C. S. Lewis Quotes

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.

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

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

Right and wrong as moral principles do not change. They are applicable and reliable determinants whether the situations with which we deal are simple or complicated. There is always a right and wrong to every question which requires our solution.

The natural law is an instrument for progress, not a weapon of revolution.

If morality had naturally no influence on human passions and actions, it were in vain to take such pains to inculcate it; and nothing would be more fruitless than that multitude of rules and precepts with which all moralists abound.

The rigid volunteer rules of right and wrong in sports are second only to religious faith in moral training.

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.

We all live in the protection of certain cowardices which we call our principles.

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

Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty.

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

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

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.

He who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage.

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.

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

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.

Since survival is the sine qua non, I now define the "moral behavior" as "behavior that tends toward survival".

Morality is a social necessity

All morality consists in a system of rules, and the essence of all morality is to be sought for in the respect which the individual acquires for these rules.

If you are following the dharma no matter what you do it is moral.

In the common run of mankind, for one that is wise and good you find ten of a contrary character.

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.