Top 100 High Moral Quotes
#1. High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.
Christopher Hitchens
#3. Without transformation, you can assume you're at a high moral, spiritual level just because you call yourself Lutheran or Methodist or Catholic. I think my great disappointment as a priest has been to see how little actual spiritual curiosity there is in so many people.
Richard Rohr
#4. The Chinese government knows that what I am teaching is good and that I am teaching people to have high moral values.
Li Hongzhi
#5. If you want to build a positive attitude, then associate with people of high moral character and read books that lead you to positive thinking.
Shiv Khera
#6. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces.
Viktor E. Frankl
#7. Within each such social group, a feeling of solidarity prevails, a compelling need to work together and a joy in doing so that represent a high moral value.
Christian Lous Lange
#8. In a way, fraud in business is no different from infidelity in marriage or plagiarism in scholarly work. Even people committed to high moral standards succumb.
Miroslav Volf
#9. You can take the high moral ground intellectually, but if it ever happens to you personally, I don't know that I could honestly say that I wouldn't want to kill someone who took someone away from me. So, it's a rich, fertile ground for great characters and great storytelling. That was the impetus.
Richard LaGravenese
#10. When a hunter is in a tree stand with high moral values and with the proper hunting ethics and richer for the experience, that hunter is 20 feet closer to God.
Fred Bear
#11. What woman worthy of the name Mother would stand on a high moral platform about selling her body if her child were dying of hunger and exposure? Not I.
Jennifer Worth
#12. It is a fact that under equal conditions, large-scale battles and whole wars are won by troops which have a strong will for victory, clear goals before them, high moral standards, and devotion to the banner under which they go into battle.
Georgy Zhukov
#13. My folks were raised pure prohibitionist. They were very good people, with high moral standards - but very repressed. There was no hugging and kissing in my home.
Hugh Hefner
#14. There are so many ways of falling off the high moral ground you've carefully built up for yourself. Moral ground is like that - slippery at the edges.
Alexander McCall Smith
#15. Our society encourages women to place a very high value on maternity as an essential part of female identity, both a high moral calling and the deepest source of satisfaction on earth. It's not easy to redefine motherhood as handing your baby over to a stranger.
Katha Pollitt
#16. I place a high moral value on the way people behave. I find it repellent to have a lot, and to behave with anything other than courtesy in the old sense of the word - politeness of the heart, a gentleness of the spirit.
Fran Lebowitz
#17. There is less danger, gentlemen, in living according to a set of high moral principles than most politicians believe.
Michael Moorcock
#18. Other men used their effete faiths and mean faculties with a high moral purpose. The Venetian gave the most earnest faith, and the lordliest faculty, to gild the shadows of an antechamber, or heighten the splendours of a holiday.
John Ruskin
#19. When you take the high moral road it is difficult for anyone to object without sounding like a complete fool.
Anita Roddick
#20. I have yet to meet a man as fond of high moral conduct as he is of outward appearances.
Confucius
#21. I think you can just go out and try to be the best you can be, deal with people with respect, with honesty, with integrity, have a high moral standard. I've always really tried to exemplify that as an athlete. I'll continue to try to do that.
Tom Brady
#22. Envy never comes to the ball dressed as envy; it comes dressed as high moral standards or distaste for materialism.
Martin Amis
#23. Knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy, dignified life. Humanity has every reason to place proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth.
Albert Einstein
#24. We are sinners. But we should not take the failure to live up to this high moral standard as an authoritative objection to the truth. We should try to do as much good as we can and to support and put up with each other.
Pope Benedict XVI
#25. Man arose to high moral vision two thousand years before the Hebrew nation was born.
James Henry Breasted
#26. The importance of a high moral code, which is at the foundation of the Scout movement, cannot be stressed too highly.
Nelson Mandela
#27. America's leaders should be examples of integrity and high moral standards. When their behavior evokes shame rather than pride and becomes something that we don't want to discuss in front of the children at the kitchen table, we should consider impeachment.
Ben Carson
#28. Each department and institution has its own authorities and responsibilities, and they act on that basis. It is wrong to even compare such actions to what is done in Guantanamo or elsewhere by the Americans. They do not stand on a high moral platform to preach to others.
