James Russell Lowell Quotes

It has been wisely observed by the greatest of modern thinkers that mankind has progressed more rapidly in every other respect than in morality.

I take the ethical truths to be the stable elements that emerge out of ethical progress and that are retained under further ethical progress.

The Bible improved my ethical IQ. I started to act like a good person. I tried not to gossip, and lie, and covet, and just by pretending I was a good person, I think I actually became a little bit better of a person. I'm not Gandhi or Angelina Jolie, but it was a baby step.

Moral progress has consisted in the main of protest against cruel customs, and of attempts to enlarge human sympathy.

He who has made great moral progress ceases to pray

You are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in.

Man's material discoveries have outpaced his moral progress.

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

In science the new is an advance; but in morals, as contradicting our inner ideals and historic idols, it is ever a retrogression.

Increase of material comforts, it may be generally laid down, does not in any way whatsoever conduce to moral growth.

If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these for to whatever point the perfection of anything brings us, progress is always an approach toward it.

Theory of the true civilization. It is not to be found in gas or steam or table turning. It consists in the diminution of the traces of original sin.

Two conditions render difficult this historic situation of mankind: It is full of tremendously deadly armament, and it has not progressed morally as much as it has scientifically and technically.

Moral epochs have their course as well as the seasons. We can no more hold them fast than we can hold sun, moon, and stars. Our faults perpetually return upon us; and herein lies the subtlest difficulty of self-knowledge.

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.

Ethical ideas and sentiments have to be considered as parts of the phenomena of life at large. We have to deal with man as a product of evolution, with society as a product of evolution, and with moral phenomena as products of evolution.

I have purposely presented the land ethic as a product of social evolution because nothing so important as an ethic is ever 'written'… It evolves in the minds of a thinking community.

Humanity's moral conscience progresses, slowly yet surely.

Mankind's survival is dependent on man's ability to solve the problems of racial injustice, poverty, and war; the solution of these problems is in turn dependent upon man's squaring his moral progress with his scientific progress, and learning the practical art of living in harmony.

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.

There is an optimism which nobly anticipates the eventual triumph of great moral laws, and there is an optimism which cheerfully tolerates unworthiness.

With a higher moral nature will come a restriction on the multiplication of the inferior.

The march of intellect is proceeding at quick time; and if its progress be not accompanied by a corresponding improvement in morals and religion, the faster it proceeds, with the more violence will you be hurried down the road to ruin.

I conceive the essential task of religion to be "to develop the consciences, the ideals, and the aspirations of mankind".