Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.
One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can.
The giving of the Torah is a story of God seeking to provide humanity with the opportunity to make moral decisions.
When the AIDS epidemic broke, because I happened to be a science nerd and knew a lot about viruses and a lot about that virus at the time, I felt a moral obligation to go out and try to stem the fear and get out and explain to people what the disease was and how it worked.
We are all born as empty vessels which can be shaped by moral values.
The measure of and self-congratulation for our own intelligence should have its basis in our moral behavior as well as our smarts.
The American people need to know that there are folks here fighting as hard as they can for individual liberty, economic freedom, appropriate national security and the fundamental moral values that have made our nation the greatest nation in the history of mankind.
I'm very disappointed in my country right now, because I think we've kind of lost our moral compass.
Through the 1980s and '90s, evangelicals sought to turn back the forces of secularization. Groups like the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition pressed for laws recognizing Christianity's unique place in American life, including laws that would allow prayer in public schools and Christian displays in public places.
I would never play a character that wasn't true. It's not a moral thing; it's just that it's more convincing if it's a little bit like me.
'The Truth' is not meant to preach or point any fingers. It's meant to show that perhaps we should all avoid taking the moral high ground unless we have thought about things a bit more.
A free and rooted society ought to consist of a web of moral obligations. We have the right to ignore them, but we ought to be actually obliged not to let other people starve or to let them lapse into destitution.
In a sane, civil, intelligent and moral society, you don't blame poor people for being poor.
A growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life.
Budgets are moral documents. Federal funding should reflect the priorities and the values of the majority of the American people.
Most students of Kissinger find it hard to say anything about Kissinger that isn't about the man himself. He is such an outsize figure that he eclipses his own context, leading his many biographers, critics, and admirers to focus nearly exclusively on the quirks of his personality or his moral failings.
You can't make people change, but the organizers of WorldFest hope that people consider being vegetarian for both moral and health reasons.
We have a legal and moral obligation to rid our world of nuclear tests and nuclear weapons.
If Trump's talking to Putin can help end the bloodshed in Ukraine or Syria, it would appear to be at least as ethical an act as pulpiteering about our moral superiority on the Sunday talk shows.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are as much every U.S. citizen's wars as they are the veterans' wars. If we don't assume that civilians have just as much ownership and the moral responsibilities that we have as a nation when we embark on something like that, then we're in a very bad situation.
America used to have a strong 'moral safety net' for its people. Today that net is badly frayed, not only because families are disintegrating but also because the church doesn't play the same role that it once did in many Americans' lives.
There is a fundamental question we all have to face. How are we to live our lives; by what principles and moral values will we be guided and inspired?
Anything that makes it easier to imagine trading places with someone else increases your moral consideration for that other person.
Thus, the controversy about the Moral Majority arises not only from its views, but from its name - which, in the minds of many, seems to imply that only one set of public policies is moral and only one majority can possibly be right.
Moral persuasion over a period of time makes a difference, but we shouldn't be naive to think that just because we raise it in a meeting it will make all those problems go away. It won't and it doesn't.
I think it is very important to build the moral fibre of the youth. Moral education should be part of the curriculum, and I will work towards introducing that.
No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward.
Kissinger's unusually high body count and singular moral imperiousness has the effect, among his critics, of obscuring his didactic utility. An outsized personality who has committed outsized mayhem, Kissinger eclipses his own context. Yet, as animals were to the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, Kissinger is good to think with.
'Moral police' is my new word. I am very against the media doing moral policing, giving opinions on actor's lives. Media should not become moral police; they should just report.
Technologists provide tools that can improve people's lives. But I want to be clear that I don't think technology by itself improves people's lives, since often I'm criticized for being too pro-technology. Unless there's commensurate ethical and moral improvements to go along with it, it's for naught.
We are naturally moral beings, but our environments can enhance - or, sadly, degrade - this innate moral sense.
The Declaration of Independence was to set forth the moral justification of a rebellion against a long-recognized political tradition - the divine right of kings.
A single week of Oprah takes you from bondage to all the violent terrors of life, to escape through vicarious encounters with celebrity, to visions of charity and hope, to hard resolve, to redemption and moral renovation.
I'm a true believer that you have a moral obligation to keep your employees honest, and that is why you have controls, so I'm never tempted or put in a position where I could do something to defraud my employer.
The moral equation strongly tells everyone who understands freedom, who understands morality, that Israel is engaging in a just war in defense of its people and its freedom.
When the economic well-being of their nation demanded a strong and creative response, my colleagues at the Federal Reserve... mustered the moral courage to do what was necessary.
