#oral

It is their mores, then, that make the Americans of the United States...capable of maintaining the rule of democracy.... Too much importance is attached to laws and too little to mores.... I am convinced that the luckiest of geographical circumstances and the best of laws cannot maintain a constitution in spite of mores, whereas the latter can turn even the most unfavorable circumstances...to advantage.... If I have not succeeded in making the reader feel the importance I attach to the practical experience of the Americans, to their habits, laws, and, in a word, their mores, I have failed in the main object of my work. -Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in American ↗

— Naomi Wolf

#constitution #liberty #morality #usa #values

My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy. ↗

— George Eliot

#morality #experience

When we say that humans have a “right” not to be used for these purposes, this means simply that the interest of humans in not being used as non-consenting subjects in experiments will be protected even if the consequences of using them would be very beneficial for the rest of us. The question, then, is why do we think that it is morally acceptable to use nonhumans in experiments but not to use humans? Vivisection, Part Two: The Moral Justification of Vivisection | Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach http://bit.ly/oREDH0 ↗

— Gary L. Francione

#moral-justification #utilitarianism #vivisection #experience

If your educe sculpture to the flat plane of the temporal experience of the work. (...) the experience of the work is inseparable from the place in which the work resides. Apart from that condition, any experience of the work is a deception. ↗

— Richard Serra

#sculpture #serra #temporal #education

A man with outward courage dares to die; a man with inner courage dares to live. ↗

— Lao Tzu

#death #inspirational #life #moral-courage #real-life

He struggled with himself, too. I saw it -- I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself. ↗

— Joseph Conrad

#struggle #faith

Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals. ↗

— Albert Schweitzer

#cease #environment #exercise #faith #his

There is a core difference between sharing the gospel with the lost and imposing a specific moral standard on the unconverted. ↗

— Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

#lost #moral-standard #unconverted #faith

Nothing in Chomsky's account acknowledges the difference between intending to kill a child, because of the effect you hope to produce on its parents (we call this "terrorism"), and inadvertently killing a child in an attempt to capture or kill an avowed child murderer (we call this "collateral damage"). In both cases a child has died, and in both cases it is a tragedy. But the ethical status of the perpetrators, be they individuals or states, could not be more distinct... For Chomsky, intentions do not seem to matter. Body count is all. ↗

— Sam Harris

#collateral-damage #moral-equivalence #noam-chomsky #faith

And now they were weary and frightened because they had gone against a system they did not understand and it had beaten them. They knew that the team and the wagon were worth much more. They knew the buyer man would get much more, but they didn't know how to do it. Merchandising was a secret to them. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#ethics #faith #morality #spirituality #business