Moral Struggle Quotes

• When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

  Edmund Burke

  Honesty, Integrity, War

  Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770) See Edmund Burke 28; Mill 18

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• If there is no struggle, there is no progress....This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

  Frederick Douglass

  Struggle, Tyrants, Progress

  Speech, Canandaigua, N.Y., 4 Aug. 1857

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• If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.

  Frederick Douglass

  Wisdom, Freedom, Rain

  Frederick Douglass (2014). “Frederick Douglass on Slavery and the Civil War: Selections from His Writings”, p.42, Courier Corporation

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• This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

  Frederick Douglass

  Struggle, Blow, Tyrants

  Frederick Douglass, Milton Meltzer (1995). “Frederick Douglass, in his own words”, Harcourt Children's Books

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• The only struggle which religions can justify, the only struggle worthy of humans, is the moral struggle against humanity's own disordered passions, against every kind of selfishness, against attempts to oppress others, against every type of hatred and violence.

  Pope John Paul II

  Struggle, Passion, Hatred

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• The most painful moral struggles are not those between good and evil, but between the good and the lesser good.

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

  Pain, Struggle, Evil

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1980). “Off Center: Essays”

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• For me, I think that the struggle around how to deal with Islam in the United States is the defining moral struggle of this half of the new century.

  Van Jones

  Struggle, Thinking, Islam

  Source: pen.org

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• Sometimes, in a moral struggle, we discover the right thing to do - just as, on some cold day long ago, we discovered mittens pinned to our coat sleeve.

  Robert Breault

  Struggle, Long Ago, Parent

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• The kingdom is not an exclusive, well-trimmed suburb with snobbish rules about who can live there. No, it is for a larger, homelier, less self-conscious caste of people who understand they are sinners because they have experienced the yaw and pitch of moral struggle.

  Brennan Manning

  Struggle, Self, People

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• The idea of winning a doctor's degree gradually assumed the aspect of a great moral struggle, and the moral fight possessed immense attraction for me.

  Elizabeth Blackwell

  Inspirational, Funny, Graduation

  Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell (2016). “Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women: Autobiographical Sketches”, p.24, Library of Alexandria

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• A growing and increasingly influential movement of philosophers, ethicists, law professors and activists are convinced that the great moral struggle of our time will be for the rights of animals.

  Michael Pollan

  Struggle, Animal, Rights

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• It is Martin King who taught that a real moral struggle
  seeks to win partners, not to leave victims.

  Maulana Karenga

  Kings, Real, Struggle

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• A good piece of fiction, in my view, does not offer solutions. Good stories deal with our moral struggles, our uncertainties, our dreams, our blunders, our contradictions, our endless quest for understanding. Good stories do not resolve the mysteries of the human spirit but rather describe and expand up on those mysteries.

  Tim O'Brien

  Dream, Struggle, Views

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• The ones I pity are the ones who never stick out their neck for something they believe, never know the taste of moral struggle, and never have the thrill of victory.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Struggle, Believe, Victory

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