Michael Shermer Quotes

In point of morals, the average woman is, even for business, too crooked.

I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.

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

Conscience is what? It is putting together a moral act and a moral ideal, and measuring the act by the ideal. It is putting this moral act which you do alongside the eternal laws of God, and seeing how it stands by those laws of God.

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

My only fear is doing something contrary to human nature - the wrong thing, the wrong way, or at the wrong time.

I have never obtained any ethical values from my scientific work.

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.

Virtue and decency are so nearly related that it is difficult to separate them from each other but in our imagination.

God gives manhood but one clew to success,--utter and exact justice; that he guarantees shall be always expediency.

Experience shows us Wealth unchaperoned by Virtue is never an innocuous neighbor.

Without integrity and conscience we lose our freedom.

Honesty is nothin' compared to decency.

Those who are most moral are farthest from the problem.

You know, there's a right and wrong way to do everything.

Have you no morals, man?' 'Can't afford them,Governor.

If we can't get back to principles and integrity and it's reduced just the interest of calculation and Machiavellian manipulation, we are in deep trouble.

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

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

There can be no justification for choosing any part of that which one knows to be evil.

There's a morality... I think there's a moral compass but whether that comes from religion or just from being a good person, and where one starts and the other begins... I'm a good person, I hope. But I'm never as good as I want to be, never as nice as I want to be, never as generous as I want to be.

Self-respect and a clear conscience are powerful components of integrity and are the basis for enriching your relationships with others.

Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be. . . .

That cannot be safe which is not honourable.

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