Morality, as has often been pointed out, is antecedent to religion-it even exists in a rudimentary form among animals.
To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.
Scientists search for truth. Philosophers search for morality. A criminal trial searches for only one result: proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
A poem may be an instance of morality, of social conditions, of psychological history; it may instance all its qualities, but never one of them alone, nor any two or three; never less than all.
We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.
The stirrings of morality emerge early in childhood. Toddlers spontaneously offer toys and help to others and try to comfort people they see in distress.
I like French films, Chabrol in particular. With him, you often get a skewed morality in which you sympathise with the person you shouldn't.
Obviously, marriage is not a synonym for morality. But stable marriages and families do encourage moral behavior.
Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis.
I'm not saying that atheists can't act morally or have moral knowledge. But when I ascribe virtue to an atheist, it's as a theist who sees the atheist as conforming to objective moral values. The atheist, by contrast, has no such basis for morality. And yet all moral judgments require a basis for morality, some standard of right and wrong.
The true meaning of religion is thus, not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.
All thoughtful persons perceive that the ideas of the morality of sexual relations upheld by the religions and laws of the Western nations are in our time undergoing a radical transformation.
Morality is only moral when it is voluntary.
One of the reasons I love writing for middle graders, besides their voracious appetite for books, is their deep concern for fairness and morality.
Watergate provides a model case study of the interaction and powers of each of the branches of government. It also is a morality play with a sad and dramatic ending.
The Queen has well-informed opinions of many of her bishops and likes those who are straightforward and intelligent. Both she and Prince Philip believe Christianity is as much about forgiveness as morality.
These youngsters hold that all morality is relative but that middle class morality is just plain bad.
