Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Theology always has moral implications, and morality is always undergirded by theology.

Religion is not just incongruent with morality, but in essential ways incompatible with it.

Christ could not create a codified 'Christian ethics'; such a thing would be a contradiction in terms.

The notion that there is no basic value system is far more incoherent or invalid than the notion that there are essential values. Every religion can tell you it has basic values. You ask a Christian, most Christians would say love God and love your neighbor. Is that the entirety of Christianity? No one in his right mind would say it is.

The Ten Commandments have never been replaced as the moral basis upon which society rests.

What is considered sinful in one of the great religions to which citizens belong isn't necessarily sinful in the others. Criminal law therefore cannot be based on the notion of sin …

In nearly every religion I am aware of, there is a variation of the golden rule. And even for the non-religious, it is a tenet of people who believe in humanistic principles.

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion.

All good moral philosophy is ... but the handmaid to religion.

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

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.

The use of God in moral debate is so problematic as to be almost worthless.

Morality is but the vestibule of religion.

Religion gets its morality from us. We don't get our morality from religion.

Let us with Caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.

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

Originally, ethics has no existence apart from religion, which holds it in solution.

I consider ethics, as well as religion, as supplements to law in the government of man.

I think that the Bible as a system of moral guidance in the 21st century is insufficient, to put it mildly. I feel quite strongly that we need a new moral lodestone if we can't rely on what is inside our own selves. Which I think, actually, is pretty reliable.

Just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim Algebra, we will see tht there is no such thing as Christian or Muslim morality.

Morality which is based on ideas, or on an ideal, is an unmitigated evil.

In reality, moral rules are directions for running the human machine. Every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain, or a friction, in the running of that machine. That is why these rules at first seem to be constantly interfering with our natural inclinations.

The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple and doesn't require religion at all.

An ethic isn't a fact you can look up. It's a way of thinking.