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
#29. To elevate the goals of humankind, to achieve high moral purpose, to realize major intended change, leaders must thrust themselves into the most intractable processes and structures of history and ultimately master them.
James MacGregor Burns
#30. America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle," he said. "We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.
George W. Bush
#31. Its crazy when people of high moral standards, feel its okay for an intimate friend to insult them in a jovial way, forgeting that even casual friends can do just the same in a jovial way.
Michael Bassey Johnson
#32. What is wanted is men of principle, who recognize a higher law than the decision of the majority. The marines and the militia whose bodies were used lately were not men of sense nor of principle; in a high moral sense they were not men at all.
Henry David Thoreau
#33. For every person who rides with a moral high-horse, they also have a dead horse that they haven't fed lying somewhere out of sight.
Zack W. Van
#34. Strong faith is more important than high intelligence. Moral force is the only force that can accomplish great things in the world,
Lucas Delattre
#35. His mother had hated him for looking after her, then hated him for leaving. Five years living with an alcoholic woman and no one had thanked him. If there was such a thing as the moral high ground it was surely he who occupied it.
Mark Haddon
#36. That's how hatred is created: two different groups, each insisting they're on the moral high ground
Neil Strauss
#37. Lord, help my children to make godly friends. I know that You brought us here and You will not leave my children forsaken. I'm concerned that in their need for acceptance they'll end up with friends whose moral standards are not as high as Yours. Bring godly role models into their lives.
Stormie O'martian
#38. damn lonely on the moral high ground.
A.W. Exley
#39. Over time, I realized I wasn't necessarily seeing people or things at their best or worst; instead, I was simply seeing things as they were.
There didn't seem to be a moral high road to take in most situations, and "What's the right thing to do?" wasn't an easy question.
Dee Williams
#40. After all, you can't really blame the Waffen S.S. for doing what comes naturally. But a funny thing happened on the way to the moral high ground.
Garth Ennis
#41. Since when do grown men and women, who presume to hold high government office and exercise what they think of as "moral leadership," require ethics officers to tell them whether it is or isn't permissible to grab the secretary's behind or redirect public funds to their own personal advantage?
Meg Greenfield
#42. My advice to you, Elsie, is go with your heart, not your head, because your head doesn't know what it wants. It only thinks about the moral high ground. And if your heart isn't happy, when you try to share it, you'll make others unhappy too.
Sarah Alexander
#43. Invoking the moral high ground somehow makes you lose it. Using a secret as a weapon makes you almost as bad as the transgressor.
David Levithan
#44. You can build the Empire State Building. Train the Prussian army. Elevate the hierarchy of a totalitarian state higher than the throne of the Most High.
But there are still people whose moral superiority defeats your own.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#45. I've never been certain whether the moral of the Icarus story should only be, as is generally accepted, 'don't try to fly too high,' or whether it might also be thought of as 'forget the wax and feathers, and do a better job on the wings.
Stanley Kubrick
#47. The moral high ground is a lovely place. It won't stop a missile, though. It won't alter the trajectory of a gauss round.
James S.A. Corey
#48. It's healthy for government to be a kind of moral catalyst, using the bully pulpit of high office.
William Weld
#49. I do feel that even though I didn't grow up being a big sci-fi fan or comic books or superhero fan, I felt myself definitely gravitate towards these movies that have a high concept and yet they're giving you a moral dilemma within that.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
#50. Everyone must know by now that the aim of Scrabble is to gain the moral high ground, the loser being the first player to slam the board shut and upset all the letters over the floor.
Craig Brown
#51. America has lost the moral high ground with the rest of the world, and we have fewer allies as a result. President Bush and his administration have undermined the war on terror by using tactics outlawed by international treaty and condemned by even our closest friends.
John Olver
#52. I have a weak stomach. My wife is a doctor, so she finds it funny that I actually pass out when I get my blood drawn. I physically can't stand gore on screen. I can't stand blood and guts. Not for any puritanical/moral high-ground reason. I just don't want to black out.
Christopher Denham
#53. Man is alone everywhere. But the solitude of the Mexican, under the great stone night of the high plateau that is still inhabited by insatiable gods, is very different from that of the North American, who wanders in an abstract world of machines, fellow citizens and moral precepts.
