I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.
Sadly, when pastors choose to neglect controversial issues, they do great damage to the spiritual growth of their congregates. We have generations of young people in our churches who simply believe what the world believes on social and moral issues, and they don’t think biblically on these matters.
Both World War II and the subsequent Cold War gave America’s involvement in world affairs a clear focus. The objectives of foreign policy were relatively easy to define, and they could be imbued with high moral content.
People can believe pretty much whatever they want to believe about moral and political issues, as long as some other people near them believe it, so you have to focus on indirect methods to change what people want to believe.
There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the express commandment of God, that are shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice.
Playing a bad guy is always a freeing experience, because you don’t have the same envelope of restrictions as you have playing a good guy. Good guys restrain themselves; they kind of have their moral fiber cut out for them in varying degrees.
Compassion has enemies, and those enemies are things like pity, moral outrage, fear.
There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.
I’m very disappointed in my country right now, because I think we’ve kind of lost our moral compass.
So long as the opposing forces are at the outset approximately equal in numbers and moral and there are no flanks to turn, a long struggle for supremacy is inevitable.
I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.
I set forth a humble and inglorious life; that does not matter. You can tie up all moral philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff. Each man bears the entire form of man’s estate.
The most powerful moral influence is example.
Emerson then incarnated the moral optimism, the progress, and the energy of the American spirit.
There are some heterosexuals that have heterosexual behavior that is appalling sexually, that is deviant and bad and not really moral and Christ-like and biblical. But those people are never questioned as to whether or not they’re allowed to be a parent.
States are not moral agents.
It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
The good moral work of art should have all the qualities that a good amoral work of art should have, such as formal unity, balance, contrast, and a sensitivity to the material out of which it is made.
I think social and moral disengagement is repugnant.
The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
My moral compass swings far to the left, but when it comes to gratuitous violence, I have trouble.
I desire to assist in attracting to this profession young men of character and ability, also to help those already engaged in the profession to acquire the highest moral and intellectual training.
The theatre is supremely fitted to say: ‘Behold! These things are.’ Yet most dramatists employ it to say: ‘This moral truth can be learned from beholding this action.’
In order to secure our unlimited future, we need a leader who understands the moral case for free enterprise.
America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.
Literature has to serve as a moral control of politics.
Middle-class people are becoming desperate. It can cause a moral man to break bad.
I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.
The proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives. Today sometimes it seems that the opposite order is prevailing.
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?
As a nuclear power – as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon – the United States has a moral responsibility to act.
I took the test for AIDS. I began to hate people who were not sick. Those people are monsters, I would think, believing that they are well because of moral superiority, because they are good. I identified with the loneliness of the sick. I felt that there was something pure about them.
Since belief determines behavior, doesn’t it make sense that we should be teaching ethical, moral values in every home and in every school in America?
The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.
For the record, I believe elected officials should talk about faith. Our founders believed the moral principles of faith were indispensable to our nation’s survival. The Declaration of Independence mentions God four times.
I could have had someone else take care of my child but I did it because that was my moral obligation and also it was a joy and I felt it was in the best interests of the child.
Science, it is said, no doubt has ameliorated the material conditions of human life, but is powerless to solve those moral and philosophical questions that interest cultured people so deeply.
Ethical religion can be real only to those who are engaged in ceaseless efforts at moral improvement. By moving upward we acquire faith in an upward movement, without limit.
First we have to recognize that the cause of poverty is both structural and behavioral. And the first thing about the behavior part is that we need a moral revolution within the African American community. Look – no white racist makes you get pregnant when you are a black teenager.
Human affairs require some combination of moral commitment with disciplined political action. And that is what keeps me intrigued and challenged and wanting to influence events.
Some pro-life advocates focus almost exclusively on the rights and suffering of the unborn baby, while some pro-choice advocates focus equally exclusively on the rights and suffering of pregnant women. This is a distortion of the moral choice that confronts us as a society.
Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.
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.
Healing is a moral thing to do.
We – the current generation – have a moral responsibility to make the world better for future generations.
If we can find God only as he is revealed in nature we have no moral God.
The Concert for Bangladesh was just a moral stance.
Nothing I write ever has a moral. If it seems to a reader that there is one, that is unintentional.
Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is more or less strong tendency ordered to an intrinsic moral evil, and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.
Ethics are not necessarily to do with being law-abiding. I am very interested in the moral path, doing the right thing.
The president of the United States from the 1940s until 2017 was considered the leader of the free world – probably the most powerful person in the world – not simply in terms of America’s military might but in terms of the moral authority of the president. Donald Trump has largely abdicated that.
Increase of material comforts, it may be generally laid down, does not in any way whatsoever conduce to moral growth.
My exile was not only a physical one, motivated exclusively by political reasons; it was also a moral, social, ideological and sexual exile.
As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture.
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.
Do you not see, first, that – as a mental abstract – physical force is directly opposed to morality; and secondly, that it practically drives out of existence the moral forces?
The higher the moral tone, the more suspect the speaker.
Why are empirical questions about how the mind works so weighted down with political and moral and emotional baggage?
A moral monopoly is the antithesis of a marketplace of ideas.
The moral and social aspiration proper to American life is, of course, the aspiration vaguely described by the word democratic; and the actual achievement of the American nation points towards an adequate and fruitful definition of the democratic ideal.
