Moral Expectations Quotes

People hold elected officials to a higher ethical standard than most others.

We don't expect every operator to be Christian, but we tell them we do expect them to operate on Christian principles.

Loving your neighbour as much as yourself is practically bloody impossible? You might as well have a commandment that states,'Thou shalt fly'.

What is kinder--to believe the best of people and burden them with a nobility beyond their endurance--or to see them as they are, and accept it because it makes them comfortable?

Law has always served the purpose of condensing and defining the moral wishes and expectations of the community.

We can’t expect the nation to operate by Christian principles… but we can expect this of the church.

What kind of person would run for president of the United States in today's political climate? It would have to be somebody who's never really been drunk in public, who's never had an affair, who never shoplifted when they were a little boy, who never had any sort of counseling at all. I just don't know how you go through your life meeting people, experiencing everything you can, trying to absorb, and not make some of those mistakes. It's impossible.

I can't play Mahatma Gandhi.

It was never decreed that a god mustn't pay hotel bills.

You have to adhere to a certain morality, a certain level of decorum, or else you'll be punished and labeled.

You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank as to praise him for playing by the rules.

Why do we never expect dull people to be rascals?

Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither. We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with other nations of the earth, and we must behave as beseems a people with such responsibilities.

The Bible tells us to be perfect. This is likely a scary thought for many people. It used to scare me. I didn't think I could ever get there, no matter how hard I tried.

We do all, myself included, we tend to hold ourselves to pretty low standards. But when it comes to judging public figures or politicians or people we've never met, we tend to hold people to very high standards, and, if we held ourselves to those standards, we'd always fall short.

I don't know anyone less Jesus like than Christians.

Children are excellent observers, and will often perceive your slightest defects. In general, those who govern children, forgive nothing in them, but everything in themselves.

… as a rule capitalists and entrepreneurs are not saints excelling in the virtue of self-denial. But neither are their critics saintly.

Most people believe that the Christian commandments are intentionally a little too severe

I try to be bad, but nobody will let me.

The clergy [in the 14th century] on the whole were probably no more lecherous or greedy or untrustworthy than other men, but because they were supposed to be better or nearer to God than other men, their failings attracted more attention.

it is wiser to be conventionally immoral than unconventionally moral. It isn't the immorality they object to, but the originality.

In the church is a memorial to Mrs. Sarah Hill, who bequeathed 1 pound annually, to be divided at Easter, between two boys and two girls who "have never been undutiful to their parents; who have never been known to swear or to tell untruths, to steal, or to break windows." Fancy giving up all that for five shillings a year! It is not worth it!

Give a lift to a tomato, you expect her to be nice, don't ya? After all, what kind of dames thumb rides, Sunday school teachers?

But they told me a man should be faithful, and walk when not able, and fight till the end but I'm only Human.