Top 74 Moral Authority Quotes
#1. Moral authority comes from following universal and timeless principles like honesty, integrity, treating people with respect.
Stephen Covey
#2. Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secret of eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority.
Henri Frederic Amiel
#3. Second, honoring parents is how nearly all of us come to recognize that there is a moral authority above us to whom we are morally accountable.
Dennis Prager
#4. Catholic Church reasserts its moral authority on contraception: If God believed in birth control, altar boys would have a uterus.
Dana Gould
#5. Teachers who do not take their own education seriously, who do not study, who make little effort to keep abreast of events have no moral authority to coordinate the activities of the classroom.
Paulo Freire
#6. When we do in Grenada what the Soviet Union did in Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, we lose moral authority and credibility.
Jesse Jackson
#7. I don't tend to think in terms of a moral authority - be a good boy, do good things - more in terms of what feels right.
John Cusack
#8. Management is formal authority given from above. Leadership is moral authority given from below and all around.
Stephen Covey
#9. That is not true, but we lack the moral authority to endorse them (acts of euthanasia). What we do instead is what you have just seen. We commend the dying to Saint Hubert and tie them to a pillar in order to prolong and intensify their suffering.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
#10. There is no enemy that respect and love will not conquer. The moral authority for survival comes from respect.
Bryant McGill
#11. Moral authority has been laid to rest, world opinion is no more than a game show and the difference between good and evil is about as relevant as changing channels.
Ralph Steadman
#12. Moral authority is never retained by any attempt to hold on to it. It comes without seeking and is retained without effort.
Mahatma Gandhi
#13. Rulers who destroy men's freedom commonly begin by trying to retain its forms ... They cherish the illusion that they can combine the prerogatives of absolute power with the moral authority that comes from popular assent.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#14. There is the authority of position and the authority of knowledge - 'Authority flows from the one who knows.' But sharing in hardship confers upon a leader something quite rare - moral authority.
John Adair
#15. There are three things about Barack that really stand out for me: strength, moral authority, and wisdom ... He has pressed the reset button on the moral authority of the entire free world.
David Cameron
#16. Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.
John Adams
#17. The voices of moral authority in the theatre demanded only punctuality and physical performance. In the light of continuing pressure and stress, the occasional lip service paid to moderation was meaningless. Starvation and poisoning were not excesses, but measures taken to stay within the norm.
Gelsey Kirkland
#18. Hillary Clinton was personally presiding over the dissolution of moral authority - particularly applied to presidents - because she looked the other way, because she tolerated it.
Rush Limbaugh
#19. All the western nations are caught in a lie, the lie of their pretended humanism: this means that their history has no moral justification, and that the West has no moral authority.
James Baldwin
#21. 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.
Billy Corgan
#22. The reason America is in its death-throes is because America has lost moral authority.
Bryant McGill
#23. I pray the Pope Francis can use his moral authority to inspire true religious freedom, and bring us closer to the day when freedom can finally take root on the island country; because only then will the people of Cuba prosper and have the opportunity to live out God's plan.
Marco Rubio
#24. Our moral authority is as important, if not more important, than our troop strength or our high-tech weapons. We are rapidly losing that moral authority, not only in the Arab world but all over the world.
Robert Reich
#25. After so many cases of terror attacks related to Islamic militancy remaining unresolved in the last few years, the government has no moral authority to stay in power.
Sheikh Hasina
#26. No Government has the moral authority to dismantle the universally understood meaning of marriage.
Keith O'Brien
#27. What you hear in my voice is fury, not suffering. Anger, not moral authority
Audre Lorde
#29. It (Lewinskygate) has ... compromised his moral authority
Joe Lieberman
#30. True leadership is moral authority, not formal authority. Leadership is a choice, not a position. The choice is to follow universal timeless principles, which will build trust and respect from the entire organization. Those with formal authority alone will lose this trust and respect.
Stephen Covey
#31. Since Hiroshima and the Holocaust, science no longer holds its pristine place as the highest moral authority. Instead, that role is taken by human rights. It follows that any assault on Jewish life - on Jews or Judaism or the Jewish state - must be cast in the language of human rights.
Jonathan Sacks
#32. We must work harder to lessen inequalities. Only by doing so can we speak with credibility and moral authority to other countries and the People's Republic of China.
Sherrod Brown
#33. We need a regime change in this country ... If we launch a pre-emptive strike on Iraq we lose all moral authority.
Jesse Jackson
#34. The people have realized that Martial Law is not law. A regime not established by law is devoid of the attribute to dispense law. A regime which puts in a bunker the highest law in the land does not have the moral authority to say that nobody is above the law.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
#35. The exultation of poverty as a spiritual virtue is of the ego, not the spirit. A person acting from a motivation of contribution and service rises to such a level of moral authority that worldly success is a natural result.
Marianne Williamson
#37. How can you hope to recognize good and evil for what they truly are if you have no belief in a moral authority greater than yourself?
Ted Dekker
#38. A bold reform agenda is our moral obligation. If we make the case effectively and win this November, then we will have the moral authority to enact the kind of fundamental reforms America has not seen since Ronald Reagan's first year.
Paul Ryan
#39. Grandmamma had been the last connection to our past. I had understood her as some referent moral authority to whom we paid no heed, but by whose judgments we measured our waywardness.
E.L. Doctorow
#40. Ultimately the success of any nonproliferation strategy requires a universal standard. Washington's "Do as I say, not as I do" approach lacks moral authority and is seen as hypocritical. It is like preaching temperance from a bar stool.
