Orson Scott Card Quotes

We all have the duty to do good.

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

No one can be good for long if goodness is not in demand.

The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.

Since belief determines behavior, doesn't it make sense that we should be teaching ethical, moral values in every home and in every school in America?

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.

The real index of civilization is when people are kinder than they need to be.

Being in humaneness is good. If we select other goodness and thus are far apart from humaneness, how can we be the wise?

On the whole, the world was friendly. It chiefly depended on whether one were good or not.

There is little evidence that other animals judge the appropriateness of actions that do not directly affect themselves.

Positive social emotions like compassion and empathy are generally good for us, and we want to encourage them. But do we know how to most reliably raise children to care about the suffering of other people? I'm not sure we do.

Good character consists of recognizing the selfishness that inheres in each of us and trying to balance it against the altruism to which we should all aspire. It is a difficult balance to strike, but no definition of goodness can be complete without it.

One goes through school, college, medical school and one's internship learning little or nothing about goodness but a good deal about success.

A good person can make another person good; it means that goodness will elicit goodness in the society; other persons will also be good.

I feel it's in people's nature to want to stop evil and embrace the good.

Virtue is its own reward. We only invented concepts like heaven and hell to describe how we feel. We don't feel good doing bad and it's nice to help someone.

Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.

We have observed that, in society and the world in which we live, selfishness has increased more than love for others, and that men of good will must work, each with his own strengths and expertise, to ensure that love for others increases until it is equal and possibly exceeds love for oneself.

Being a good person and fair person is very important in life, I think.

Human morality is unthinkable without empathy.

I think that we all know what evil is. We have a sense of what's evil, and certainly killing innocent people is evil. We're less sure about what is good. There's sort of good, good enough, could be better - but absolute good is a little harder to define.

I feel really ambiguous about the psychology of people trying to do good in the world.

As long as I'm a good person and I do things from the heart, that's all that matters.

You don't need a religious background to strive for something good, for genuine compassion and love for others.

There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham.