Without civic morality communities perish; without personal morality their survival has no value.

- Bertrand Russell

Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.

- Vaclav Havel

A human being is not to be handled as a tool but is to be respected and revered. [From: An Ethical Philosophy of Life]

- Felix Adler

Whatever we learn to do, we learn by actually doing it; men come to be builders, for instance, by building, and harp players by playing the harp. In the same way, by doing just acts we come to be just; by doing self-controlled acts, we come to be self-controlled; and by doing brave acts, we become brave.

- Aristotle

Ethics should precede economics... We know this because we've seen the results of capitalism without conscience: the pollution of the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat; the endangerment of workers; and the sale of dangerous products -- from cars to toys to drugs. All in pursuit of greater and greater profits.

- Arianna Huffington

To love our neighbor as ourselves is such a truth for regulating human society, that by that alone one might determine all the cases in social morality.

- John Locke

There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.

- Marshall McLuhan

Privilege is the greatest enemy of right.

- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Because it's so easy to copy anything, a lot of people have convinced themselves that they shouldn't have to pay for it. Well, the reason you get paid is because the people who sit all day long at their desks creating books and songs and software have mortgages. And if you're only going to sell one copy of everything and then the world is going to make a gazillion pirated copies off of it, it's going to be really hard to pay your mortgage.

- Pat Schroeder

When people come to you for help, do not turn them off with pious words, saying, "Have faith and take your troubles to God." Act instead as though there were no God, as though there were only one person in the world who could help -- only yourself.

- Martin Buber

Reality is much more complex than any judgment of right and wrong encourages you to believe. When you really understand the ethical, spiritual, social, economic, and psychological forces that shape individuals, you will see that people's choices are not based on a desire to hurt. Instead, they are in accord with what they know and what world views are available to them. Most are doing the best they can, given what information they've received and what problems they are facing.

- Michael Lerner

The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

We don't set out to save the world; we set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people's hearts.

- Pema Chodron

What would our world be like if we ceased to worry about "right" and "wrong," or "good" and "evil," and simply acted so as to maximize well-being, our own and that of others? Would we lose anything important?

- Sam Harris

The most powerful moral influence is example.

- Huston Smith

Scientific progress makes moral progress a necessity; for if man's power is increased, the checks that restrain him from abusing it must be strengthened.

- Madame de Stael



All outward forms of religion are almost useless, and are the causes of endless strife. . . . Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself and never mind the rest.

- Beatrix Potter



The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself.

- Jane Addams



The expedient thing and the right thing are seldom the same thing.

- Charlie Brower



It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.

- Margaret Mead



Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action for all eternity.

- Michael Korda



Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

- Albert Einstein



What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

- Henry David Thoreau



We need to build millions of little moments of caring on an individual level. Indeed, as talk of a politics of meaning becomes more widespread, many people will feel it easier to publicly acknowledge their own spiritual and ethical aspirations and will allow themselves to give more space to their highest vision in their personal interactions with others. A politics of meaning is as much about these millions of small acts as it is about any larger change. The two necessarily go hand in hand.

- Michael Lerner



If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

- Albert Einstein



Do unto others 20% better than you would expect them to do unto you, to correct for subjective error.

- Linus Pauling



To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control, that can lead you to be shattered in very extreme circumstances for which you were not to blame. That says something very important about the condition of the ethical life: that it is based on a trust in the uncertain and on a willingness to be exposed; it's based on being more like a plant than like a jewel, something rather fragile, but whose very particular beauty is inseparable from that fragility.

- Martha Nussbaum



Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed.

- Karen Armstrong



To declare that the end justifies the means, to declare that the government may commit crimes, would bring terrible retribution.

- Louis D. Brandeis



I have my values, and if you don't like them, well I've got some others.

- Mark Twain



Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe -- the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

- Immanuel Kant



Knowledge is no guarantee of good behavior, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behavior,

- Martha Nussbaum



A good picture is equivalent to a good deed.

- Vincent van Gogh



I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishment after I'm dead.

- Kurt Vonnegut



Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be the first in love. I want you to be the first in moral excellence. I want you to be the first in generosity.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.



Sustainability isn't about the quick fix or the cheap solution. Generally it means making a commitment and trying, as best we can, to honor it. In any worthwhile enterprise, from protecting the environment to preserving a relationship, we are going to encounter difficulties. The good life is not a problem-free life. In point of fact, the process of overcoming adversity often produces some of the most rewarding experiences we will ever have. Human beings need to be challenged to 'test their mettle,' as it were. Throwing in the towel at the first sign of trouble or small inkling of distress may be the easy thing to do, but it doesn't help our self-concept. Most of life's troubles can be overcome if we are willing to work through them with patience.

- Michael A. Schuler



Beyond right and wrong, there is a field. I will meet you there.

- Rumi



For my own part, I abandon the ethics of duty to the Hegelian critique with no regrets; it would appear to me, indeed, to have been correctly characterized by Hegel as an abstract thought, as a thought of understanding.

- Paul Ricoeur



Instead of a bottom-line based on money and power, we need a new bottom-line that defines productivity and creativity as where corporations, governments, schools, public institutions, and social practices are judged as efficient, rational and productive not only to the extent they maximize money and power, but to the extent they maximize love and caring, ethical and ecological sensitivity, and our capacities to respond with awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation.

- Michael Lerner



Belief is a moral act for which the believer is to be held responsible.

- Lillian Hellman



The argument has long been made that we humans are by nature compassionate and empathic despite the occasional streak of meanness, but torrents of bad news throughout history have contradicted that claim, and little sound science has backed it. But try this thought experiment. Imagine the number of opportunities people around the world today might have to commit an antisocial act, from rape or murder to simple rudeness and dishonesty. Make that number the bottom of a fraction. Now for the top value you put the number of such antisocial acts that will actually occur today.

- Daniel Goleman



Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.



Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique.

- James MacGregor Burns



Feeling that morality has nothing to do with the way you use the resources of this world is an idea that can't persist any longer. If it does, then we won't.

- Barbara Kingsolver



The act of acting morally is behaving as if everything we do matters.

- Gloria Steinem