Diogenes Quotes

True knowledge gives a moral standing and moral strength.

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

A good moral character is the first essential. It is highly important not only to be learned but to be virtuous.

That which is selfish is immoral, and that which is unselfish is moral.

We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.

The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.

[T]here is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists . . . an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.

Is not virtue a negation of becoming?

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

Of all the things of a man's soul which he has within him, justice is the greatest good and injustice the greatest evil.

Honesty is nothin' compared to decency.

Even virtue is an art; and even its devotees are divided into those who practise it and those who are merely amateurs.

You can't be right by doing wrong; you can't be wrong by doing right.

When goodness is lost, it is replaced by morality.

Morality must always precede and accompany religion, and yet religion is much more than morality.

You know, there's a right and wrong way to do everything.

There is no virtue in curiosity. In fact, it might be the most immoral desire a man can possess.

...virtue is not merely a state in conformity with the right principle, but one that implies the right principle; and the right principle in moral conduct is prudence.

Morality, taken as apart from religion, is but another name for decency of sin.

The consideration that human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected will always continue to prompt me to promote the former by inculcating the practice of the latter.

People are either good or they're not. Religion doesn't make anybody good, I don't think.

Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.

Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

To make your people understand what righteousness is, this must be the basis of all your teaching.

There is no real excellence in all of this world which can be separated from right living.