How can an act done under compulsion have any moral element in it, seeing that what is moral is the free act of an intelligent being?
quote by Auberon Herbert
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Beauty is composed of an eternal, invariable element whose quantity is extremely difficult to determine, and a relative element which might be, either by turns or all at once, period, fashion, moral, passion.
quote by Jean-Luc Godard
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Political realism is aware of the moral significance of political action. It is also aware of the ineluctable tension between the moral command and the requirements of successful political action. And it is
unwilling to gloss over and obliterate that tension and thus to obfuscate both the moral and the political issue by making it appear as though the stark facts of politics were morally more satisfying than they actually are, and the moral law less exacting than it actually is.
quote by Hans Morgenthau
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America's greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.
quote by John W. Gardner
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Wrong Can Never Be A Right
While everyone has a right
Not everything can be done
For that will darken moral light
Of rules and laws there will be none.
While everyone can be free
Respect for others are always due
Freedom has a responsibility
We cannot do all we want, that's true.
Rapists and murderers can be free
It's their life to do what they want
The same thing with homosexuality -
It's against our laws, so you can't.
Whatever is wrong cannot be a 'right'
And the moral issue is this:
Of God's Law we must never ever lose sight
When He says it is wrong - it is.
poem by Cynthia Buhain-Baello
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You cannot have Liberty in this world without what you call Moral Virtue, and you cannot have Moral Virtue without the slavery of that half of the human race who hate what you call Moral Virtue.
quote by William Blake
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I write because something inner and unconscious forces me to. That is the first compulsion. The second is one of ethical and moral duty. I feel responsible to tell stories that inspire readers to consider more deeply who they are.
quote by David Guterson
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The Moral Rights
‘The moral rights of the author
have been asserted’… that, I’m told,
is what I should say when I write
anything for publication here; even before
I say anything..
It means, I guess, the more, the less..
than ‘Copyright’ which normally
gets printed just above it;
which just means, don’t copy this;
whereas ‘moral rights’ convey
so much more…
suggesting that I even possess morality;
which, considering my wild, undisciplined
former life, you might well question..
but note, I merely ‘assert’ them;
feel free to challenge them (you note that ‘rights’
are plural; plenty lawyer’s fees there
to say, well maybe this, not that…
and you’re free (your defending counsel may assert)
to copy my poem and put your own name to it;
since truth can be in no man’s sole possession,
and my poem, bless its metered tropes,
speaks naught but the truth..
though now I mention ‘truth’, I don’t recall
that phrase about the moral rights
upon the title-page of, let’s say,
the Gospels; Books of Moses; Qu’ran; Upanishads;
those guys on whom we’ve so long depended
to tell us what morality should be..
so please understand, that when I ‘assert’,
it’s more for my self-image than for yours;
makes me feel good; I must be
a serious author, if (in the subtext, scholars footnote)
the moral underpinning may be detected..
and that said – now to the poem.. Except
now I’ve forgotten what I was going to say..
Perhaps that, too, is a moral issue; but
I have the right to remain silent..
even if I’m up on this morality charge..
my defence is, that my Muse,
hearing the word ‘morality’,
flees my company. ’Twas ever so.
poem by Michael Shepherd
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The mind cannot support moral chaos for long. Men are under as strong a compulsion to invent an ethical setting for their behavior as spiders are to weave themselves webs.
quote by John Dos Passos
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States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.
quote by Noam Chomsky
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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
quote by John Kenneth Galbraith
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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
quote by John Kenneth Galbraith
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An opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offense, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth; or it is an error: it can never be a crime or a virtue.
quote by Frances Wright
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At an expense trifling indeed, compared to what she frequently spends upon unprofitable contests, she might place the moral world on a new foundation, and to rise the pinnacle of moral glory.
quote by John Strachan
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The idea of winning a doctor's degree gradually assumed the aspect of a great moral struggle, and the moral fight possessed immense attraction for me.
quote by Elizabeth Blackwell
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Art is moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television.
quote by Rita Mae Brown
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Moral And Justice
Scrupulous thoughts, morally we act,
It’s our thought,
Rare we did, it’s a fact,
poised with moral of correctness,
Befall upon to choose rarely opt for greatness,
We did, we think, what’s right what’s not,
All say for moral we ought
To fight, but what’s right,
Right for all wrong for none,
Feasibility turns zero to get one,
Some say moral is that
we choose justice,
Justice to all, we rarely did,
Befall upon to choose,
We choose what’s important and which amuse,
Some choose friends, some go for family,
Choosing the either fails the justice,
poem by Rahul Singh Parihar
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Convinced as I am and as I am from my government that the world needs a new moral architecture over all I believe that this should be the first topic to debate in our world of today, ethics, moral.
quote by Hugo Chavez
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Thus, the controversy about the Moral Majority arises not only from its views, but from its name - which, in the minds of many, seems to imply that only one set of public policies is moral and only one majority can possibly be right.
quote by Edward Kennedy
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Hypocrisy is a value that I think has been embraced by the Republican Party. We get lectured by people all day long about moral values by people who have their own moral shortcomings.
quote by Howard Dean
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Now here is a departure from the first principle of true ethics. Here we find ideas of moral wrong and moral right associated with something else than beneficial action. The consequent is, we lose sight of the real basis of morals, and substitute a false one.
quote by Francis Wright
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