Bruce Babbitt Quotes

A different vision of ethics is that of a collection of resources people can use to act better. The resources might be firm rules that could always be relied on. Or they might be ideals that could often be followed without thinking but that sometimes conflicted with one another.

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.

Only our deep moral values and our strong social institutions can hold back that jungle and restrain the darker impulses of human nature.

True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting.

The natural law is an instrument for progress, not a weapon of revolution.

Morals consist of political morals, commercial morals, ecclesiastical morals, and morals.

A man cannot have character unless he lives within a fundamental system of morals that creates character.

The finest and most beautiful ideas on morals and manners have been swept away before our times, and nothing is left for us but to glean after the ancients and the ablest amongst the moderns.

No true civilization can be expected permanently to continue which is not based on the great principles of Christianity.

The law functions as formal embodiment of a moral code, not as free-standing substitute for it.

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

The content of scientific theory itself offers no moral foundation for the personal conduct of life.

We need an approach to ethics which makes no recourse to religion and can be equally acceptable to those with faith and those without.

Morals were restrictive, but they were grounded on human experience.

All things are moral; and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature.

If "Thou shalt not covet," and "Thou shalt not steal," were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.

Religion is the only solid Base of morals and that Morals are the only possible Support of free governments.

There are religions and social and moral awareness in any society that gets passed immediately. Those human truths. All cultures address them.

There is no doctrine will do good where nature is wanting.

The moral cement of all society is virtue; it unites and preserves, while vice separates and destroys.

It is impossible to maintain freedom and order and justice without religious and moral sanctions.

Do you know what morals are? Morals are an obedience to rules that people laid down to help you live among them.

Our manners, our civilization, and all the good things connected with manners and civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles: I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion.

The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition.

No law made by man can overturn that of the Creator without dramatically affecting society in its very foundation.