Human will-power alone is not enough. Will-power is excellent and we should always be using it; but it is not enough. A desire to live a good life is not enough. Obviously we should all have that desire, but it will not guarantee success. So let me put it thus: Hold on to your principles of morality and ethics, use your willpower to the limit, pay great heed to every noble, uplifting desire that is in you; but realize that these things alone are not enough, that they will never bring you to the desired place. We have to realize that all our best is totally inadequate, that a spiritual battle must be fought in a spiritual manner.
– Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Morality
Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
– George Washington
Morality | Religion
To risk reputation and affection for the truth’s sake is so demanding that to do it constantly you will need a degree of moral principle that only the Spirit of God can work in you. Do not turn your back like a coward, but play the man. Follow boldly in your Master’s steps, for He has made this rough journey before you. Better a brief warfare and eternal rest than false peace and everlasting torment.
– Alistair Begg
Morality
Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.
– Blaise Pascal
Morality | Knowledge | Affliction
The moral absolutes rest upon God’s character. The moral commands He has given to men are an expression of His character. Men as created in His image are to live by choice on the basis of what God is. The standards of morality are determined by what conforms to His character, while those things which do not conform are immoral.
– Francis Schaeffer
Morality
The consideration that human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected will always continue to prompt me to promote the former by inculcating the practice of the latter.
– George Washington
Happiness | Morality
The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Morality
We must preserve our moral foundation and the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as gifts of God. Then we need to demand that anyone who wishes to represent us do the same.
– Judge Roy Moore
Morality | Liberty
Abortion is too often an atonement for the consequences of immorality, the sins of the parents.
– Ed Cole
Abortion | Immorality
Pure morality points you to the purest one of all. When impure, it points you to yourself. The purer your habits, the closer to God you will come. Moralizing from impure motives takes you away from God.
– Ravi Zacharias
Morality | Purity
Because of the diverse conditions of humans, it happens that some acts are virtuous to some people, as appropriate and suitable to them, while the same acts are immoral for others, as inappropriate to them.
– Thomas Aquinas
Virtue | Immorality
The obligation of human beings to support and obey human governments, while they legislate upon the principles of the moral law, is an unalterable as the moral law itself.
– Charles Finney
Government | Morality
The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.
– C.S. Lewis
Morality
Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?
– Blaise Pascal
Death | Morality | Quarreling
Prayer is often a temptation to bank on a miracle of God instead of on a moral issue, i.e., it is much easier to ask God to do my work than it is to do it myself. Until we are disciplined properly, we will always be inclined to bank on God’s miracles and refuse to do the moral thing ourselves. It is our job, and it will never be done unless we do it.
– Oswald Chambers
Prayer | Miracles | Morality
Concupiscence and force are the source of all our actions; concupiscence causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones.
– Blaise Pascal
Morality
We have learned to live with unholiness and have come to look upon it as the natural and expected thing.
– A. W. Tozer
Life | Morality
You can’t raise the standard of women’s morals by raising their pay envelope. It lies deeper than that.
– Billy Sunday
Morality | Women
It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden.
– G.K. Chesterton
Morality
Bad seed is a robbery of the worst kind: for your pocket-book not only suffers by it, but your preparations are lost and a season passes away unimproved.
– George Washington
Morality
The moral law of God is the only law of individuals and of nations, and nothing can be rightful government but such as is established and administered with a view to its support.
– Charles Finney
Government | Morality
Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that.
– C.S. Lewis
Morality | Teachers
Morality is a neat cover for foul venom, but it does not alter the fact that the heart is vile, and the man himself is under damnation. Men will be damned with good works as well as without them, if they make them their confidence (rather than Jesus Christ).
– Charles Spurgeon
Morality
Christianity is the only system of faith which combines religious beliefs with corresponding principles of morality. It builds ethics on religion.
– Austin Phelps
Christianity | Morality
Critics of Christianity correctly point out that the church has proved an unreliable carrier of moral values. The church has indeed made mistakes, launching Crusades, censuring scientists, burning witches, trading in slaves, supporting tyrannical regimes. Yet the church also has an inbuilt potential for self-correction because it rests on a platform of transcendent moral authority. When human beings take upon themselves the Luciferian chore of redefining morality, untethered to any transcendent source, all hell breaks loose.
– Phillips Brooks
Morality
I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.
– G.K. Chesterton
Morality
There is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is as hard as nails. If God is like the Moral Law, then He is not soft.
– C.S. Lewis
God | Morality
The neglected heart will soon be a heart overrun with worldly thoughts; the neglected life will soon become a moral chaos.
– A. W. Tozer
MoralityLifeThe Heart
When we forget God, we lose the only true basis for morality and ethics, and we are cast upon the shifting sands of moral relativism in which anything goes, including lying, cheating and stealing.
– Judge Roy Moore
Immorality
The greatest harm that can be suffered in the fight against perceived evil and injustice is not physical death or “occupation.” It is the death of the conscience and spirit cut off from the nourishment of moral law.
