George Washington Quotes

All good moral philosophy is ... but the handmaid to religion.

No morality can be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine.

It is often said by religious people that without its framework, there is no sense of right or wrong. My view is that religion comes after ethics.

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

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.

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

Morality must always precede and accompany religion, and yet religion is much more than morality.

It's simply untrue that religion provides the only framework for a universal morality.

I do not want to suggest that you have to be religious to be moral.

It is difficult for me to regard anyone who obeys no moral principle in his conduct to be a religious man.

I think we have to give religion its due. I think we have to respect those for whom religion is important, but equally respect those who can achieve good morality without religion.

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.

Religion is not just incongruent with morality, but in essential ways incompatible with it.

Morality may exist in an atheist without any religion, and in a theist with a religion quite unspiritual.

Golden Rule lies at the heart of every religious and of every ethical system of morality, it what makes us look at one another. The religions have all adopted it independently, Chinese, Indian, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, because they find it works and because it says something very deep about the structure of our humanity.

There was no other God, religion, or lawful magistracy, than conscience, which teaches all men the precepts of Justice, to do no injury, to live honestly, and give everyone his due.

All true religion must stand on true morality.

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

Morality, taken as apart from religion, is but another name for decency of sin.

I was brought up an atheist and have always remained so. But at no time was I led to believe that morality was unimportant or that good and bad did not exist. I believe passionately in the need to distinguish between right and wrong and am somewhat confounded by being told I need God, Jesus or a clergyman to help me to do so.

I consider ethics, as well as religion, as supplements to law in the government of man.

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

As soon as we lose the moral basis, we cease to be religious. There is no such thing as religion over-riding morality. Man, for instance, cannot be untruthful, cruel or incontinent and claim to have God on his side.

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

The difference between religion and morality lies simply in the classical division of things into the divine and the human, if one only interprets this correctly.