Moral Duty Quotes - Page 2

• I believe that the community's duty to education is, therefore, its paramount moral duty. By law and punishment, by social agitation and discussion, society can regulate and form itself in a more or less haphazard and chance way. But through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move.

  John Dewey

  Educational, Believe, Moving

  John Dewey (1972). “The Early Works, 1882-1898: 1895-1898. Early essays”, p.94, SIU Press

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• Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.

  Etty Hillesum

  Peace, World, Moral

  Etty Hillesum (1985). “An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”

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• Man, no doubt, owes many other moral duties to his fellow men; such as to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick, protect the defenseless, assist the weak, and enlighten the ignorant. But these are simply moral duties, of which each man must be his own judge, in each particular case, as to whether, and how, and how far, he can, or will perform them.

  Lysander Spooner

  Men, Sick, Judging

  Lysander Spooner (1882). “Natural Law, Or, The Science of Justice: A Treatise on Natural Law, Natural Justice, Natural Rights, Natural Liberty, and Natural Society : Showing that All Legislation Whatsoever is an Absurdity, a Usurpation, and a Crime”

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• The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. Books are written by the alone for the alone.

  Donna Tartt

  Book, Reading, Being Alone

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• The moral duty of the free writer is to begin his work at home: to be a critic of his own community, his own country, his own government, his own culture. The more freedom the writer possesses, the greater the moral obligation to play the role of critic.

  Edward Abbey

  Country, Home, Government

  Edward Abbey (1996). “The Serpents of Paradise: A Reader”, p.373, Macmillan

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• The world is ruled by neither justice nor morality; crime is not punished nor virtue rewarded, one is forgotten as quickly as the other. The world is ruled by power and power is obtained with money. To work is senseless, because money cannot be obtained through work, but through exploitation of others. And if we cannot exploit as much as we wish, at least let us work as little as we can. Moral duty? We believe neither in the morality of man nor in the morality of systems. [p. 168]

  Tadeusz Borowski

  Believe, Men, Justice

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• On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Mind, Criticism

  'The Importance of Being Earnest' (1895) act 2

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• I write because something inner and unconscious forces me to. That is the first compulsion. The second is one of ethical and moral duty. I feel responsible to tell stories that inspire readers to consider more deeply who they are.

  David Guterson

  Writing, Inspire, Firsts

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• With nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Politics, Morality, Individual

  Thomas Jefferson, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”

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• We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties, and history bears witness to the fact that a just nation is trusted on its word when recourse is had to armaments and wars to bridle others.

  Thomas Jefferson

  War, Facts, Bears

  George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, James Knox Polk, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Milhous Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama (2017). “Inaugural Speeches from the Presidents of the United States - Complete Edition”, p.20, e-artnow sro

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• Today, the UK must be the pioneer of a new model of economic change, that integrates social and environmental consideration. This is not just a question of values and moral duty. It is about our economy's capacity to sustain itself

  David Miliband

  Business, Environmental, Pioneers

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• A photographer is a witness. He has a moral duty. Every picture must be true and honest. I believe a photographer's strength is his ability to accurately record reality. There are photographers who think they are lucky if they find unusual or special subject. But it is never the subject that is so marvelous. It is how alive and real the photographer can make it.

  Edouard Boubat

  Real, Believe, Thinking

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• The deadly monotony of Christian country life where there are no beggars to feed, no drunkards to credit, which are among the moral duties of Christians in cities, leads as naturally to the outvent of what Methodists call "revivals" as did the backslidings of the people in those days.

  Corra May Harris

  Christian, Country, Cities

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• My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.

  Ayn Rand

  Fighting, Helping Others, Simple

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.89, Penguin

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• If obedience invariably leads to cruelty, disobedience is our moral duty.

  Martin Firrell

  Moral, Obedience, Cruelty

  "Keep the Faith". Text projections in the Duveen Gallery, Tate Britain, London, 2006.

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• Armenians, as a people that have survived the Genocide, have a moral duty towards mankind and history in the prevention of genocides. We have done and will continue to do our best to support the persistent implementation of the Genocide Convention. Genocide cannot concern only one people, because it is a crime against humanity.

  Serzh Sargsyan

  People, Support, Humanity

  Speech by President Serzh Sargsyan in the Chatham House British Royal Institute of International Affairs, www.president.am. February 10, 2010.

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• I now feel that I have a moral duty to course correct and say wait a minute, it's not just for adults.

  Francoise Mouly

  Waiting, Adults, Moral

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

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• Self-love . . . is the sole antagonist of virtue, leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Love Is, Self, Moral

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private : Published by the Order of the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library, from the Original Manuscripts, Deposited in the Department of State”, p.349

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• Namely, if I am challenging the base of all these institutions, I'm challenging the moral code of altruism. The precept that man's moral duty is to live for others. That man must sacrifice himself to others. Which is the present day morality.

  Ayn Rand

  Sacrifice, Men, Challenges

  Source: blankonblank.org

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• The conference also has a moral duty to examine the corruption of science that can be caused by massive amounts of money. The United States has disbursed tens of billions of dollars to climate scientists who would not have received those funds had their research shown climate change to be beneficial or even modest in its effects. Are these scientists being tempted by money? And are the very, very few climate scientists whose research is supported by industry somehow less virtuous?

  Patrick Michaels

  Research, Climate, United States

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• The socialist countries have the moral duty of liquidating their tacit complicity with the exploiting countries of the West.

  Che Guevara

  Country, Socialist Countries, West

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• As a German citizen, as a German professor, and as a political person, I hold it to be not only my right but also my moral duty to take part in the shaping of our German destiny, to expose and oppose obvious wrongs.

  Kurt Huber

  Destiny, Political, Citizens

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• To provoke dreams of terror in the slumber of prosperity has become the moral duty of literature.

  Ernst Otto Fischer

  Dream, Slumber, Literature

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• Today there are a lot places where people say they're just hopeless. If I can come from a hopeless country, get an education, become a hyphenated American and become president of the World Bank, it's my moral duty to make sure that every single person on the planet has that opportunity.

  Jim Yong Kim

  Country, Opportunity, People

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• MORAL LAW, Evidence of.- Man has been subjected by his Creator to the moral law, of which his feelings, or conscience as it is sometimes called, are the evidence with which his Creator has furnished him. ... The moral duties which exist between individual and individual in a state of nature, accompany them into a state of society ... their Maker not having released them from those duties on their forming themselves into a nation.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Law, Feelings

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