– Alan Keyes
Morality
If Jesus sets the divine standard for morality, I could now have an unwavering foundation for my choices and decisions, rather than basing them on the ever-shifting sands of expediency and self-centeredness.
– Lee Strobel
Morality
If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Morality
There is not only a lack of success for condoms. It’s worse than that — they are utter failures.
– Wendy Wright
Lust | Morality
Human art and science are employed to make lust appealing, to make drinking popular, to present the world’s ungodly standard of morals as the ideal for the young and unsuspecting youth who sees the films. I find that every indictment I made against the movie industry and the theater six years ago (1932) is still true.
– John R. Rice
Immorality
Unless the will is free, man has no freedom; and if he has no freedom he is not a moral agent, that is, he is incapable of moral action and also of moral character.
– Charles Finney
Morality | Freedom
If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin.
– Albert Mohler
Morality
Critics of Christianity correctly point out that the church has proved an unreliable carrier of moral values. The church has indeed made mistakes, launching Crusades, censuring scientists, burning witches, trading in slaves, supporting tyrannical regimes. Yet the church also has an inbuilt potential for self-correction because it rests on a platform of transcendent moral authority. When human beings take upon themselves the Luciferian chore of redefining morality, untethered to any transcendent source, all hell breaks loose.
– Philip Yancey
Morality
One can regard the moral law as an illusion, and so cut himself off from the common ground of humanity.
– C.S. Lewis
Morality
Morality may keep you out of jail, but it takes the blood of Jesus Christ to keep you out of hell.
– Charles Spurgeon
Morality | Hell
The modernists started with the assumption that science is the only source of sure knowledge, that nature is all there is, and thus that morality is merely a human invention that can be changed to meet changing circumstances in an evolving world.
– Chuck Colson
Morality | Nature | Circumstances
Civilization today reminds me of an ape with a blowtorch playing in a room full of dynamite. It looks like the monkeys are about to operate the zoo, and the inmates are taking over the asylum.
– Vance Havner
Morality
Where painting is weakest, namely, in the expression of the highest moral and spiritual ideas, there music is sublimely strong.
– Harriet Beecher Stowe
Morality | Music
In this age of “gotcha” politics, it seems that there is an almost recreational spirit of enjoyment that many people take regarding the failings of others. As Christians, we should never take this cavalier attitude toward other’s moral tragedies.
– Jonathan Falwell
Politics | Morality
If any country were indeed filled with men, each thus diligently discharging the duties of his own station without breaking in upon the rights of others, but on the contrary endeavoring, so far as he might be able, to forward their views and promote their happiness, all would be active and harmonious in the goodly frame of human society.
– William Wilberforce
Morality | Diligence
The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Apathy | Morality
The greatest harm that can be suffered in the fight against perceived evil and injustice is not physical death or “occupation.” It is the death of the conscience and spirit cut off from the nourishment of moral law.
– Alan Keyes
Morality
The movies spend so many millions of dollars in publicity that no great medium of expression or opinion in America remains uncontrolled.
– John R. Rice
Immorality
Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
– G.K. Chesterton
Morality
The standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that real Right than others.
– C.S. Lewis
Morality
The truth is that while liberals now hold the reins of power in Washington, D.C., the American people have not abandoned traditional morality and a conservative philosophy of government.
– Judge Roy Moore
Politics | Morality | America
Nothing in the world so tends to defile the imagination, to pervert the affections, and to corrupt the morals, as self-consciousness. You know it is connected with every disease and morbid action of the body. …All self-consciousness is of the very essence and nature of sin.
– A. A. Hodge
Morality
The popular concept that we should each determine our own morality is based on the belief that the spiritual realm is nothing at all like the rest of the world. Does anyone really believe that? For many years after each of the morning and evening Sunday services I remained in the auditorium for another hour to field questions. Hundreds of people stayed for the give-and-take discussions. One of the most frequent statements I heard was that ‘Every person has to define right and wrong for him- or herself.’ I always responded to the speakers by asking, ‘Is there anyone in the world right now doing things you believe they should stop doing no matter what they personally believe about the correctness of their behavior?’ They would invariable say, ‘Yes, of course.’ Then I would ask, ‘doesn’t that mean that you do believe there is some kind of moral reality that is ‘there’ that is not defined by us, that must be abided by regardless of what a person feels or thinks?’ Almost always, the response to that question was silence, either a thoughtful or a grumpy one.
– Tim Keller
Morality
The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike. Unless we return to the crude and nursery-like belief in objective values, we perish.
– C.S. Lewis
Morality | Believing | Freedom
Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Morality | Success | Business
Men of authority and influence may promote good morals. Let them in their several stations encourage virtue. Let them favor and take part in any plans which may be formed for the advancement of morality.
