Quotes on Religion and Philosophy

Augustine:

Doing evil is nothing but turning away from learning.

On Free Choice of the Will

Augustine:

There is no single cause of evil; rather, everyone who does evil is the cause of his own evildoing.

On Free Choice of the Will

Simone de Beauvoir:

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.

The Ethics of Ambiguity

John Dewey:

Since morality is concerned with conduct, any dualisms which are set up between mind and activity must reflect themselves in the theory of morals.

Democracy and Education (1916)

Epictetus:

Whatever moral rules you have deliberately proposed to yourself, abide by them as they were laws, and as if you would be guilty of impiety by violating any of them. Don't regard what anyone says of you, for this, after all, is no concern of yours.

The Enchiridion

Alexander Herzen:

All religions have based morality on obedience, that is to say, on voluntary slavery. That is why they have always been more pernicious than any political organisation. For the latter makes use of violence, the former - of the corruption of the will.

From the Other Shorem, "Omnia Mea Mecum Porto" (1855). Quoted from: The Columbia Dictionary Of Quotations

Neil Kurshan:

The most powerful lessons about ethics and morality do not come from school discussions or classes in character building. They come from family life where people treat one another with respect, consideration, and love.

Raising Your Child to Be a Mensch, ch. 3 (1987).

Thomas Merton:

It is easy enough to tell the poor to accept their poverty as God's will when you yourself have warm clothes and plenty of food and medical care and a roof over your head and no worry about the rent. But if you want them to believe you - try to share some of their poverty and see if you can accept it as God's will yourself!

Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation, chapter 14, p. 107 (1949).

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Montaigne:

Why in judging a man do you judge him all wrapped up in a package? He displays to us only parts that are not at all his own, and hides from us those by which alone one can truly judge of his value. It is the worth of the blade that you seek to know, not of the scabbard; perhaps you will not give a penny for it if you have unsheathed it. You must judge him by himself, not by his finery.

Essays

Friedrich Nietzsche:

We praise or fault, depending on which of the two provides more opportunity for our powers of judgment to shine.

Human, All Too Human

Thomas Paine:

Loving enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has besides no meaning. It is incumbent on man, as a moralist, that he does not revenge an injury; and it is equally as good in a political sense, for there is no end to retaliation, each retaliates on the other, and calls it justice; but to love in proportion to the injury, if it could be done, would be to offer a premium for crime.

The Age of Reason (1795)

Thomas Paine:

Morality is injured by prescribing to it duties that, in the first place, are impossible to be performed; and, if they could be, would be productive of evil; or, as before said, be premiums for crime. The maxim of doing as we would be done unto does not include this strange doctrine of loving enemies:for no man expects to be loved himself for his crime or for his enmity.

The Age of Reason (1795)

Blaise Pascal:

Theft, incest, infanticide, parricide, have all had a place among virtuous actions. Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man should have the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have none with him?

Pensees (1660)

Blaise Pascal:

It is right that what is just should be obeyed; it is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed. Justice without might is helpless; might without justice is tyrannical.

Pensees (1660)

Jay F. Rosenberg:

I am suspicious of the notion of unrequited suffering, in particular, of its inescapable implication that suffering can be "requited". Suffering is not a debit entry in some ledger, something that can be offset by an appropriate credit on another page. Suffering is intrinsic disvalue. Positive consequences may flow from it, but it cannot thereby be "made good".

Jay F. Rosenberg

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Bertrand Russell:

All moral rules must be tested by examining whether they tend to realize ends that we desire. I say ends that we desire, not ends that we ought to desire. What we "ought" to desire is merely what someone else wishes us to desire.

Essays

Bertrand Russell:

No man who believes that all is for the best in this suffering world can keep his ethical values unimpaired, since he is always having to find excuses for pain and misery.

Essays

Bertrand Russell:

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

A Free Man’s Worship and Other Essays, ch. 6 (1976).

Friedrich Von Schlegel:

Religion and morals are symmetrically opposed, just like poetry and philosophy.

Selected Ideas, idea 67, (1799-1800)