Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes

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

Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair' before you can say Jack Robinson.

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

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.

The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.

Ethics may be defined as the obligations of morality.

At the core of every moral code there is a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a version of history. To human nature (of the sort conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so understood), the rules of the code apply.

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

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

Ordinary human laws are the means - however imperfect - by which we express our understanding of the enduring moral law.

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.

Religion may have become a codification of morality, and it may fortify it, but it's not the origin of it.

The fundamental basis of ethics must be chosen in some non-scientific way.

It's very much simpler to get rid of any written rule you choose than it is an item of customary morality... while laws are preserved on tablets of wood or stone, customary morality is engraved deep in our living souls

Morality is always derivative. It stems from one's worldview.

Right and wrong as moral principles do not change. They are applicable and reliable determinants whether the situations with which we deal are simple or complicated. There is always a right and wrong to every question which requires our solution.

There are many religions, but there is only one morality.

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

The principles of ethics come from our own nature as social, reasoning beings.

Ye must leave righteous ways behind, not to speak of unrighteous ways.

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

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

I've no objection to morality, except that it's obsolete.

A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.

The law functions as formal embodiment of a moral code, not as free-standing substitute for it.