50 Inspiring Moral Quotes

In today's fast-paced world, where the lines between right and wrong can often seem blurred, finding inspiration in timeless moral wisdom can provide clarity and guidance. Moral quotes have the unique power to resonate with our core values and spark meaningful reflection in our daily lives. Whether drawn from ancient philosophy or modern thought leaders, these nuggets of wisdom serve as reminders of the principles that ground us, motivate our actions, and define our character. Join us on a journey through a curated collection of the top 50 inspiring moral quotes, offering insights that encourage us to live with integrity, compassion, and purpose.

1. “True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.” - Francois de La Rochefoucauld

2. “Does truth have a moral?” - Rick Riordan

3. “I like the relaxed way in which the Japanese approach religion. I think of myself as basically a moral person, but I'm definitely not religious, and I'm very tired of the preachiness and obsession with other people's behavior characteristic of many religious people in the United States. As far as I could tell, there's nothing preachy about Buddhism. I was in a lot of temples, and I still don't know what Buddhists believe, except that at one point Kunio said 'If you do bad things, you will be reborn as an ox.'This makes as much sense to me as anything I ever heard from, for example, the Reverend Pat Robertson.” - Dave Barry

4. “Observe how many people evade, rationalize and drive their minds into a state of blind stupor, in dread of discovering that those they deal with- their "loved ones" or friends or business associates or political rulers- are not merely mistaken, but evil. Observe that this dread leads them to sanction, to help and to spread the very evil whose existence they fear to acknowledge.” - Ayn Rand

5. “The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man's first duty is to himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men.” - Ayn Rand

6. “Any man who has got himself set over others and don't have any responsibility to something bigger than him is a son of a bitch.” - Oakley Hall

7. “Those who are most moral are farthest from the problem.” - Saul D. Alinsky

8. “Kemurnian barangkali memang tak ditakdirkan untuk dunia yang tak kekal, tak tunggal, ini.” - Goenawan Mohamad

9. “sebuah tawa : suatu tanda kebebasan, suatu petunjuk kembalinya sifat human.” - Goenawan Mohamad

10. “The world is not that black and white, Rachel. There are no moral absolutes. It is complex.” - Emily Giffin

11. “Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” - George Orwell

12. “Hermes smiled. "I knew a boy once ... oh, younger than you by far. A mere baby, really."Here we go again, George said. Always talking about himself.Quiet! Martha snapped. Do you want to get set on vibrate?Hermes ignored them. "One night, when this boy's mother wasn't watching, he sneaked out of their cave and stole some cattle that belonged to Apollo.""Did he get blasted to tiny pieces?" I asked."Hmm ... no. Actually, everything turned out quite well. To make up for his theft, the boy gave Apollo an instrument he'd invented-a lyre. Apollo was so enchanted with the music that he forgot all about being angry."So what's the moral?""The moral?" Hermes asked. "Goodness, you act like it's a fable. It's a true story. Does truth have a moral?""Um ...""How about this: stealing is not always bad?""I don't think my mom would like that moral."Rats are delicious, suggested George.What does that have to do with the story? Martha demanded.Nothing, George said. But I'm hungry."I've got it," Hermes said. "Young people don't always do what they're told, but if they can pull it off and do something wonderful, sometimes they escape punishment. How's that?” - Rick Riordan

13. “It is also true that the less competent a person is in a given domain, the more he will tend to overestimate his abilities. This often produces an ugly marriage of confidence and ignorance that is very difficult to correct for.” - Sam Harris

14. “Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.” - Madeleine L'Engle

15. “The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles.” - Jeff Cooper

16. “Having to face him at a competency hearing is like getting to hell and finding out that the only food available is raw liver-insult added to injury.” - Jodi Picoult

17. “Life, it turns out, goes on. There is no cosmic rule that grants you immunity from the details just because you have come face-to-face with a catastrophe. The garbage can still overflow, the bills arrive in the mail, telemarketers, interrupt dinner.” - Jodi Picoult

18. “Envy, after all, comes from wanting something that isn't yours. But grief comes from losing something you've already had.” - Jodi Picoult

19. “The instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our personalities derives from it. Anything that conflicts with the survival instinct acts sooner or later to eliminate the individual and thereby fails to show up in future generations. . . . A scientifically verifiable theory of morals must be rooted in the individual's instinct to survive--and nowhere else!--and must correctly describe the hierarchy of survival, note the motivations at each level, and resolve all conflicts.We have such a theory now; we can solve any moral problem, on any level. Self-interest, love of family, duty to country, responsibility toward the human race . . . .The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual.” - Robert A. Heinlein

20. “Our moral economy went bankrupt long before our financial one.” - Steve Maraboli

21. “And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.” - Terry Pratchett

22. “Só num mundo de cegos as coisas serão o que verdadeiramente são.” - José Saramago

23. “The noblest study of mankind is Man, says Man.” - James Thurber

24. “Movie Cliche #12: The Moral. A character states the obvious and everybody gets the point.” - Connie Willis

25. “Well, you have said that you were quite certain I was not a serious anarchist. Does this place strike you as being serious?""It does seem to have a moral under all its gaiety," assented Syme; "but may I ask you two questions? You need not fear to give me information, because, as you remember, you very wisely extorted from me a promise not to tell the police, a promise I shall certainly keep. So it is in mere curiosity that I make my queries. First of all, what is it really all about? What is it you object to? you want to abolish Government?""To abolish God!" said Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic. "We do not only want to upset a few despotisms and police regulations; that sort of anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the Nonconformists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish to deny all those arbitrary distinctions of vice and virtue, honour and treachery, upon which mere rebels base themselves. The silly sentimentalists of the French Revolution talked of the Rights of Man! We hate Rights and we hate Wrongs. We have abolished Right and Wrong.""And Right and Left," said Syme with a simple eagerness. "I hope you will abolish them too. They are much more troublesome to me.” - G.K. Chesterton

26. “The horse had a fly-net over its head and ears. It looked down on the paving-stones with the empty disappointed expression of an old moral theologian. Whenever the guide spat between his shoes, the horse shook his head in disapproval.” - Wolfgang Koeppen

27. “And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.” - Oscar Wilde

28. “The elegance is as physical, as moral quality that has nothing common with the clothing. You can see a countrywoman more elegant than one so called elegant woman.” - Karl Lagerfeld

29. “And now dear little children, who may this story read, To idle, silly flattering words, I pray you ne'er give heed: Unto an evil counsellor, close heart and ear and eye, And take a lesson from this tale, of the Spider and the Fly.” - Mary Howitt

30. “When spontaneous demoralizing thoughts seep into your conscience, don't trip...allowing them to fester. These are random tests of your conviction and determination. Large or small, your reaction to such intrusions is a defining moment for which no one else, but you, can mitigate.” - T.F. Hodge

31. “All individuals have moral deficiencies, and when introducing these to reality one not only strengthens himself but also the confidence of others in the human exigency for Christ due to a reflection throughout the body of Christ.” - Criss Jami

32. “Think about that for a moment. They died for you. Now take a good look at the life you're living and tell me: Did they do the right thing?” - Mira Grant

33. “I may do some good before I am dead--be a sort of success as a frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral story.” - Thomas Hardy

34. “One of the main arguments that I make is that although almost everyone accepts that it is morally wrong to inflict “unnecessary” suffering and death on animals, 99% of the suffering and death that we inflict on animals can be justified only by our pleasure, amusement, or convenience. For example, the best justification that we have for killing the billions of nonhumans that we eat every year is that we enjoy the taste of animal flesh and animal products. This is not an acceptable justification if we take seriously, as we purport to, that it is wrong to inflict unnecessary suffering or death on animals, and it illustrates the confused thinking that I characterize as our “moral schizophrenia” when it comes to nonhumans.A follow-up question that I often get is: “What about vivisection? Surely that use of animals is not merely for our pleasure, is it?”Vivisection, Part One: The “Necessity” of Vivisection | Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach” - GaryLFrancione

