Emerson then incarnated the moral optimism, the progress, and the energy of the American spirit.
I am horrified by the moral amnesia that develops when a dictator dies.
It's true that Paris is made up of equal parts of social conservatism and anarchic experimentation, but foreigners never quite know where to place the moral accent mark.
Each generation, as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: 'What are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do they extend? By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved?'
All the political angst and moral melodrama about getting 'the rich' to pay 'their fair share' is part of a big charade. This is not about economics, it is about politics.
A moral monopoly is the antithesis of a marketplace of ideas.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism.
Moral justification is a powerful disengagement mechanism. Destructive conduct is made personally and socially acceptable by portraying it in the service of moral ends. This is why most appeals against violent means usually fall on deaf ears.
I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix.
Preaching is the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life.
A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives - of approving of some and disapproving of others.
So long as the opposing forces are at the outset approximately equal in numbers and moral and there are no flanks to turn, a long struggle for supremacy is inevitable.
Sharpton is a smart guy. In some ways, he's a good guy. But a moral arbiter? Let's not get carried away.
The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.
From the day I started to think politically and to develop my own moral values, from my earliest youth, I have been an ardent defender of Israel.
It takes us many years to learn that the passion for justice and the welfare of all, once it has been aroused, is the deepest one in moral life.
The addiction to sports, therefore, in a peculiar degree marks an arrested development in man's moral nature.
Being able and willing to complain is what makes us rational and moral animals, capable of seeing and articulating the difference between how things are and how they should be.
The moral effect of the thundering of one's own artillery is most extraordinary, and many of us thought that we had never heard any more welcome sound than the deep roaring and crashing that started in at our rear.