Genuine leadership is inherently moral. So the values chosen matter tremendously, and they must be values aligned with society (including the most universal statement of human values in history, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as clear values of sustainability evidenced in global declarations like the Stockholm and Rio Declarations.
Politicians are addicted to spending and revenue extraction. As with an addict, there's little pause for moral or legal contemplation.
I was thinking about the legacy of ghosts in fiction, and specifically the moral power of those Dickensian ghosts. Because a ghost can be a very powerful but also manipulative element.
Democracy may have arisen in the West as the way of striving for the universal aspiration to dignity and freedom, but it isn't alien to the underlying concepts that infuse religion and moral philosophy everywhere.
The search for a moral equivalent of war continues to define American liberalism to this day.
Good manners are a part of good morals.
Those who cultivate moral confusion for profit should understand this: we will name their names and shame them as they deserve to be shamed.
How we become moral and understand good and bad, and how we overcome our impulse towards violence, is all really important to me, as a person.
Literature remains an indispensable human activity, in which the reader and the writer are engaged of their own volition. Hence, literature has no duty to the masses or society, and ethical or moral pronouncements added by busybody critics are of no concern to the writer.
I think historically modern economics, capitalist economics, tends to erode moral categories. . . And this is where I think the right gets capitalism wrong. They kind of assume that there is a moral equivalence or moral valence to capitalism, but I tend to think that economics erodes all the kind of cultural taboos and inhibitions and values it comes into contact with.
Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity these, three and a place in society where no one of the three can be exercised?
Mr. Market is kind of a drunken psycho. Some days he gets very enthused, some days he gets very depressed. And when he get really enthused you sell to him, and if he gets depressed, you buy from him. There's no moral taint attached to that.
The Labour Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.
We can look you in the eye and talk to you about life, heart, love rock'n'roll, whatever, but we do not have the moral authority to tell people how to vote or what to do with their bodies. We are just a rock band.
What are the moral implications? What do these people do when they have tremendous amounts of money? They use that money to perpetuate their own wealth and their own power. Every day, Congress works on behalf of big-money interests.
If one starts with an impersonal beginning, the answer to morals eventually turns out to be the assertion that there are no morals.
As for the law of moral causation ('karma'): this is human justice dressed up as cosmic justice and then imputed to the impersonal workings of the natural world.
I want our children's children to be free to walk safely down the street, girls to attend school, and women to work. I hope we continue to have freedom to wear what we want, worship how we want, study what we want, publish what we want while assuming personal responsibility for one's moral character.
Whereas modern cynicism brought despair about the ability of the human species to realize laudable ideals, postmodern cynicism doesn't — not because it's optimistic, but because it can't take ideals seriously in the first place. The prevailing attitude is Absurdism. A postmodern magazine may be irreverent, but not bitterly irreverent, for it's not purposefully irreverent; its aim is indiscriminate, because everyone is equally ridiculous. And anyway, there's no moral basis for passing judgment. Just sit back and enjoy the show.
Government Picking Winners and Losers = Corruption. When government tries to pick winners and losers, the inevitable consequence is corruption. Yes, corruption. If not in a legal sense, certainly in a moral sense