Robert Winston Quotes

The very idea that we get a moral compass from religion is horrible. Not only should we not get our moral compass from religion, as a matter of fact we don't.

It's simply untrue that religion provides the only framework for a universal morality.

Our moral traditions developed concurrently with our reason, not as its product.

One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.

If you have religious faith, very good, you can add on secular ethics, then religious belief, add on it, very good. But even those people who have no interest about religion, okay, it's not religion, but you can train through education.

Religion may have become a codification of morality, and it may fortify it, but it's not the origin of it.

It makes me upset, if not angry, when people assume that there can be no morality without a religious framework. If there's a moral framework without all that religious stuff, it's more valuable.

The death of dogma is the birth of morality.

Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

It is often said by religious people that without its framework, there is no sense of right or wrong. My view is that religion comes after ethics.

In the past, the respect people had for religion meant that ethical practice was maintained through a majority following one religion or another. But this is no longer the case. We must therefore find some other way of establishing basic ethical principles.

Whatever efforts one may make, one must revert to the realization that religion is the real basis of morality; religion is the real and perceptible purpose within us, which alone, can turn aside our attention from things. ... The science of morality can no more teach human beings to be honest, in all the magnificence of this word, than geometry can teach one how to draw.

There is no true and abiding morality that is not founded in religion.

There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.

I was brought up an atheist and have always remained so. But at no time was I led to believe that morality was unimportant or that good and bad did not exist. I believe passionately in the need to distinguish between right and wrong and am somewhat confounded by being told I need God, Jesus or a clergyman to help me to do so.

Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality. Morality is not bribery or threats. Religion is bribery and threats. Humans have morality. We don't need religion.

My faith has been the driving thing of my life. I think it is important that people who are perceived as liberals not be afraid of talking about moral and community values.

The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.

We have found that morals are not, like bacon, to be cured by hanging; nor, like wine, to be improved by sea voyages; nor, like honey, to be preserved in cells.

If you do not know the laws of right conduct, you cannot form your character.

If you didn't have any conscious beings in the world, there really wouldn't be morality but with consciousness that you have it.

Guided by nothing but pop culture values, many children no longer learn how to think about morality and virtue, or to think of them at all. They grow up with no shared moral framework, believing that the highest values are diversity, tolerance and non-judgmentalism.

The first idea the child must acquire is that of the difference between good and evil.

Morality is of the highest importance - but for us, not for God.

It is becoming clear that the old platitudes can no longer be maintained, and that if we wish to improve our morals we must first improve our knowledge.