There is growing evidence ... for a kind of universal morality which transcends different religious traditions and lack of religion. Things like the Golden Rule – Do as you would be done by; do unto others as you wish them to do unto you. Richard Dawkins, Minnesota Radio 2008
[the word moral] is gradually getting to resemble the word righteous ... But, for all that, moral is not preaching, it is beauty of a rare kind. Ernest Dimnet, What We Live By, 1932
Religions transform themselves into creedless moral themes. Daniel C Dennett, lecture, Edinburgh University 2006, ‘Religion as a Natural Phenomenon’
Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right. H L Mencken
Honour is simply the morality of superior men. H L Mencken
This idea that without religion something fundamental would be lost to us in moral terms – this really is questionable. Sam Harris, lecture New York Society for Ethical Culture lecture 2005
No-one ever says this is immoral. ibid.
The guarantor of our morality is in our brains. ibid.
Indeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral – that is, when pressing these concerns inflict unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings. This explains why Christians like yourself expend more ‘moral’ energy opposing abortion than fighting genocide. It explains why you are more concerned about human embryos than about the lifesaving promise of stem-cell research. And it explains why you can preach against condom use in sub-Saharan Africa while millions die from AIDS there each year. Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
If you think that it would be impossible to improve upon the Ten Commandments as a statement of morality, you really owe it to yourself to read some other scriptures. Once again, we need look no further than the Jains: Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: ‘Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being.’ Imagine how different our world might be if the Bible contained this as its central precept. Christians have abused, oppressed, enslaved, insulted, tormented, tortured, and killed people in the name of God for centuries, on the basis of a theologically defensible reading of the Bible. ibid.
You are using your own moral intuitions to authenticate the wisdom of the Bible – and then, in the next moment, you assert that we human beings cannot possibly rely upon our own intuitions to rightly guide us in the world. ibid.
Is this really the best book we have on morality? Is it even a good book? Sam Harris, Believing the Unbelievable, Aspen Ideas Festival 2007
The basic claim that we get our morality from religion is clearly false. ibid.
Compassion is the basis of morality. Arthur Schopenhauer
Modern societies march towards morality in proportion as they leave religion behind. Paul Bert
The eternal adventure of trying to discover moral truth in the world. Stephen Fry, with Christopher Hitchens v The Catholic Church 2009
Gloucester, ’tis true that we are in great danger;
The greater therefore should our courage be ...
There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out –
For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers,
Which is both beautiful and good husbandry,
Besides, there are our outward consciences,
And preachers to us all, admonishing
That we should dress us fairly for our end.
Thus may we gather honey from the weed
And make a moral of the devil himself. William Shakespeare, Henry V IV i 1-14, King Harry to Gloucester
Hamlet 1990: Give me some light! The King reacts. Hamlet is vindicated ... He is straitjacketed to his own morality. David Tennant on Hamlet, BBC 2012
I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality. Mahatma Gandhi
The first principle of value that we need to rediscover is this: that all reality hinges on moral foundations. In other words, that this is a moral universe, and that there are moral laws of the universe just as abiding as the physical laws. Martin Luther King
I always felt a sense of cosmic companionship so that the loneliness and the fear have faded away because of a greater feeling of security because of commitment to a moral idea. Martin Luther King, interview BBC 1961
No-one can be perfectly free till all are free; no-one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no-one can be perfectly happy till all are happy. Herbert Spencer
Absolute morality is the regulation of conduct in such a way that pain shall not be inflicted. Herbert Spencer
Fundamentalists long for the return of a more moral America, an America that may never have been. All around them they see what they perceive as declining morality and spirituality. They reason that if humans share ancestry with the other animals, we have no reason to behave as anything other than animals. This view neglects the fact that humans are the only known animals with the ability to contemplate the consequences of their own actions. It also fails to recognize that there is a great deal of good in the world, the nightly news notwithstanding. Crime existed long before the theory of evolution, even before the writing of the Bible, and biologists do not like crime any more than the creationists do. Evolutionary theory is not a license to run amok, and neither is a belief in the literal interpretation of the Bible a guarantor of moral behaviour. Tim Berra, Evolution and the Myth of Creationism
His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy. Woody Allen
Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray 1891
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. Oscar Wilde
All art is immoral. Oscar Wilde, Intentions, 1891
The cables reveal a kind of moral ambivalence in US diplomacy. Richard Bilton, Wikileaks: The Secret Life of a Superpower I, BBC 2012
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare. Mark Twain
Fear is the mother of morality. Friedrich Nietzsche
A slave morality. Friedrich Nietzsche
Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual. Friedrich Nietzsche
And from your policy do not wholly banish fear. For what man living, freed from fear, will still be just? Aeschylus, Greek tragedian c.525-456 B.C.
The whole effect of Christianity was to transfer drama onto the moral plane. Andre Gide, Les Faux-Monnayeurs, 1925
If your morality is governed by anything personal, ethical, rational or humanitarian then the Vatican is bullshit. Penn & Teller, Bullshit! s7e10: Vatican, Showtime 2009
So exactly why the fuck do we Americans get so fucking uptight about teens having sex with each other? Penn & Teller, Bullshit! s8e4: Teen Sex
In Nevada the heterosexual age of consent is sixteen; but you have to be eighteen to have gay sex. ibid.
If you’re fifteen and take a picture of your own naked body you are a child pornographer. ibid.
Gay teens get exposed to all kinds of vicious hatred all the time. ibid.
Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality. Morality is not bribery or threats. Religion is bribery and threats. Humans have morality. We don’t need religion. Penn Jillette
What is morally appropriate in a war-time environment? Robert S McNamara, The Fog of War 2003