Octavio Paz
#54. We have come to think of taking offence as a fundamental right. We value very little more highly than our rage, which gives us, in our opinion, the moral high ground. From this high ground we can shoot down at our enemies and inflict heavy fatalities.
Salman Rushdie
#55. When one gets reports from scientists, engineers and technicians whose credibility by all common standards is high and whose moral caliber seems to preclude a hoax, one can do no less than hear them out, in all seriousness.
J. Allen Hynek
#56. Like so many of his successors in the language-crank world today, though, (Jonathan) Swift not only loathes (the) banal and common change (language); he ascribes it to moral failing.
Robert Lane Greene
#57. And while I might not always agree with the viewpoint I have to portray, because I play a district attorney, as an actress I can always tell myself that my character is trying to take the moral high ground.
Lara Flynn Boyle
#58. The downfall of every civilization comes, not from the moral corruption of the common man, but rather from the moral complacency of common men in high places.
E. Digby Baltzell
#59. History reveals there is no moral high ground; there is only perspective. We often exhibit the same behaviors for which we condemn others.
Steve Maraboli
#60. Priority is placed on the chastity of women. You can be corrupt, or a murderer and still hold your head up high on the street without problems, whereas if there are any suspicions of your chastity and moral behaviour as a woman, you get lynched.
Safak Pavey
#61. There's no question at all that the population explosion will come to an end. The two basic choices are it'll come to an end because we control our reproduction, and in many areas we have started to do so, or we'll end up with a high death rate. You have to take a personal moral stand on this.
Paul R. Ehrlich
#62. There is a ... position that considers the moral complications of pollution not in terms of doing harm, but in terms of trespassing ["Poisoning the Well," High Country News, January 19, 2015].
Benjamin Hale
#63. And he never quit in the middle of something. If he started a job, he'd finish it. It was almost like a moral thing for him. He was what you'd call extremely ethical. He set pretty high standards for himself.
Jon Krakauer
#64. Ostracism makes individuals feel they lack purpose, have less control over their lives, are less good moral beings, and lack self-worth. Those high school cliques aren't uniquely adolescent experiences: Human beings hate being left out. We conform because to do so seems to give our life meaning.
Anonymous
#65. The Statist veils his pursuits in moral indignation, intoning in high dudgeon the injustices and inequities of liberty and life itself, for which only he can provide justice and bring a righteous resolution.
Mark Levin
#66. When the Christian brings the standards of Jesus Christ to bear upon life in a material and secular world, it is often resented. Because the moral and spiritual demands of Jesus Christ are so high, they often set the Christian apart.
Billy Graham
#67. I call upon the leaders of all nations to work for peace, even when the risks seem high. I call upon Christians to pray and work for peace in whatever constructive ways are open to them. I do not believe this is only a political issue; it is a moral one as well.
Billy Graham
#68. You know that things are not going well when you lose the moral high ground to a TMZ reporter,
John Oliver
#69. Develop and protect a moral sensibility and demonstrate the character to apply it. Dream big. Work hard. Think for yourself. Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might. And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer.
David McCullough Jr.
#70. Moral excellence is an ornament for personal beauty; righteous conduct, for high birth; success for learning; and proper spending for wealth.
Chanakya
#71. Assertion of truths known and felt, promulgation of truth from the high platform of truth itself, declaration of faith by the mouth of moral conviction
this is the New Testament method, and the true one.
J.G. Holland
#72. Whereas religions may serve a benign purpose by letting many people feel comfortable with the level of morality they themselves can attain, no religion holds its member to the high standards of moral responsibility that the secular world of science and medicine does!
Daniel Dennett
#73. The challenge for people today
and it is not and easy one
is to maintain high personal standards even while feeling that one is living in a moral sewer.
Nathaniel Branden
#74. An e-mail from a reader says that liberals like to take the moral high ground, even though their own moral relativism means that there is no moral high ground.
Thomas Sowell
#75. If we condone torture, we yield the moral high ground to our enemies and encourage anyone who hates us to stoop to using that subhuman level against us. We reap whatever we sow.
