Morally Good Quotes

“Would a just God sentence a morally good individual to hell for never having heard of him? And for that matter, would a just God expel a morally good individual to hell who has heard of Jesus, but simply finds no evidentiary reason to believe? According to any reasonable interpretation of Christianity's key doctrines, the answer is a simple and firm 'Yes.' This is because, according to Christian dogma, it is impossible to be 'moral' without Jesus Christ; I disagree with this on a fundamental level.”

— David G. McAfee

“Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I'm bullshitting myself, morally speaking?”

— David Foster Wallace

“It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have got it.”

— Edwin Way Teale

“The novel as a form is usually seen to be moral if its readers consider freedom, individuality, democracy, privacy, social connection, tolerance and hope to be morally good, but it is not considered moral if the highest values of a society are adherence to rules and traditional mores, the maintenance of hierarchical relationships, and absolute ideas of right and wrong. Any society based on the latter will find novels inherently immoral and subversive.”

— Jane Smiley

“It seems obvious, looking back, that the artists of Weimar Germany and Leninist Russia lived in a much more attenuated landscape of media than ours, and their reward was that they could still believe, in good faith and without bombast, that art could morally influence the world. Today, the idea has largely been dismissed, as it must in a mass media society where art's principal social role is to be investment capital, or, in the simplest way, bullion. We still have political art, but we have no effective political art. An artist must be famous to be heard, but as he acquires fame, so his work accumulates 'value' and becomes, ipso-facto, harmless. As far as today's politics is concerned, most art aspires to the condition of Muzak. It provides the background hum for power.”

— Robert Hughes

“The world of [comic book] collecting is not a pretty place. For a bunch of guys who like good-over-evil stories, you sure meet a lot of morally bankrupt assholes.”

— Seth

“In a world without God, who's to say whose values are right and whose are wrong? There can be no objective right and wrong, only our culturally and personally relative, subjective judgments. Think of what that means! It means it's impossible to condemn war, oppression, or crime as evil. Nor can you praise generosity, self-sacrifice, and love as good. To kill someone or to love someone is morally equivalent. For in a universe without God, good and evil do not exist-there is only the bare, valueless fact of existence, and there is no one to say you are right and I am wrong.”

— William Lane Craig

“The truth is not always useful, not always good. It's like putting your faith in water. Yes, we need the rain, but too much can sweep you away in a flood and drown you. Like all great natural, elemental forces, the truth needs to be channeled, managed, controlled and intelligently, morally allocated.”

— Iain Banks

“While I don't think sociopaths have any sort of moral urge to do good things, I think they can and do act morally in the context of pursuing their own advantage. A good analogy would be a corporation. There are a lot of corporations that do things that you like, maybe even good things, like produce vaccines or electric cars, although the primary motivation is to make a profit. But just because you are trying to make a profit doesn't mean you can't do it by doing things you like, or that you are good at, or that comport with the way you see the world, or want the world to see you.”

— M.E. Thomas

“The public debate plays out in an infinite regress of blame over who's responsible for those who fail to fit the standard erotic mold. This is variously ascribed to the people choosing to be the deviants they are, porn, the Devil (always a shoo-in), bad parents, poor role models, our sexually repressed culture, or the psychiatrists who keep needling sexual minorities by branding them mentally ill. It's a rabbit hole of endless (and usually endlessly bad) arguments. Morally, all that matters-and allow me to reiterate that because I feel it's quite important, all that matters-is whether a person's sexual deviancy is demonstrably harmful. If it's not, and we reject the person anyway, then we're not the good guys in this scenario; we're the bad guys.”

— Jesse Bering

“Process as process is neither morally good nor morally bad. We may judge results but not process. The morally bad agent may perform the deed which is good. The morally good agent may perform the deed which is bad. Maybe a man has to sell his soul to get the power to do good.”

— Robert Penn Warren

“Maybe you cannot be the CEO of a multinational corporation, but you can frighten a few people, or cause them to scurry around like chickens, or steal from them, or-maybe best of all-create situations that cause them to feel bad about themselves. And this is power, especially when the people you manipulate are superior to you in some way. Most invigorating of all is to bring down people who are smarter or more accomplished than you, or perhaps classier, more attractive or popular or morally admirable. This is not only good fun; it is existential vengeance. And without a conscience, it is amazingly easy to do. You quietly lie to the boss or to the boss's boss, cry some crocodile tears, or sabotage a coworker's project, or gaslight a patient (or a child), bait people with promises, or provide a little misinformation that will never be traced back to you.”

— Martha Stout

“But I feel like letting other people be good for me
after all, I'm just an unhappy little girl and even if I'm extremely intelligent, that doesn't change anything, does it? An unhappy little girl who, just when things are at their worst, has been lucky enough to meet some good people. Morally, do I have the right to let this chance go by?”

