#moralist

Ages when custom is unsettled are necessarily ages of prophecy. The moralist cannot teach what is revealed; he must reveal what can be taught. He has to seek insight rather than to preach. ↗

— Walter Lippmann

#cannot #custom #insight #moralist #must

It follows that the one thing we should not do to the men and women of past time, and particularly if they ghost through to us as larger than life, is to take them out of their historical contexts. To do so is to run the risk of turning them into monsters, whom we can denounce for our (frequently political) motives—an insidious game, because we are condemning in their make-up that which is likely to belong to a whole social world, the world that helped to fashion them and that is deviously reflected or distorted in them. Censure of this sort is the work of petty moralists and propagandists, not historians (p. 5). ↗

— Lauro Martines

#context #historians #history #memory #moralists

On the surface we all act like we all love each other and we're free and easy, and actually we're far more moralistic than any other society I've ever lived in. ↗

— Kathy Acker

#actually #any #each #easy #ever

A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist. ↗

— Will Durant

#cannot #moralist #statesman

The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile. ↗

— Alan Watts

#efforts #egos #feel #futile #his

Though sages may pour out their wisdom's treasure, there is no sterner moralist than pleasure. ↗

— Lord Byron

#moralist #out #pleasure #pour #sages

Our generals talk a good game about taking care of their grunts, and the majority of our Beltway politicians bay with moralistic fervor about how they, too, support the troops. ↗

— David Hackworth

#bay #beltway #care #fervor #game

Moralistic is not moral. And as for truth - well, it's like brown - it's not in the spectrum. Truth is so generic. ↗

— Iris Murdoch

#generic #like #moral #moralistic #spectrum

In the early days of Christianity the exercise of chastity was frequently combined with a close and romantic intimacy of affection between the sexes which shocked austere moralists. ↗

— Havelock Ellis

#austere #between #chastity #christianity #close