35. “The cactus thrives in the desert while the fern thrives in the wetland.The fool will try to plant them in the same flowerbox.The florist will sigh and add a wall divider and proper soil to both sides.The grandparent will move the flowerbox halfway out of the sun.The child will turn it around properly so that the fern is in the shade, and not the cactus.The moral of the story?Kids are smart.” - Vera Nazarian

36. “¿Debe la alegría vestirse con lo que fabrico el Dolor?” - Oscar Wilde

37. “Sometimes carrying the burden of an upsetting truth, and hiding it, is actually a gift you give to someone else. You bear that burden, so they don’t have to, in a situation where telling them will change nothing.” - Cassandra Clare

38. “What is moral is self-evident.” - Friedrich Theodor Vischer

39. “I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it.” - Anne Brontë

40. “And the moral for Dinosaurs is: Lock the Back Door!” - Mo Willems

41. “The pity is that the public will demand and find a moral in my book, or worse they may take it in some serious way, and on the honour of a gentleman, there is not one single serious word in it.” - James Joyce

42. “Kalau kau bisa membeli kekaguman seseorang dengan uang, kekuasaan, atau logika, maka lintah darat, polisi, dan profesor universitas akan memiliki lebih banyak pengagum daripada siapa pun.” - Natsume Soseki

43. “Ketika manusia bebas memutuskan untuk menghormatimu, hadiah yang kaumiliki lebih mahal nilainya daripada apapun.” - Natsume Soseki

44. “Mi padre era un hombre decente. O, por lo menos, eso que llamaríamos un hombre decente: alguien que, en las pequeñas circunstancias de la vida, prefiere no complicarse con las molestias de la indecencia. Uno que, por ejemplo, si al salir de la panadería desecubre que se lleva, además de las facturas, pebetes y miñones, un cuarto kilo de cuernitos sin pagar, vuelve al local, compone una sonrisa tímida, turbada - que le sale perfecta- e intenta un chiste malo para decirle a la dueña que ha vuelto porque es un hombre decente:-¡Vengo a denunciar un robo!Le dirá, por ejemplo, y que él es el delincuente que acaba de llevarse el cuarto de cuernitos sin previo abono de su precio estipulado. O sea: mi padre era un hombre cómodo, que nunca quiso tomarse el trabajo de ver qué haía un poco más allá de la decencia, de la conveniencia, de los buenos modales y las reglas morales. La decencia, en general, es cuestión de falta de imaginación o de pereza, y mi padre tenía, por lo que sé, bastante de las dos. Aunque, por supuesto, no sé qué habría pasado si alguna vez la tentación de la indecencia lo hubiera asaltado en serio, armada de una buena recompensa. Es fácil ser decente cuando te cuesta un cuarto de cuernitos; de allí en más se hace más y más difícil, hasta que llega al punto en que cada cual encuentra su temperatura de fundido. Si no hay metal que resista el calor pertinente, ¿por qué habría hombres o mujeres? Es - si existen tales cosas - una de esas verdades innegables; sabiéndolo, ¿no es preferible ahorrarse el fuego de decenas, cientos de grados celsius, y fundirse cin tanto despilfarro?” - Caparrós Martín

45. “A man shows he's a man by the way he corresponds to the expectations of those who are naive.” - Torey Haydden

46. “Life is like defusing a bomb, once you cut the wrong wire your whole life is ruined.” - Mohamed Zahy Hussain

47. “People who wouldn't dream of drowning a puppy in a barrel full of water think nothing of killing a fish the same slow way.” - Karen Traviss

48. “We have complete choice as individuals: the only decisions we can take are our own. And yet so many species use the state of being an individual as an excuse for inaction, helplessness and irresponsibility.No situation is so overwhelming that action is pointless. Targassat of Surang.” - Karen Traviss

49. “If you witness evil men committing evil deeds and do nothing, what does that make you?” - K.L. Toth

50. “It is a friend's duty that he does not leave his friend in a difficult position but provide intimacy and support to him. In difficulty who leaves is a false and the one not quitting is a true friend.” - Aacharya Shri Mahashraman