Montesquieu Quotes

As long as the decent people refuse to believe that morality must manifest itself in every sphere of human activity, including the political, they will not meet the challenge of Marxism.

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

When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.

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.

Real morality is possible when the sanctions for morality are also tangible and real. Therefore, atheism shifts the basis of morality from faith in god to obligations of social living. Moral conduct is not a passport to heaven; it is social necessity.

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

The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.

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

Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality.

There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not always call itself by that name.

Do what's right and you'll please some of the people and astound the rest.

Honesty is nothin' compared to decency.

You can't be right by doing wrong; you can't be wrong by doing right.

Fundamentally, the force that rules the world is conduct, whether it be moral or immoral. If it is moral, at least there may be hope for the world. If immoral, there is not only no hope, but no prospect of anything but destruction of all that has been accomplished during the last 5,000 years.

In morals as in politics anarchy is not for the weak.

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

Honesty is largely a matter of information, of knowing that dishonesty is a mistake. Principle is not as powerful in keeping people straight as a policeman.

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.

Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law, and without justice.

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

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

Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral act. And never suppose that in any possible situation, or under any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear to you.

Guide them by edicts, keep them in line with punishments, and the common people will stay out of trouble but will have no sense of shame. Guide them by virtue, keep them in line with the rites, and they will, besides having a sense of shame, reform themselves.

Politics have no relation to morals.