– William Wilberforce
Morality | Authority | Men
Research indicates that once an uncommitted couple gets involved in sexual intercourse, the relationship usually begins to end. They have reached the superficial end of the physical aspects of the relationship, and they have no particularly compelling reason to explore its depths.
– Chip Ingram
Immorality | Romance
As a result of this total breakdown of basic morality in virtually every distinguished element within the American framework, constitutional governance is also virtually nonexistent. Adams was right: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral . . . people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
– Chuck Baldwin
America | Government | Morality
Our Western society is so deeply divided between these two approaches (moralism, self-discovery) that hardly anyone can conceive of any other way to live. If you criticize or distance yourself from one, everyone assumes you have chosen to follow the other, because each of these approaches tends to divide the whole world into two basic groups. The moral conformists say: ‘the immoral people — the people who ‘do their own thing’ — are the problem with the world, and moral people are the solution.’ The advocates of self-discovery say: ‘The bigoted people — the people who say, ‘We have the Truth’ — are the problem with the world, and progressive people are the solution.
– Tim Keller
Christianity | Morality
Place not thy amendment only in increasing thy devotion, but in bettering thy life. It is the damning hypocrisy of this age that it slights all good morality, and spends its zeal in matters of ceremony, and a form of godliness without the power of it.
– Thomas Fuller
Morality | Godliness
Heat water to the highest degree, you cannot make wine of it; it is water still; so, let morality be raised to the highest, it is nature still; it is old Adam put in a better dress.
– Thomas Watson
Morality | Nature
Unless we discover actual truth, morality is up for grabs.
– Pamela Christian
Truth | Morality
The character of the world is morally different from the Spirit-imparted life we have received from God.
– Watchman Nee
Morality
All men alike stand condemned, not by alien codes of ethics, but by their own, and all men therefore are conscious of guilt.
– C.S. Lewis
Sin | Morality
False notions of liberty are strangely common. People talk of it as if it meant the liberty of doing whatever one likes – whereas the only liberty that a man, worthy of the name of man, ought to ask for, is, to have all restrictions, inward and outward, removed that prevent his doing what he ought.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Morality | Liberty
The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Morality
Community service has become a patch for morality. You can devote your life to community service and be a total schmuck.
– Tim Keller
Service | Morality
Mr. Osteen can be assured that his weak and evasive non-answer to this reporter’s question will put him at very little risk for arrest. But then, pandering prophets are rarely at much of a risk from the public anyway. There was no conviction in his answer; no clear declaration of biblical truth; no Gospel, no judgment, and no promise. Just a non-answer with a smile. Pathetic . . . simply pathetic. (regarding Osteen’s failure to declare homosexuality as sin)
– Albert Mohler
Morality
Morality, like numinous awe, is a jump; in it, man goes beyond anything that can be ‘given’ in the facts of experience.
– C.S. Lewis
Morality
In reality, moral rules are directions for running the human machine. Every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain, or a friction, in the running of that machine. That is why these rules at first seem to be constantly interfering with our natural inclinations.
– C.S. Lewis
Morality
Wherever any precept of traditional morality is simply challenged to produce its credentials, as though the burden of proof lay on it, we have taken the wrong position.
– C.S. Lewis
Morality
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead top political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great Pillars?
– George Washington
Government | Morality | Patriotism
The devil may also make use of morality.
– Karl Barth
Morality
I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Morality | Power
As conscience grows more passive and the evil spirit supplies his guidance, some Christians begin to lower their moral standard – thinking they henceforth live according to a higher life principle, and therefore treat immoral matters as not quite so immoral any more.
– Watchman Nee
Conscience | Immorality
We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.
– G.K. Chesterton
Morality
No books are so legible as the lives of men; no character so plain as their moral conduct.
– James H. Aughey
Morality | Men
The absence of the true Light means moral Death. The darkness of the natural world to the intellect is not all. What history testifies to is, first the partial, and then the total eclipse of virtue that always follows the abandonment of belief in a personal God.
– Henry Drummond
Morality
Morality or duty never yet made a man happy in himself or dear to others.
– C.S. Lewis
Morality | Happiness
I believe that a long step toward public morality will have been taken when sins are called by their right names.
– Billy Sunday
Morality
No government is lawful or innocent that does not recognize the moral law as the only universal law, and God as the Supreme Lawgiver and Judge, to whom nations in their national capacity, as well as individuals, are amenable.
– Charles Finney
Government | Morality
If we get our very identity, our sense of worth, from our political position, then politics is not really about, it is about us. Through our cause we are getting a self, our worth. That means we MUST despise and demonize the opposition. If we get our identity from our ethnicity or socioeconomic status, then we HAVE to feel superior to those of other classes and races. If you are profoundly proud of being an open-minded, tolerant soul, you will be extremely indignant toward people you think are bigots. If you are a very moral person, you will feel superior to people you think are licentious. And so on.
– Tim Keller
Morality | Politics | Tolerance