Dalai Lama Quotes

In the past, the respect people had for religion meant that ethical practice was maintained through a majority following one religion or another. But this is no longer the case. We must therefore find some other way of establishing basic ethical principles.

He who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage.

I doubt not, but from self-evident Propositions, by necessary Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out.

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

I have never obtained any ethical values from my scientific work.

The natural law is an instrument for progress, not a weapon of revolution.

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

A different vision of ethics is that of a collection of resources people can use to act better. The resources might be firm rules that could always be relied on. Or they might be ideals that could often be followed without thinking but that sometimes conflicted with one another.

Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!

There is no ethics in general. There are only-eventually-ethics of processes by which we treat the possibilities of a situation.

I was brought up an atheist and have always remained so. But at no time was I led to believe that morality was unimportant or that good and bad did not exist. I believe passionately in the need to distinguish between right and wrong and am somewhat confounded by being told I need God, Jesus or a clergyman to help me to do so.

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.

We have next to consider the formal definition of virtue.

But the nature of the universe is such that ends can never justify means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.

Let us with Caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.

It’s pretty simple, the ethical life. It’s just demanding.

Philosophy is fundamentally about how you come to terms with living your life and trying to do it in a wise manner, and, for me, that means decently and compassionately and courageously and so forth.

There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.

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.

Ethics is inescapable.

The very essence of our civilization is that we give a paramount place to morality in all our affairs, public or private.

Science, by itself cannot, supply us with an ethic.

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

The characteristic feature of all ethics is to consider human life as a game that can be won or lost and to teach man the means of winning.

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