In Moral Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. – Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Author’s Notice. Ironically Twain asks readers not to use the book to moralize, as it is very much a story about moral choices.
America has become amnesiac, a country in which forms of historical, political, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but celebrated. – Henry Giroux
The main point for me is moral; animals are sentient beings. I know for some this is a hard argument to accept, but we’re not built to eat a lot of meat. – Grace Slick
All moral laws are merely statements that certain kinds of actions will have good effects. – George Edward Moore
Human and moral factors must always be considered. They must never be missing from policies and from public discussion. – Herman Kahn
Forcing people to be generous isn’t humanitarian, effective, compassionate or moral. Only acts that are truly voluntary for all concerned can be truly compassionate. – Harry Browne
I will use whatever position I have in order to root out hypocrisy. Democrats have strong moral values. Frankly, my moral values are offended by some of the things I hear on programs like ‘Rush Limbaugh,’ and we don’t have to put up with that. – Howard Dean
The moral and spiritual aspects of both personal and international relationships have a practical bearing which so-called practical men deny. – Henry A. Wallace
There is increasing social concern about our use of nonhumans for experiments, food, clothing and entertainment. This concern about animals reflects both our own moral development as a civilization and our recognition that the differences between humans and animals are, for the most part, differences of degree and not of kind. – Gary L. Francione
No student of history can fail to see the moral interest of the Middle Ages, any more than an artist can fail to see their aesthetic interest. – Goldwin Smith
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. – H. L. Mencken
Science cannot resolve moral conflicts, but it can help to more accurately frame the debates about those conflicts. – Heinz R. Pagels
There is no moral distinction between fur and other materials made from animals, such as leather, which also is the result of the suffering and death of sentient beings. – Gary L. Francione
Obscenity is a moral concept in the verbal arsenal of the establishment, which abuses the term by applying it, not to expressions of its own morality but to those of another. – Herbert Marcuse
A citizen is a political and moral agent who in fact has a shared sense of hope and responsibility to others and not just to him or herself. – Henry Giroux
Democrats always like to brag that their guys are smarter than the opponents and Republicans always like to brag that their guys are more moral than the opponents. But if you’re looking for morals in politics you’re looking for bananas in the cheese department. – Harry Shearer
Nuclear weapons are intrinsically neither moral nor immoral, though they are more prone to immoral use than most weapons. – Herman Kahn
I like moral judgment to emerge from the reader. We are being sold a very simplistic morality by our leaders at a time when nuance and understanding are at a premium. – Hari Kunzru
One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring. – H. L. Mencken
It is in their inherent moral components that recent Western strategies may be deficient. What percentage of the populations in countries engaged in the 14-year effort in Afghanistan could even name the three main Taliban groups with whom their soldiers have been engaged? – H. R. McMaster
Allowing our government to kill citizens compromises the deepest moral values upon which this country was conceived: the inviolable dignity of human persons. – Helen Prejean
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught. – H. L. Mencken
There is a fundamental question we all have to face. How are we to live our lives; by what principles and moral values will we be guided and inspired? – H. Jackson Brown, Jr.