Daniel J. Boorstin Quotes

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

I think that unless you can take judgments of right and wrong like an automaton, you must have emotions because that is our only way of moral guidance.

For children to take morality seriously they must be in the presence of adults who take morality seriously. And with their own eyes they must see adults take morality seriously.

If you want young people to take right and wrong seriously, you must put them in the presence of people who take right and wrong seriously.

We become moral when we are unhappy.

Fear is the mother of morality.

If you do not know the laws of right conduct, you cannot form your character.

We are naturally moral beings, but our environments can enhance - or, sadly, degrade - this innate moral sense.

People want to know if I have a moral standpoint that they should be picking up on, and the truth is, I don't. I don't want people to think that I'm trying to tell them to feel a certain way. I think that's cheap filmmaking.

One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.

Morality is not only taught; it is caught.

Indeed, without emotion it seems unlikely we can even have morality.

Education is the art of making man ethical.

Force cannot transmit a moral principle: moral ideas can be received only through the reason of the heart.

Humans are the only ones who are the custodians of other people's morals.

The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded about this, because if you left it to them to work out for themselves, they would never bother. They would just find out what was best for them, and then they would call that the right thing. That's how most people thought.

Conscience is a man's compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities in directing one's course by it, still one must try to follow its direction.

Morality, when vigorously alive, sees farther than intellect, and provides unconsciously for intellectual difficulties.

Clergymen almost necessarily fail in two ways as teachers of morals. They condemn acts which do no harm and they condone acts which do great harm.

It is not good for one's morals to see bad acting

Morality must relate, at some level, to the well-being of conscious creatures. If there are more and less effective ways for us to seek happiness and to avoid misery in this world - and there clearly are - then there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.

To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.

The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.

Our moral traditions developed concurrently with our reason, not as its product.

A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives - of approving of some and disapproving of others.