Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

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

The Bible and its teachings helped form the basis for the Founding Fathers' abiding belief in the inalienable rights of the individual.

For many people, morality means a set of rules governing the disposition on one's genital organs; or a set of injunctions against lying, stealing, or killing except when such acts are sanctioned by church or state.

At times, morality can be dismissed as a matter of personal conscience, no matter how widespread its acceptance. Ethics, on the other hand, arises from societal or group commitments to principia of behavior.

The fact that some governments, churches and numerous corrupted individuals have tried to reduce such behavior from criminal offence to personal privilege dose not change the nature nor the seriousness of the practice. This woe is pronounced upon those who would pervert standards of mortality and decency. They seek man’s approval of that which God had condemned. They have been successful in getting legislation passed to make such perversion legal and acceptable by society.

Morality is not defined and cannot be defined by individual choice.

Most people believe that the Christian commandments, e.g. to love one's neighbor as oneself, are intentionally a little too severe - like setting a clock half an hour ahead to make sure of not being late in the morning.

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

We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses. And then we come across another of God’s teachings on morality: if a man discovers on his wedding night that his bride is not a virgin, he must stone her to death on her father’s doorstep (Deuteronomy 22:13-21).

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

Almost every man who has by his life-work added to the sum of human achievement of which the race is proud, of which our people are proud, almost every such man has based his life-work largely upon the teachings of the Bible

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

Individualism has really the higher aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age.

The problem is that it has become politically awkward to draw attention to absolutes of bad and good. In place of manners, we now have doctrines of political correctness, against which one offends at one's peril: by means of a considerable circular logic, such offences mark you as reactionary and therefore a bad person. Therefore if you say people are bad, you are bad.

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

Equality is the measure of all things, and bad behavior is less bad if everyone indulges in it.

None within the sound of my voice should be in any doubt concerning what is moral and what is not, nor should any be in doubt about what is expected of us ... We have been and continue to be taught God's laws. Despite what you may see or hear elsewhere, these laws are unchanging.

Morality makes stupid.- Custom represents the experiences of men of earlier times as to what they supposed useful and harmful - but the sense for custom (morality) applies, not to these experiences as such, but to the age, the sanctity, the indiscussability of the custom. And so this feeling is a hindrance to the acquisition of new experiences and the correction of customs: that is to say, morality is a hindrance to the development of new and better customs: it makes stupid.

Science, by itself cannot, supply us with an ethic.

When any significant change takes place in the moral standards of a community, it is immediately reflected in a general shifting of the meanings of common words.

I'll tell you what's the greatest power under heaven, and that is public opinion-the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is wrong, what is honourable and what is shameful. That's the steam that is to work the engines.

Custom ... changes the very nature of things; and what was honorable a thousand years ago, may probably be looked upon as infamous now.

Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.

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

Conscience is merely our own judgment of the right or wrong of our actions, and so can never be a safe guide unless enlightened by the word of God.