David Cortright
#41. We [americans] have earned the moral authority, at least compared to anybody else in the world ...
Chuck Todd
#42. It's hard to have any moral authority over a group of drunken college students when you have never had a beer and never been laid.
Tom Green
#43. Also she went in for culture, which gave her a certain moral authority. It wouldn't now; but people believed, then, that culture could make you better - a better person. They believed it could uplift you, or the women believed it. They hadn't yet seen Hitler at the opera house.
Margaret Atwood
#44. It is fundamentally important that Grasso resign so that the New York Stock Exchange can restore its moral authority.
Phil Angelides
#45. If art is to flourish in the twenty-first century, it must renew its moral authority by rededicating itself to life. It must be an enriching, ennobling and vital partner in the public pursuit of civilization. It should be a majestic presence in everyday life just as it was in the past.
Frederick Hart
#46. There can be no moral authority to tell you what to do, for no such authority can lie outside your own will.
Steve Hagen
#47. The highest levels of the U.S. military, the Defense Department, and the White House must be held accountable for putting our troops at greater risk and diminishing Americas moral authority across the globe.
Lawrence Korb
#48. A god that created the world and then walked off the site leaving it to its own devices is not a fit object of worship, nor a source of moral authority.
Simon Blackburn
#49. The rich are thus not just more powerful than the poor, they also have moral authority over the poor and with it the moral responsibility to tell the poor how to live: build self-discipline, work hard, climb the economic ladder, and so become self-reliant. M
George Lakoff
#50. Once you've discounted your own moral authority, once you've undermined your own country's moral self-confidence, you cannot lead.
Anonymous
#51. Sapping the foundations of civilisation, of authority, of other people's altars, spattering them with filth, winking jocosely at them only to justify and conceal one's own rottenness and moral poverty is only possible for a very vain, base, and nasty creature.
Anton Chekhov
#52. A man should live his life a certain way not because of some divine authority, but because of a personal moral obligation to himself and others.
Jodi Picoult
#53. The individual makes a clear effort to define moral values and principles that have validity and application apart from the authority of the groups of persons holding them and apart from the individual's own identification with the group.
Lawrence Kohlberg
#54. The kind of "blind obedience" once theologized as the ultimate step to holiness, is itself blind. It blinds a person to the insights and foresight and moral perspective of anyone other than an authority figure.
Joan D. Chittister
#55. While moral rules may be propounded by authority the fact that these were so propounded would not validate them.
A.J. Ayer
#56. Added to the moral solitude of the murderer comes the solitude of the artist, which can acknowledge no authority, save that of another artist.
Jean Genet
#57. In a nonviolent army, the general and the officers are elected, or are as if elected, when their authority is moral and rests solely on the willing obedience of the rank and file.
Mahatma Gandhi
#58. The search for moral guidance which shall not depend upon external authority has invariably ended in the acknowledgment of some new authority.
Walter Lippmann
#59. Undermine their pompous authority, reject their moral standards, make anarchy and disorder your trademarks. Cause as much chaos and disruption as possible but don't let them take you ALIVE.
Sid Vicious
#60. Truth withers when freedom dies, however righteous the authority that kills it; and free individualism uninformed by moral value rots at its core and soon brings about conditions that pave the way for surrender to tyranny.
Frank S. Meyer
#61. The Interpretation of the Laws of Nature in a Common-wealth, dependeth not on the books of Moral Philosophy. The Authority of writers, without the Authority of the Commonwealth, maketh not their opinions Law, be they never so true.
Thomas Hobbes
#62. He who rules by moral force is like the pole star, which remains in place while all the lesser stars do homage to it.
Confucius
#63. What are the moral convictions most fondly held by barbarous and semi-barbarous people? They are the convictions that authority is the soundest basis of belief; that merit attaches to readiness to believe; that the doubting disposition is a bad one, and skepticism is a sin.
Thomas Huxley
#64. Anyway, there were thousands of Kantoreks, all of them convinced that they were acting for the best, in a way that was the most comfortable for themselves.
But as far as we are concerned, that is the very root of their moral bankruptcy.
Erich Maria Remarque
#65. I was also beginning to learn about social psychology and the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures, which made me think about how malleable our supposedly strict moral codes become in the right conditions. Something that DIVERGENT grapples with.
Veronica Roth
#66. Each generation, as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: 'What are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do they extend? By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved?'
Pope Benedict XVI
#67. Hence, in a state of nature, no man had any moral power to deprive another of his life, limbs, property, or liberty; nor the least authority to command or exact obedience from him, except that which arose from the ties of consanguinity.
Alexander Hamilton
#68. A country will have authority and influence because of moral factors, not its military strength; because it can be humble and not blatant and arrogant; because our people want to serve others and not dominate others. And a nation without morality will soon lose its influence around the world.
Jimmy Carter
#69. For Aboriginal leaders, the social and moral obligation that comes with community leadership is life-long. Those who lead, who have authority, must care for and look after those who come behind.
Patrick Dodson
#70. The people in general ought to have regard to the moral character of those whom they invest with authority either in the legislative, executive, or judicial branches.
John Witherspoon
#71. The same president who has insisted that core moralism drives him has brought America to its lowest moral standing in history.
Glenn Greenwald
#72. No moral system can rest solely on authority.
A.J. Ayer
#73. It was much less dangerous for the disciples of Christ to neglect the observance of the moral duties, than to despise the censures and authority of their bishops.
Edward Gibbon
#74. Literature isn't a moral beauty contest. Its power arises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off; the belief it inspires is what counts.
Philip Roth
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