Moral Compass Quotes

1. "I lost my moral compass and I have done terrible things that I very much regret."
Author: Andrew Fastow

2. "I was extremely greedy and lost my moral compass."
Author: Andrew Fastow

3. "All too rarely do I hear people asking just what it is that we've done to make so many children's hearts so hard, or what collectively we might do to right their moral compass - what values we must live by."
Author: Barack Obama

4. "No culture has yet solved the dilemma each has faced with the growth of a conscious mind: how to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in all life, when one finds darkness not only in one's own culture but within oneself."
Author: Barry Lopez

5. "How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light."
Author: Barry López

6. "I'm very disappointed in my country right now, because I think we've kind of lost our moral compass."
Author: Billy Corgan

7. "Ethics that focus on human interactions, morals that focus on humanity's relationship to a Creator, fall short of these things we've learned. They fail to encompass the big take-home message, so far, of a century and a half of biology and ecology: life is- more than anything else- a process; it creates, and depends on, relationships among energy, land, water, air, time and various living things. It's not just about human-to-human interaction; it's not just about spiritual interaction. It's about all interaction. We're bound with the rest of life in a network, a network including not just all living things but the energy and nonliving matter that flows through the living, making and keeping all of us alive as we make it alive. We can keep debating ideologies and sending entreaties toward heaven. But unless we embrace the fuller reality we're in- and reality's implications- we'll face big problems."
Author: Carl Safina

8. "Sadism dominates the culture. It runs like an electric current through reality television and trash-talk programs, is at the core of pornography, and fuels the compliant, corporate collective. Corporatism is about crushing the capacity for moral choice and diminishing the individual to force him or her into an ostensibly harmonious collective. This hypermasculinity has its logical fruition in Abu Ghraib, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our lack of compassion for our homeless, our poor, the mentally ill, the unemployed, and the sick. ... We accept the system handed to us and seek to find a comfortable place within it. We retreat into the narrow, confined ghettos created for us and shut our eyes to the deadly superstructure of the corporate state."
Author: Chris Hedges

9. "We've bought into the idea that education is about training and "success", defined monetarily, rather than learning to think critically and to challenge. We should not forget that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers. A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death."
Author: Chris Hedges

10. "You can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its context (Exodus 21). The second is from the Gospels and says that only those without sin should cast the first stone. The first is a moral basis for capital punishment and other barbarities; the second is so relativistic and "nonjudgmental" that it would not allow the prosecution of Charles Manson. Our few notions of justice have had to evolve despite these absurd codes of ultra vindictiveness and ultracompassion."
Author: Christopher Hitchens

11. "It is clear that something is seriously lacking in the way we humans are going about things. But what is it that we lack? The fundamental problem, I believe, is that at every level we are giving too much attention to the external, material aspects of life while neglecting moral ethics and inner values. By inner values, I mean the qualities that we all appreciate in others, and toward which we all have a natural instinct, bequeathed by our biological nature as animals that survive and thrive only in an environment of concern, affection, and warm-heartedness-or in a single word, compassion. The essence of compassion is a desire to alleviate the suffering of others and to promote their well-being. This is the spiritual principle from which all other positive inner value emerge."
Author: Dalai Lama XIV

12. "The more cashless our society becomes, the more our moral compass slips."
Author: Dan Ariely

13. "As surely as I feel love and need for food and water, I feel love and need for God. But these feelings have nothing to do with Supramundane Males planning torments for those who don't abide by neocon "moral values." I hold the evangelical truth of our situation to be that contemporary politicized fundamentalists, including first and foremost those aimed at Empire and Armageddon, need us non-fundamentalists, mystics, ecosystem activists, unprogrammable artists, agnostic humanitarians, incorrigible writers, truth-telling musicians, incorruptible scientists, organic gardeners, slow food farmers, gay restaurateurs, wilderness visionaries, pagan preachers of sustainability, compassion-driven entrepreneurs, heartbroken Muslims, grief-stricken children, loving believers, loving disbelievers, peace-marching millions, and the One who loves us all in such a huge way that it is not going too far to say: they need us for their salvation."
Author: David James Duncan

14. "We need more moral compasses and less Sat Navs"
Author: Dean Cavanagh

15. "Always, in Lincoln's mature theology, there is paradox. There is starting this, yet there is also tenderness; there is melancholy, yet there is also humor: there is moral law, yet there is also compassion. History is the scene of the working out God's justice, which we can never escape, but it is also the scene of the revelation of the everlasting mercy."
Author: Elton Trueblood

16. "At the end of this journey, it seems to me that reconciling the long shadows cast by the uneasy past may ultimately depend on elements so basic that they bring to mind a simple Slav proverb I once came across and never forgot: Eat bread and salt and speak the truth. They are the recovery of fact, public accountability and the instituting of fair trials of one sort or another, to help mark ends and beginnings and to return the moral compass as close to the centre as possible."
Author: Erna Paris

17. "The sturdiest pillars of human morality are compassion and a sense of justice."
Author: Frans De Waal

18. "Jesus expressed intense anger toward those who where immoral, such as the self-righteous Pharisees, but he never suggested that they were demonized. Toward the demonized, however, he never expressed anger; rather he exhibited only compassion. As Langton notes, "Pity rather than anger characterizes the attitude of Jesus toward the possessed...He treats them as if they were the victims of an involuntary possession." Indeed, he treats them as though they are casualties of war. For, in his view, this is precisely what they are."
Author: Gregory A. Boyd

19. "Forcing people to be generous isn't humanitarian, effective, compassionate or moral. Only acts that are truly voluntary for all concerned can be truly compassionate."
Author: Harry Browne

20. "My kids are at a point in their lives where I'm a moral compass for them. God help them both."
Author: Jack Wagner

21. "...idea at play here is that of "morality." When young women are taught about morality, there's not often talk of compassion, kindness, courage, or integrity. There is, however, a lot of talk about hymens"
Author: Jessica Valenti

22. "A guardian ad litem... GAL is appointed by a court to be a child's advocate during legal proceedings that involve a minor. You don't have to be a lawyer to be trained as a GAL, but you have to have a moral compass and a heart. Which, actually probably renders most lawyers unqualified for the job."
Author: Jodi Picoult

23. "I have a theory which I suspect is rather immoral,' Smiley went on, more lightly. 'Each of us has only a quantum of compassion. That if we lavish our concern on every stray cat, we never get to the centre of things."
Author: John Le Carré

24. "So I'm just waiting until one party or the other actually gets a moral compass and a backbone."
Author: John Perry Barlow

25. "Maybe this isn't the right thing to say, but I want you to know: When you ran for the stage, I've never been so proud of you in all my life. You've always been beautiful; you've always been talented. And now I know that your moral compass is perfectly aligned, that you see clearly when things are wrong, and you do everything you can to stop it. As a father, I can't ask for more. I love you America. And I'm so so proud."
Author: Kiera Cass

26. "He's like six hundred years younger than you are. I refuse to be the moral compass of our cell! Most weekends I have an intoxispell bong attached to my mouth like a respirator. I love scatological humor, and I list 'pranks involving nuclear waste' and 'making demons eat things' as my hobbies."
Author: Kresley Cole

27. "I was always an unusual girl.My mother told me I had a chameleon soul, no moral compass pointing due north, no fixed personality; just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean."
Author: Lana Del Rey

28. "The problem was with Bill Clinton, the scandals and rumored scandals, the incubating ones and the dying ones never ended. Whatever moral compass the president was consulting was leading him in the wrong direction. His closets were full of skeletons just waiting to burst out."
Author: Louis Freeh

29. "Dominion does not mean domination. We hold dominion over animals only because of our powerful and ubiquitous intellect. Not because we are morally superior. Not because we have a "right" to exploit those who cannot defend themselves. Let us use our brain to move toward compassion and away from cruelty, to feel empathy rather than cold indifference, to feel animals' pain in our hearts."
Author: Marc Bekoff

30. "All I can hope to do is instill great morality in my son and trust him along the way. The music he listens to or how he chooses to wear his hair doesn't define his moral compass, and if he wants to listen to country music and wear a cowboy hat too, that's fine."
Author: Mark Hoppus

31. "My moral compass swings far to the left, but when it comes to gratuitous violence, I have trouble."
Author: Michael Biehn

32. "If everyone got a divorce and looked for a second wife, the Coptic family would lose its moral compass."
Author: Pope Shenouda III

33. "Some of the most morally conscious, kindest, most compassionate people are in the entertainment industry, people who want to affect the world and make it a better place through telling human, heartfelt stories."
Author: Rainn Wilson

34. "I've got my own moral compass to steer byA guiding star beats a spirit in the skyAnd all the preaching voices -Empty vessels ring so loudAs they move among the crowdFools and thieves are well disguisedIn the temple and market placeLike a stone in the riverAgainst the floods of springI will quietly resistLike the willows in the windOr the cliffs along the oceanI will quietly resistI don't have faith in faithI don't believe in beliefYou can call me faithlessI still cling to hopeAnd I believe in loveAnd that's faith enough for meI've got my own spirit level for balanceTo tell if my choice is leaning up or downAnd all the shouting voicesTry to throw me off my courseSome by sermon, some by forceFools and thieves are dangerousIn the temple and market placeLike a forest bows to winterBeneath the deep white silenceI will quietly resistLike a flower in the desertThat only blooms at nightI will quietly resist"
Author: Rush

35. "As we consider the fast pace of scientific and technological progress in our modern world, we must not lose our moral compass and give way to 'free market eugenics'."
Author: Sam Brownback

36. "If people use common sense and their own guiding moral compass, I think they'll generally stay out of trouble."
Author: Steve Chabot

37. "The more truthful I am with myself and others, the more my conscience is clear and tranquil. Thus, I can more thoroughly and unequivocally inhabit the present moment and accept everything that happens without fear, knowing that what goes around comes around (the law of karma). Ethical morality and self-discipline represent the good ground, or stable basis. Mindful awareness is the skillful and efficacious grow-path, or way. Wisdom and compassion constitute the fruit, or result. This is the essence of Buddhism [...]"
Author: Surya Das

38. "That we are not totally transformed, that we can turn away, turn the page, switch the channel, does not impugn the ethical value of an assault by images. It is not a defect that we are not seared, that we do not suffer enough, when we see these images. Neither is the photograph supposed to repair our ignorance about the history and causes of the suffering it picks out and frames. Such images cannot be more than an invitation to pay attention, to reflect, to learn, to examine the rationalizations for mass suffering offered by established powers. Who caused what the picture shows? Who is responsible? Is it excusable? Was it inevitable? Is there some state of affairs which we have accepted up to now that ought to be challenged? All this, with the understanding that moral indignation, like compassion, cannot dictate a course of action."
Author: Susan Sontag

39. "A tyrant has uncommon moral compass."
Author: Toba Beta

40. "Human's moral compass doesn't work yet in worlds where the instinct navigates life."
Author: Toba Beta

41. "[He] had seen firsthand the horrific results of appeasement. It was a path chosen by feebleminded people who were morally incapable of confronting evil. He saw many parallels between the Nazis, the communists, and these jihadists. They were all sociopaths at heart--obsessed with their own tribal desires and utterly incapable of conferring justice or compassion on those outside the tribe. If you were not one of them, you were a lesser human, and thus deserved to be treated in any way they saw fit. And if that meant blowing up airliners and buses full of innocent civilians, then so be it."
Author: Vince Flynn

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