclaiming that our attitude toward them should be casual or lenient, you can't be surprised by a rising generation who then behaves disrespectfully, treating life, people, and choices as if they possess little value or worth.  For whether or not that was the intention, society has taught them to believe thusly.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

44. “Was there ever a great true love? Anyone who became the object of my obsession and not simply my affections?...I could not let myself become that unmindful. Isn't that what love is - losing your mind? You don't care what people think. You don't see your beloved's faults, the slight stinginess, the bit of carelessness, the occasional streak of meanness. You don't mind that he is beneath you socially, educationally, financially, and morally - that's the worst, I think, deficient morals.” - Amy Tan

45. “It seems it doesn't pay to be good anymore, when people are short-changing you for evil.” - Anthony Liccione

46. “The morals of societies are defined by how they treat a strange woman.” - M.F. Moonzajer