Edwin Louis Cole Quotes

It is not enough merely possess virtue, as if it were an art; it should be practiced.

I was brought up to believe that human beings are good, which is why it shocks me to the core when I see human beings behaving badly.

The principle can be established that for a man who does not cheat what he believes to be true must determine his actions.

As long as the decent people refuse to believe that morality must manifest itself in every sphere of human activity, including the political, they will not meet the challenge of Marxism.

I think that ethical behaviour is another feature of the kind of inner discipline that leads to a happier existence.

This whole religion revolves around knowing the truth and acting by it, and action must be accompanied by patience.

The most important thing in a person's life is his faith and how he translates his faith into practical deeds.

The only way to show a true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God’s existence.

Integrity is the courage and self-discipline to cooperate and initiate according to the Divine, which you know in your heart as Truth.

Here is the point about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true - that religion has caused innumerate people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.

Never value anything as profitable to thyself which shall compel thee to break thy promise, to lose thy self-respect, to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to act the hypocrite, to desire anything which needs walls and curtains.

Morals - all correct moral laws - derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level.

The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman.

It was time to pull my moral socks up and behave myself.

Virtue is not a thing you can have by halves; it is or it is not.

The real nature of an ethic is that it does not become an ethic unless and until it goes into action.

Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.

What people believe impacts on what they do. And it's not as if religion is universally bad. Of course it's responsible for many peoples doing good actions.

Happiness is inseparably connected with decent, clean behavior.

Integrity is not something that grownups have and adolescents can aspire to. Integrity is something that all of us, at all ages, are constantly striving for.

Many among men are they who set high the show of honor, yet break justice.

If you are doing something for reward or punishment, you do not have morality.

What we take for virtue is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry knows how to arrange.

The modern moralists extol ... the cult of practical activity in defiance of the disinterested life.

The key to acting with integrity is to simply stop playing the game.