Mohammad Khatami Quotes

Morality's not practical. Morality's a gesture. A complicated gesture learnt from books.

A man may not transgress the bounds of major morals, but may make errors in minor morals.

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

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

There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition. There are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.

That which is selfish is immoral, and that which is unselfish is moral.

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

Strength and success; they are above morality, above criticism. It seems then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it.

The larger picture is really to swing people's awareness of what really is moral.

moral, adj. Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right. Having the quality of general expediency.

"On my honor" - what an ennobling phrase! Three short words, nine letters, but the summation of all we call character. From the Boy Scout's Oath.

If the Coastal Republic had believed in the existence of virtue, it could at least have aspired to hypocrisy.

We don't claim to have perfect morals, but at least we have a huge area of things that, while legal, are beneath us. We won't do them. Currently, there's a culture in Americathat says that anything that won't send you to prison is OK.

As to the permanent interest of individuals in the aggregated interests of the community, and in the proverbial maxim, that honesty is the best policy, present temptation is often found to be an overmatch for those considerations.

There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules

Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat, When it's so lucrative to cheat.

There is no ethics in general. There are only-eventually-ethics of processes by which we treat the possibilities of a situation.

If throughout your life you abstain from murder, theft, fornication, perjury, blasphemy, and disrespect toward your parents, church, and your king, you are conventionally held to deserve moral admiration even if you have never done a single kind, generous or useful action. This very inadequate notion of virtue is an outcome of taboo morality, and has done untold harm.

Morality is the Science of harmonious relations between intelligent beings.

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.

I am a moralist. I worry.

The importance of a high moral code, which is at the foundation of the Scout movement, cannot be stressed too highly.

You can't be right by doing wrong; you can't be wrong by doing right.

Absolute morality is the regulation of conduct in such a way that pain shall not be inflicted.

No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living, but that ten times in his life he might not lawfully be hanged.