Marilyn French Quotes

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

Morality represents for everybody a thoroughly definite and ascertained idea: the idea of human conduct regulated in a certain manner.

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.

I've no objection to morality, except that it's obsolete.

To claim that theft or adultery or lying are "evil" simply reflects our degraded idea of good-—that it has something to do with respect for property, respectability, and sincerity.

Morals - all correct moral laws - derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level.

The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.

The whole history of man is continuous proof of the maxim that to divest one's methods of ethical concepts means to sink into the depths of utter demoralization.

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.

Ethics is a code of values which guide our choices and actions and determine the purpose and course of our lives.

Ye must leave righteous ways behind, not to speak of unrighteous ways.

The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name.

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

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

I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.

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

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.

As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn't do it, don't.

Ethics, as has been well said, are the finest fruits of humanity, but they are not its roots

The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman.

The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions.

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

Morality, thou deadly bane,Thy tens o' thousands thou has slain!

People need a moral code, to help them make decisions. All this bio-yogurt virtue and financial self-righteousness are just filling the gap in the market. But the problem is that it's all backwards. It's not that you do the right thing and hope it pays off; the morally right thing is by definition the thing that gives the biggest payoff.

I don't want to do anything that violates my own personal code of ethics and morals.