Benh Zeitlin Quotes

All systems of morality are fine. The gospel alone has exhibited a complete assemblage of the principles of morality, divested of all absurdity. It is not composed, like your creed, of a few common-place sentences put into bad verse. Do you wish to see that which is really sublime? Repeat the Lord's Prayer.

A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen

The religious man fears, the man of honor scorns, to do an ill action.

I am thankful that the church exists, thankful that it has done such great things, giving us laws, for instance - 'thou shalt' and 'thou shalt not', and established Goodness and Evil. That's what all religions do, and as soon as we try to replace them, worldly religions like fascism and communism take over.

We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.

Whatever efforts one may make, one must revert to the realization that religion is the real basis of morality; religion is the real and perceptible purpose within us, which alone, can turn aside our attention from things. ... The science of morality can no more teach human beings to be honest, in all the magnificence of this word, than geometry can teach one how to draw.

Really, all religious teachings can be boiled down to: “Just be cool. Don’t be an asshole.

Let us with Caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.

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.

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

I have always tried to have a message, not to be a preacher, but a message that shows it's better to be a good guy than a bad guy, and I try to make it clear that doing the right thing is more attractive than not.

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

Only Atheists have morals, the religious have reward and punishment. That's not morality, that's sucking up.

To be good and to do good-that is the whole of religion.

There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair.

Beyond all our actions stands the larger shadow: How are we to choose between what we have been taught to think right and something else which manifestly succeeds?

People are either good or they're not. Religion doesn't make anybody good, I don't think.

I am too much a moralist at heart, and really want to preach at people in some acceptable form, rather than entertain them.

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

But I think it is a serious issue to wonder about the other platonic absolutes of say beauty and morality.

At the end of the day, if there are truly ethical considerations, those have to override scientific considerations.

Laws and customs may be creative of vice; and should be therefore perpetually under process of observation and correction: but laws and customs cannot be creative of virtue: they may encourage and help to preserve it; but they cannot originate it.

Our moral traditions developed concurrently with our reason, not as its product.

It seems difficult, sometimes, to believe that there was a time when sentiments now become habitual, sentiments that imply not only the original imperative of conduct, but the original metaphysic of living, were by no means altogether habitual.

Any simple claim that you need religion to be good is flat wrong.