Theme

Philosophy quotes about morality

Morality in philosophy concerns right and wrong, obligation, and the standards by which we judge persons and acts.

Why this theme matters

Moral philosophy asks whether morality is objective, how reasons bind us, and how character, rules, and consequences relate. Traditions differ on whether duty, virtue, or outcomes come first.

In the history of philosophy

From Confucian and Greek virtue vocabularies to Kantian duty, utilitarianism, and critiques of moral ideology, the theme remains central to public life.

Thinkers in this collection

Socrates , Plato , Immanuel Kant , Arthur Schopenhauer , The Great Learning , Iris Murdoch , Bhagavad Gita , Baruch Spinoza

Frequently asked questions

What is morality in philosophy?

It is the domain of norms about right action, good character, and what we owe one another—studied systematically in ethics.

How is morality different from ethics?

In everyday speech they overlap; academically, ethics often names the philosophical study of moral practices and concepts.

Where can I find philosophy quotes about morality?

Browse the passages below, then related themes such as virtue, responsibility, and justice.

  1. It is worse to do injustice than to suffer it.
  2. No one errs willingly.
  3. Love is the desire for the perpetual possession of the good.
  4. Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe…: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
  5. Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
  6. Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never merely as a means.
  7. Compassion is the basis of morality.
  8. It is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be considered good without limitation except a good will.
  9. The way of great learning lies in illuminating luminous virtue, in renewing the people, and in resting in the highest good.
  10. Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.
  11. You have a right to action alone, never to its fruits.
  12. Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.
  13. Reason is wholly inactive, and can never be the source of so active a principle as conscience, or a sense of morals.
  14. Good is to be done and pursued, and evil avoided.
  15. Conscience! Conscience! divine instinct, immortal and heavenly voice.
  16. The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
  17. Not leaning is called the Mean; not changing is called Constancy. The Mean is the right Way of the world; Constancy is its settled principle.
  18. One must never do injustice in any way.
  19. We are not born for ourselves alone.
  20. How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others.
  21. Act so that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle of universal legislation.
  22. We need a moral philosophy in which the concept of love… can once again be made central.
  23. I can only choose within the world I can see, in the moral sense of "see" which implies that clear vision is a result of moral imagination and moral effort.
  24. Man is a creature who makes pictures of himself and then comes to resemble the picture.
  25. Moral change and moral achievement are slow; we are not loosely and lightly attached to the world.
  26. The concepts of obligation, and duty—moral obligation and moral duty, that is to say—and of what is morally right and wrong, and of the moral sense of "ought," ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible.
  27. The greater part of modern moral philosophy derives from Sidgwick and is utilitarian or consequentialist.
  28. We are not free to say that just anything is the subject of a moral belief.
  29. We are most of us inclined to think that a great deal of damage, and even lives lost, is better than doing murder.
  30. Narrative imagination is an essential preparation for moral interaction.
  31. The Law has obliged us to reflect upon existing things by means of the intellect, and to seek knowledge of them from that perspective.
  32. Divine justice requires that obedience and disobedience not be equal in outcome; reward and punishment follow desert.
  33. A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization. A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization.
  34. To kill one man is called unrighteousness and incurs one capital crime; by this reckoning, to kill ten men is ten times unrighteous and incurs ten capital crimes.