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I was raised the old-fashioned way, with a stern set of moral principles: Never lie, cheat, steal or knowingly spread a venereal disease. Never speed up to hit a pedestrian or, or course, stop to kick a pedestrian who has already been hit. From which it followed, of course, that one would never ever -- on pain of deletion from dozens of Christmas card lists across the country -- vote Republican.

 

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All my growth and development led me to believe that if you really do the right thing, and if you play by the rules, and if you've got good enough, solid judgment and common sense, that you're going to be able to do whatever you want to do with your life.

 

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Feeling that morality has nothing to do with the way you use the resources of this world is an idea that can't persist any longer. If it does, then we won't.



Barry Lopez:

 

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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.

 

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Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds.

 

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It is very difficult and expensive to undo after you are married the things that your mother and father did to you while you were putting your first six birthdays behind you.

 

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Conventionality is not morality

 

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You know what they say: if God had been a Liberal, we wouldn't have had the ten commandments. We'd have had the ten suggestions.

 

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Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

 

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There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

 

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We would like to believe that we are not in the business of surviving but in being good, and we do not like to admit to ourselves that we are good in order to survive.

 

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The cosmos is neither moral or immoral; only people are. He who would move the world must first move himself.

 

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We have committed the Golden Rule to memory; let us now commit it to life.

 

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I have learned two lessons in my life: first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

 

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The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.

 

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Ethical religion can be real only to those who are engaged in ceaseless efforts at moral improvement. By moving upward we acquire faith in an upward movement, without limit.

 

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The conception of worth, that each person is an end per se, is not a mere abstraction. Our interest in it is not merely academic. Every outcry against the oppression of some people by other people, or against what is morally hideous is the affirmation of the principle that a human being as such is not to be violated. A human being is not to be handled as a tool but is to be respected and revered. [From: An Ethical Philosophy of Life]

 

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To care for anyone else enough to make their problems one's own, is ever the beginning of one's real ethical development.

 

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Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions, a crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit.



George Bernard Shaw:

 

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Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.