Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning,--an
endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea read more

Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning,--an
endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the
distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly
bodies.

The principles we live by, in business and in social life, are the most important part of happiness.

The principles we live by, in business and in social life, are the most important part of happiness.

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people whom we personally dislike.

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people whom we personally dislike.

The disesteem into which moralists have fallen is due at bottom to their failure to see that in an age read more

The disesteem into which moralists have fallen is due at bottom to their failure to see that in an age like this one the function of the moralist is not to exhort men to be good but to elucidate what the good is. The problem of sanctions is secondary.

When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a read more

When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble.

The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you read more

The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.

What I have absolutely no sympathy with is the legislator, the man who seeks, for his own profit, to exploit read more

What I have absolutely no sympathy with is the legislator, the man who seeks, for his own profit, to exploit the weaknesses of those who are unable to help themselves and then to fasten some moral superscription upon it. This I loathe so much that I cannot conceivably explain how much it is.

I'm one of the undeserving poor . . . up ugen middle-class
morality all the time . . . read more

I'm one of the undeserving poor . . . up ugen middle-class
morality all the time . . . . What is middle-class morality?
Just an excuse for never giving me anything.

Turning the other cheek is a kind of moral jiu-jitsu.

Turning the other cheek is a kind of moral jiu-jitsu.