Corliss Lamont Quotes

Our western science is a child of moral virtues; and it must now become the father of further moral virtues if its extraordinary material triumphs in our time are not to bring human history to an abrupt, unpleasant and discreditable end.

We should work for material progress and at the same time ethical progress.

For the first time in human history, there seems to be a radical increase in the proportion reaching principled morality.

We must work passionately and indefatigably to bridge the gulf between our scientific progress and our moral progress. One of the great problems of mankind is that we suffer from a poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually.

I believe the human race is ready to make a quantum leap forward spiritually and morally.

Time eventually convinces most of us that forgiveness is a virtue. Conveniently, cowardice and forgiveness look identical at a certain distance.

The goal of the pastor is not to get people to show up but to get people to grow up.

The ideas of right and wrong change with the experience of the race, and this change is wrought by the gradual ascertaining of consequences - of results.

For duty, duty must be done; The rule applies to everyone.

The evil arising from mental improvement can be corrected only by a still further progress in that very improvement. Either morality is a fable, or the more enlightened we are, the more attached to it we become.

Good and evil both increase at compound interest.

I don't feel there is any spiritual or metaphysical justification for turning our backs on human suffering.

We must distinguish between spirituality in general terms, which aims to make us better people, and religion. Adopting a religion remains optional, but becoming a better human being is essential.

Not only virtue, but also insight, not only sanctity but also wisdom, are the duties and tasks of mankind.

You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principle enemy of moral progress in the world.

The law is the witness and external deposit of our moral life. Its history is the history of the moral development of the race.

There is no such thing as duty. If you know that a thing is right, you want to do it. If you don't want to do it - it isn't right. If it's right and you don't want to do it - you don't know what right is and you're not a man.

If you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something about it.

He who has made great moral progress ceases to pray

We cannot but think there is something like a fallacy in Mr. Buckle's theory that the advance of mankind is necessarily in the direction of science, and not in that of morals.

There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right.

The idea of duty--that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self--is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life.

For every step in spiritual perception, three steps are to be taken in moral development.

Ethical progress is the only cure for the damage done by scientific progress.