Emma Thompson Quotes

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

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.

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

If you deny that any principles of conduct at all are common to and admitted by all men who try to behave reasonably - well, I don't see how you can have any ethics or any ethical background for law.

Ethics are pre-determined and a matter of discovery, not a evolved concept.

I do my research, and if I'm supporting something, then it's because it aligns with me morally and ethically.

Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is Good.

I have never lived on principles. When I have had to act, I never first asked myself on what principles I was going to act, but I went at it and did what I thought fit. I have often reproached myself for my want of principle.

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

Duty is a better guide than stars or statutes.

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.

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.

I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn't. You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one's aims are, that's the trouble, specially if you're British.

My school of thought is, anything goes, but I can't do that anymore.

Moral standards cannot be changed by battle and cannot be changed by ballot.

If Truth is taken away from us, then Right and Wrong are taken from us as well. If we don't know Right and Wrong, then we can't, we won't control ourselves, but will look to someone else to bring order through brute force and raw power. We will be controlled by a tyrant, and we will no longer be free.

The only guide to man is his conscience.

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

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

The Holy Scriptures...can alone secure to society order and peace, and to our courts of justice and constitutions of government, purity, stability, and usefulness.....Bibles are strong entrenchments. Where they abound, men cannot pursue wicked courses and at the same time enjoy quiet conscience.

If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say "give them up," for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.

The content of scientific theory itself offers no moral foundation for the personal conduct of life.

By renouncing the Bible, philosophers swing from their moorings upon all moral subjects..It is the only correct map of the human heart that ever has been published.

It's because even a good man can't always be right, that we need ... rules.

I am, as I have always been, of the opinion that while the niceties of normal moral constraints should be our guides, they must not be our masters.