Charles Kesler Quotes

It's very much simpler to get rid of any written rule you choose than it is an item of customary morality... while laws are preserved on tablets of wood or stone, customary morality is engraved deep in our living souls

No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.

I considered mores to be one of the great general causes responsible for the maintenance of a democratic republic . . . the term "mores" . . . meaning . . . habits of the heart.

I like the English. They have the most rigid code of immorality in the world.

Laws are subordinate to custom.

This point seems counter-intuitive, given the amount of conspicuous vulgarity, vice, and immorality in America. Indeed some Islamic fundamentalists argue that their regimes are morally superior to the United States because they seek to foster virtue among the citizens.

The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.

Some laws are not written, but are more decisive than any written law.

A deep meaning resides in old customs.

Honor to a Spaniard, no matter how dishonest, is as real a thing as water, wine, or olive oil. There is honor among pickpockets and honor among whores. It is simply that the standards differ.

There's so many strict ideas and rules, whether it's from religion or it's just generations and generations.

Culture is a reflection of values.

Cultures grow on the vine of tradition.

Most conduct is guided by norms rather than by laws. Norms are voluntary and are effective because they are enforced by peer pressure.

In the battle for preserving sound social and moral norms, many religious institutions can no longer be counted as allies.

There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not always call itself by that name.

What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives.

The very essence of our civilization is that we give a paramount place to morality in all our affairs, public or private.

Most people believe you have to have some moral absolutes if you want to hold back chaos.

If throughout your life you abstain from murder, theft, fornication, perjury, blasphemy, and disrespect toward your parents, church, and your king, you are conventionally held to deserve moral admiration even if you have never done a single kind, generous or useful action. This very inadequate notion of virtue is an outcome of taboo morality, and has done untold harm.

The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from Custom.

The civilization of a country consists in the quality of life that is lived there, and this quality shows plainest in the things that people choose to talk about when they talk together, and in the way they choose to talk about them.

Morality is the thing upon which your friends smile, and immorality is the thing upon which they frown

The needs of a society determine its ethics.