Rick Warren
#77. I think all villains have something in common: they have something that they need or want very, very badly. The stakes are very high and they are not bound by moral codes or being ethical, so they can do anything and will do anything to get what they want.
Donna Murphy
#78. Looking back on 200 years of feminist agitation in this country, we've got to get it that the moral high ground doesn't get us anything. Pleading with powerful men never gets us what we need. Talking doesn't do it. Being right doesn't do it. Hardball politics does it ... and a political strategy.
Naomi Wolf
#79. 'The Truth' is not meant to preach or point any fingers. It's meant to show that perhaps we should all avoid taking the moral high ground unless we have thought about things a bit more.
Michael Palin
#80. The moral high ground proved to be one hell of an aphrodisiac...
Eve A. Floriste
#81. People generally don't suffer high rates of PTSD after natural disasters. Instead, people suffer from PTSD after moral atrocities. Soldiers who've endured the depraved world of combat experience their own symptoms. Trauma is an expulsive cataclysm of the soul.
David Brooks
#82. The moral high ground to which I aspired had turned into a slippery slope.
Alfred Alcorn
#83. I don't regard the real and true and authentic as something to claim as a moral high ground.
Rachel Kushner
#84. It was all very well occupying the moral high ground on electoral reform, but what really mattered, she thought, was how you treated your mother.
Alexander McCall Smith
#85. A person who is seeking to feel justification for some action might move from "What you've done angers me" to "What you've done is wrong." Popular justifications include the moral high ground of righteous indignation and the more simple equation known by its biblical name: an eye for an eye.
Gavin De Becker
#86. When the word 'morality' comes up in connection with economics, income distribution and financial stability are usually the issues. Is it moral for rich countries to use such a high proportion of the world's resources or for investment bankers to earn large bonuses?
Edmund Phelps
#87. We can't reform mandatory spending in this area until we first deal with ours. I tell my colleagues, 'Let's get the moral high ground and demonstrate that we want to make changes to our pension, and then we can deal with the big problems.'
Timothy Griffin
#88. Under the leadership of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, the United States has given up the moral high ground that we used to occupy as an international leader.
Marty Meehan
#89. Hypocrisy is not a way of getting back to the moral high ground. Pretending you're moral, saying your moral is not the same as acting morally.
Alan Dershowitz
#90. Unless they're utterly heartless, people put a certain value on human life. It keeps us from killing each other off for no reason. But for leaders like you and me, a moral high ground is too absolute. There are choices to be made.
Amanda Bouchet
#91. So what about me? Would I always have to find a high horse? The moral relish, the rising above, the being in the right, which can make me flaunt my losses.
Alice Munro
#92. The first step in gaining the upper hand is always to seize the moral high ground, and to be able to do this with no more than a single word is nothing short of genius. I
Alan Bradley
#93. Like everyone else, evangelicals have a right to present arguments on all the issues, but the moment we present them as part of some "Christian" platform we abandon our moral high ground.
Philip Yancey
#94. I don't claim any moral or ethical high ground, but I also have chosen not to run for public office. Shouldn't there be a higher standard of conduct for public officials?
Mark McKinnon
#95. Whoever has had the experience of the moral sentiment cannot choose but believe in unlimited power. Each pulse from that heart isan oath from the Most High. I know not what the word sublime means, if it be not the intimations, in this infant, of a terrific force.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#96. Sometimes the dues we pay to maintain integrity are pretty high, but the ultimate cost of moral compromise is so much higher.
Michael Josephson
#97. It is my opinion that the Christian conception of God current in these middle years of the twentieth century is so decadent as to be utterly beneath the dignity of the Most High God and
actually to constitute for professed believers something amounting to a moral calamity.
Aiden Wilson Tozer
#98. As a teenager, I put a lot of pressure on myself, and a lot of that, for me, was about finding a moral high ground. As I've grown up, I've decided to abandon that because it made me judgmental and also stressed me out.
Veronica Roth
#99. Why does she always have the moral high ground, what is it about women, always behaving so well and thinking of things we should have thought of first and shaming us?
Jill Dawson
#100. And the moral high ground is a lovely place," Marwick said, as if he were agreeing. "It won't stop a missile, though.
James S.A. Corey
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