— Muriel Barbery

“At first, I was dubious that my mother would agree that writing letters to prisoners was morally instructive, but Mr. Peterson, who was extremely crazy, insisted that it was. He told me that most of the prisoners we'd be writing to shouldn't have been put in prison in the first place. They were good people who'd been locked away and denied their most basic human rights. They weren't allowed to act according to their consciences or even to express their opinions without fear of persecution and physical reprisals - although Mr. Peterson doubted very much that I could imagine what that was like. I told Mr. Peterson that since I went to secondary school, I thought that I could imagine it fairly well.”

— Gavin Extence

“If (a writer) has applied himself to an art for 15 or 20 years and they've gotten good at it, and they're expected to do something else to support themselves while the industry that sells this craft supports itself very well, something is badly wrong. Morally wrong.”

— John Irving

“The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes: and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false. The rights of men are in a sort of middle, incapable of definition, but not impossible to be discerned. The rights of men in government are their advantages; and these are often in balances between differences of good; in compromises between good and evil, and sometimes between evil and evil ... Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit ...”

— Edmund Burke

“Despite his elegant appearance, Mr. Gweta's most striking asset was his alluring personality. Professor Khupe had met few such men in his life. Their warmth made everyone feel like they were their best friend. They were good men. However, they tended to be morally ambidextrous. If a stranger confessed to having been involved in a horrible crime, they would reserve judgment until they found out whether the confessor was the victim or victimizer. Once they knew, they would immediately lend their sympathies to the confessor's position. Their worldview was simple. They supported the first person to confide in them. Such men made good lawyers.”

— Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

“A flourishing, morally credible media is a vital component in the maintenance of genuinely public talk, argument about common good.”

— Rowan Williams

“What good does it do to tell somebody to live morally so they can die 50 years later and apparently go to Hell?”

— Donald Miller

“To be in the weakest camp is to be in the strongest school. Nor can I imagine anything that would do humanity more good than the advent of a race of Supermen, for them to fight like dragons. If the Superman is better than we, of course we need not fight him; but in that case, why not call him a Saint? But if he is merely stronger (whether physically, mentally, or morally stronger, I do not care a farthing), then he ought to have to reckon with us at least for all the strength we have. If we are weaker than he, that is no reason why we should be weaker than ourselves. If we are not tall enough to touch the giant's knees, that is no reason why we should become shorter by falling on our own.”

— G.K. Chesterton

“Whatever anybody eats is their business. I'm just a vegetarian because I personally want to be. If my sons want to go have a steak ... then that's their decision. But coming from my hand, as their mother, I have to give them what I feel is good for them. I don't take a stand morally. This is for myself.”

— Lindsay Wagner

“As a liberal, I am morally obligated to be pragmatic. What good do I do poor people, elderly people, people who are being discriminated against because of their sexual orientation if I'm not realistic about accomplishing something.”

— Barney Frank

“Take your pick. It literally could be any one of those things and many, many more. It's hard to live a morally good life when you have a propensity for shenanigans.”

— T.J. Klune

“As a real person, he wouldn't last a minute, would he? But drama is about imperfection. And we've moved away from the aspirational hero. We got tired of it, it was dull. If I was House's friend, I would hate it. How he so resolutely refuses to be happy or take the kind-hearted road. But we don't always like morally good people, do we?”

— Hugh Laurie

“As a dad, he thinks that his philosophy is morally correct. He has no conscience whatsoever about letting his kids put a penny in a light socket to find out electricity is not so good for you, and if you want to learn how to swim, you have to be thrown into the deep end.”

— Stacy Keach

“Most effective altruists are not saints but ordinary people like you and me, so very few effective altruists claim to live a fully ethical life. Most of them are somewhere on the continuum between a minimally acceptable ethical life and a fully ethical life. That doesn't mean that they are constantly feeling guilty about not being morally perfect. Effective altruists don't see a lot of point in feeling guilty. They prefer to focus on the good they are doing. Some of them are content to know they are doing something significant to make the world a better place. Many of them like to challenge themselves, to do a little better this year than last year.”

— Peter Singer

“I dislike this whole business of experimentation on animals, unless there's some very good and altogether exceptional reason to this very case. The thing that gets me is that it's not possible for the animals to understand why they are being called upon to suffer. They don't suffer for their own good or benefit at all, and I often wonder how far it's for anyone's. They're given no choice, and there is no central authority responsible for deciding whether what's done is morally justifiable. These experiment animals are just sentient objects; they're useful because they are able to react; sometimes precisely because they're able to feel fear and pain. And they're used as if they were electric light bulbs or boots. What it comes to is that whereas there used to be human and animal slaves, now there are just animal slaves. They have no legal rights or choices in the matter.”

— Richard Adams

“With all my soul I wished to be good, but I was young, passionate and alone, completely alone when I sought goodness. Every time I tried to express my most sincere desire, which was to be morally good, I met with contempt and ridicule, but as soon as I yielded to low passions I was praised and encouraged.”

— Leo Tolstoy

“What I want you to be - I don't mean physically but morally: you are very well physically - is a firm fellow, a fine firm fellow, with a will of your own, with resolution. with determination. with strength of character that is not to be influenced except on good reason by anybody, or by anything. That's what I want you to be. That's what your father, & your mother might both have been”

— Charles Dickens

“This isn't about guilt or innocence, he says. The dinosaurs weren't morally good or bad, but they're all dead.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“I think that technologies are morally neutral until we apply them. It's only when we use them for good or for evil that they become good or evil.”

— William Gibson

“These days, all I ask of Fate is that the people she hurls into my life, whether they are evil or good, or morally bipolar, should be amusing to one degree or another ... Most good people have a sense of humor. The problem is finding smile-inducing evil people, because the evil are mostly humorless.”

— Dean Koontz

“These days, all I ask Fate is that the people she hurls into my life, whether they are evil or good, or morally bipolar, should be amusing to one degree or another.”

— Dean Koontz

“The idea that there's good and evil knowledge ... well, that's strictly a religious point of view. Actions can be either moral or immoral, yes, but knowledge can't be labeled that way. To a scientist, to any educated man or woman, all knowledge is morally neutral.”

— Dean Koontz

“I've definitely enjoyed myself more on the projects where I've played a good person, rather than on the projects where I've played somebody who is morally compromised.”

— Domhnall Gleeson

“There may be many systems of religion that so far from being morally bad are in many respects morally good: but there can be but ONE that is true; and that one necessarily must, as it ever will, be in all things consistent with the ever existing word of God that we behold in his works. But such is the strange construction of the christian system of faith, that every evidence the heavens affords to man, either directly contradicts it or renders it absurd. It”

— Thomas Paine

“[W]e are not morally bad people for taking carbon and turning it into the energy that offers life to humanity in a world that would otherwise be brutal (think of life before modernity). On the contrary, we are good people for doing so.”

— John Christy

“Rational egoism is the only morality that is for human life; thus, it is the only morality that is actually moral. Those who choose to be rationally self-interested thereby make the most of their life - and they are morally good because of it.”

— Craig Biddle

“The best minds will tell you that when a man has begotten a child he is morally bound to tenderly care for it, protect it from hurt, shield it from disease, clothe it, feed it, bear with its waywardness, lay no hand upon it save in kindness and for its own good, and never in any case inflict upon it a wanton cruelty. God's treatment of his earthly children, every day and every night, is the exact opposite of all that, yet those best minds warmly justify these crimes, condone them, excuse them, and indignantly refuse to regard them as crimes at all, when he commits them.”

— Mark Twain

“Whether we had a (good) moral intuition more developed, we would be as much morally disgusted by the rapacity of those who try to benefit from, and monopolize (or secure or corner), having no consideration (regardless or irrespective of) for others ("autrui", Fr.), than we physically are by a sickening (or nauseating) smell.”

— African Spir

“Morally a woman has a right to the free and entire development of every faculty which God has given her to be improved and used to His honor. Socially she has a right to the protection of equal laws; the right to labor with her hands the thing that is good; to select the kind of labor which is in harmony with her condition and her powers; to exist, if need be, by her labor, or to profit others by it if she choose. These are her rights, not more nor less than the rights of the man.”

— Anna Brownell Jameson

“In my career, I learned that giving your services for free gives you a good return on your investment, not just financially but morally. It supplements your personal integrity.”

— Stevie Wonder

“I believe that courage is morally neutral. I can well imagine wicked people being brave and good people being timid or afraid. I don't consider it a moral virtue.”

— Susan Sontag

“My films ought to be judged on whether they're entertaining or good as films, but not on the political view necessarily. I'm trying to be morally responsible and no more. I don't have an agenda I'm trying to push.”

— Sydney Pollack

“Hitherto we have been permitted to seek beauty only in the morally good - a fact which sufficiently accounts for our having found so little of it and having had to seek about for imaginary beauties without backbone! - As surely as the wicked enjoy a hundred kinds of happiness of which the virtuous have no inkling, so too they possess a hundred kinds of beauty; and many of them have not yet been discovered.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

“Every time I tried to express my most heartfelt desires to be morally good I met with contempt and ridicule; and as soon as I would give in to vile passions I was praised and encouraged. Ambition, love of power, self-interest, lechery, pride, anger, vengeance-all of it was highly esteemed.”

— Leo Tolstoy

“There can be neither politically nor morally a good which is not universal ... we cannot reform for a time or for a class, but for all and for the whole, and our very interests will draw us together in one wide bond of sympathy.”

— Letitia Elizabeth Landon

“Hell is not evil; it's a place where evil gets punished. Hell is not pleasant, appealing, or encouraging. But Hell is morally good, because a good God must punish evil.”

— Randy Alcorn

“Have fired 500 rounds at the Germans, at my command, been shelled, didn't run away thank the Lord and never lost a man. Probably shouldn't have told you but you'll not worry any more if you know I'm in it than if you think I am. Have had the most strenuous work of my life, am very tired but otherwise absolutely in good condition physically mentally and morally.”

— Harry S. Truman

“We must understand that when a society undermines intellectual freedom for its own purposes it is absolutely morally bad, but when it represses biological freedom for its own purposes it is absolutely morally good.”

— Robert M. Pirsig