Moral Obligation Quotes - Page 2

• The writer’s job is to write with rigor, with commitment, to defend what they believe with all the talent they have. I think that’s part of the moral obligation of a writer, which cannot be only purely artistic. I think a writer has some kind of responsibility at least to participate in the civic debate. I think literature is impoverished, if it becomes cut from the main agenda of people, of society, of life.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Jobs, Believe, Writing

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• There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.

  Chinua Achebe

  Thinking, Allies, Moral

  Chinua Achebe (2012). “There Was a Country: A Memoir”, p.50, Penguin

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• As the wealthiest nation on Earth, I believe the United States has a moral obligation to lead the fight against hunger and malnutrition, and to partner with others.

  Barack Obama

  Believe, Fighting, Hunger And Poverty

  "Obama welcomes Hollande as French president hints at Afghan compromise" by Ewen MacAskill, Patrick Wintour, www.theguardian.com. May 18, 2012.

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  If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

  John F. Kennedy

  Inspirational, Success, Helping Others

  Inaugural Address, 20 Jan. 1961

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• The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man's first duty is to himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men.

  Ayn Rand

  Independent, Men, Rights

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.76, Penguin

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• Working for a just distribution of the fruits of the earth and human labor is not mere philanthropy. It is a moral obligation.

  Pope Francis

  Earth, Fruit, Moral

  Pope Francis (2016). “Care for Creation: A Call for Ecological Conversion”, p.40, Orbis Books

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• A patriot without religion in my estimation is as great a paradox as an honest Man without the fear of God. Is it possible that he whom no moral obligations bind, can have any real Good Will towards Men?

  Abigail Adams

  Real, Men, Moral

  Abigail Adams, John P. Kaminski (2009). “The Quotable Abigail Adams”, p.62, Harvard University Press

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• Tell the truth as you understand it. If you're a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act - truth is always subversive.

  Anne Lamott

  Truth, Moral, Revolutionary

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• I think we have a moral obligation to our children that can be easily summarized: number one, protect them from harm.

  Tom Allen

  Children, Thinking, Numbers

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• If you make a habit of sincere prayer, your life will be very noticeably and profoundly altered. Prayer stamps with its indelible mark our actions and demeanor. A tranquillity of bearing, a facial and bodily repose, are observed in those whose inner lives are thus enriched. Within the depths of consciousness a flame kindles. And man sees himself. He discovers his selfishness, his silly pride, his fears, his greeds, his blunders. He develops a sense of moral obligation, intellectual humility. Thus begins a journey of the soul toward the realm of grace.

  Alexis Carrel

  Prayer, Selfish, Silly

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• He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country. There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country, who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections.

  Samuel Adams

  Country, Men, Feelings

  Samuel Adams (1968). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1773-1777: 1773-1777”

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• I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Writing, Ideas, Evil

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• If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act—truth is always subversive.

  Anne Lamott

  Real, Writing, Emotional

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• Theoretically, you can make, obviously, a powerful argument that centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination are the primary cause for all those gaps. That those were wrongs done to the black community as a whole, and black families specifically, and that in order to close that gap, a society has a moral obligation to make a large, aggressive investment, even if it's not in the form of individual reparations checks, but in the form of a Marshall Plan, in order to close those gaps. It is easy to make that theoretical argument.

  Barack Obama

  Powerful, Order, Community

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• If you know something is morally reprehensible, then it is your moral obligation to stop it as soon as possible.

  Jane Velez-Mitchell

  Moral, Obligation, Ifs

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• Anybody has a right to evade taxes if he can get away with it. No citizen has a moral obligation to assist in maintaining his government

  J. P. Morgan

  Government, Citizens, Maintaining

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• When the AIDS epidemic broke, because I happened to be a science nerd and knew a lot about viruses and a lot about that virus at the time, I felt a moral obligation to go out and try to stem the fear and get out and explain to people what the disease was and how it worked.

  Morgan Fairchild

  Epidemics, Aids Epidemic, People

  "Live From" with Kyra Phillips, www.cnn.com. January 27, 2005.

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• If people won't spend any money, the government has this moral obligation to do it.

  Ron Paul

  Government, People, Moral

  Source: www.peakprosperity.com

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• War is a biological necessity of the first importance, a regulative element in the life of mankind which cannot be dispensed with. ... But it is not only a biological law but a moral obligation and, as such, an indispensable factor in civilization.

  Friedrich von Bernhardi

  War, Civilization, Law

  "Germany and the next War" by Friedrich von Bernhardi, (Ch. I), 1911.

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• People talk about the idea of special relationships, that is, the morality only really binds people who stand in some kind of contractual relationship with each other but in fact if you take that seriously as a criteria of when we have a moral relationship then it's hard to see why we would have moral obligations to strangers for example or people who live across the sea from us but yet, every decent person believes that we do.

  Dale Jamieson

  Believe, People, Special

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Being a correspondent at the Vietnam war for me was about exposing myself to danger but it wasn't completely self-serving. I felt that there were these dark places of the earth, were dark things were happening and people should know about them. Call it my moral obligation to go and see them and report them.

  Philip Caputo

  War, Dark, People

  Source: classic.esquire.com

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• I was raised by my parents to believe that you had a moral obligation to try and save the world. You sent money to the Red Cross, you registered people to vote, you marched in rallies, stood in vigils, picked up litter.

  Anne Lamott

  Believe, People, Parent

  Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.9, Anchor

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• We attempted to try to solve every problem in the world, out of a sense of moral obligations, and attitudes, and our history. But no country can solve every problem without exhausting itself. Therefore, we have to establish priorities.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Country, Attitude, Priorities

  Source: edition.cnn.com

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• Every nation has a moral obligation to safeguard the future.

  Al Gore

  Moral, Obligation, Nations

  Interview with George Negus, www.sbs.com.au. August 23, 2013.

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• We hold the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance.

  Thomas Paine

  Justice, Age, Extravagance

  Thomas Paine (2016). “THE AGE OF REASON - Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology (Including “The Life of Thomas Paine”): Deistic Critique of Bible and Christian Church”, p.350, e-artnow

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