Secular Ethics Quotes

“About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough—and even miraculous enough if you insist—I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about?

Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don't believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart's content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others—while in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity—so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities… but there, there. Enough.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.”
― thomas paine, Rights of Man

“I have gained this by philosophy; I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law.”
― Aristotle

“As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.

[Letter to William Short, 31 October 1819]”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow men, not knowing what they do.”
― John Quincy Adams

“The goodness of people depends on the intentions of their brains and not on their religion or ancestry.”
― Merlin Franco, A Dowryless Wedding

“We ought so to behave to one another as to avoid making enemies of our friends, and at the same time to make friends of our enemies.”
― Pythagoras

“All religions are man-made; God has not yet revealed himself beyond doubt to anybody.”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“Each mind conceives god in its own way. There may be as many variation of the god figure as there are people in the world”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“There is nothing behind the curtains of religions, people put there whatever their imaginations can fathom”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“Why doesn't the pope convert to Calvinism? Why doesn't the Dalai Lama, convert to Christianity, why doesn't Billy Graham convert to Islam, Why doesn't the Ayatollahs convert to Buddhism, Why isn't Buddhism swept away? Religious leaders know that all religions are equal; they know that no one of them has the monopoly to the knowledge of God. They know that each religion is trying to find the hidden God and that no one religion can claim to have found him beyond doubt. That's why they remain where they are and respect each other.”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“Once you believe that god is not a private property of anybody, you are on your way to becoming a new messiah. Maybe your own if not the world's”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“[C]apitalism is clearly inadequate as any kind of social ideal, since it is only motivated by profit, without any ethical principle guiding it. Unbridled capitalism can involve terrible exploitation of the weak. Thus we need to adopt an approach to economic justice which respects the dynamism of capitalism while combining it with a concern for the less fortunate. Once again, I think microfinance offers a sustainable and responsive line of approach to issues of poverty alleviation and development, an approach which could avoid the excesses of capitalism on the one hand and the inefficiency of excessive state control on the other.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World

“[It] is nevertheless better than the theological concept, of deriving morality from a divine, all-perfect will, not merely because we do not intuit this perfection, but can derive it solely from our concepts, of which morality is the foremost one, but because if we do not do this (which, if we did, would be a crude circle in explanation), the concept of his will that is left over to us, the attributes of the desire for glory and domination, bound up with frightful representations of power and vengeance, would have to make a foundation for a system of morals that is directly opposed to morality.”
― Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

“God has not yet revealed himself to no one in no unclear terms. Religions are attempts to find him; on that level they are all equal”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“A secular morality teaches that what man thinks, says, and does lives after him and influences for good or ill future generations. This is a higher, nobler, and greater, incentive to righteousness than any life of personal reward or fear of punishment in a future life.”
― David Marshall Brooks, The Necessity Of Atheism

“Secularism is not the absence of religion, secularism is the absence of religious intolerance.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mukemmel Musalman: Kafir Biraz, Peygamber Biraz

“Don’t curse the gods; you will feel shame when you have to call on them for help”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“Without a Uniform Civil Code, labelling India be Secular nation is just a illusion.

Uniform Civil Code is necessary for India so that t same laws r valid for every citizen without taking religion into consideration.”
― Vikram Singh Slathia

“Threat to secularism in one nation is threat to democracy everywhere.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neden Türk: The Gospel of Secularism

“The secular version of becoming godlike: be excellent. Why? Because people imagine gods as vastly excelled version of themselves. The more excellent, the more god.”
― Thomas Vato

“Genuine cooperation cannot, however, be imposed by force; it can only emerge from mutual trust and respect among the parties involved, and trust comes only with transparency.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World

“Safeguarding the future is not just a matter of laws and government regulations; it also requires individual initiative.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World

“If children in a given school, for example, come from diverse religious or cultural backgrounds, on what basis should the school conduct ethical education? To use a single religious perspective would be inadequate.
[...] What is required is a way of promoting inner values which is genuinely universal — which can embrace, without prejudice, both agnostic humanist perspectives and religious perspectives of various kinds.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World

“[W]hen teaching ethical awareness and inner values, providing information is never enough, and teaching by example is of paramount importance.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World

“If you believe in God, make it a reason for assimilation, not segregation. If you prefer reason, use it for warm ascension, not cold and fancy descension.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sin Dios Sí Hay Divinidad: The Pastor Who Never Was

“If organized religion is the most infantile form of religion, secularism is religion for the grownups. But it doesn't end there. The next stage is where the very concept of secularism turns obsolete.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mukemmel Musalman: Kafir Biraz, Peygamber Biraz

“Not aim for nondivision, we gotta start from
nondivision - not aim for secularism, we gotta
start from secularism - not aim for harmony, we
gotta start from harmony.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşk Mafia: Armor of The World

“When amidst believers,
speak in the tongue of believers.
When amidst atheists,
speak in the tongue of atheists.

But if you find yourself amidst
militants and fundamentalists,
do not speak, just listen,
and you'll learn
how not to be a human being.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşk Mafia: Armor of The World

“Many fervor, many faiths,
thus the world is made.
World without secularism
is world of the dead.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo