Added to the moral solitude of the murderer comes the solitude of the artist, which can acknowledge no authority, save that of another artist.
One shouldn't ever be conscious of the author as lecturer. When social or moral points are too heavily stressed, I always get uncomfortable.
Literature isn't a moral beauty contest. Its power arises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off; the belief it inspires is what counts.
After so many cases of terror attacks related to Islamic militancy remaining unresolved in the last few years, the government has no moral authority to stay in power.
I don't tend to think in terms of a moral authority - be a good boy, do good things - more in terms of what feels right.
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.
True art is by nature moral. We recognize true art by its careful, thoroughly honest search for and analysis of values. It is not didactic because, instead of teaching by authority and force, it explores, open-mindedly, to learn what it should teach....
Undermine their pompous authority, reject their moral standards, make anarchy and disorder your trademarks. Cause as much chaos and disruption as possible but don't let them take you ALIVE.
Just as Man developed morals and ethical behavior over thousands of years of evolution; so, too, did he invent an authority figure to enforce these behaviors - God.
Moral authority has been laid to rest, world opinion is no more than a game show and the difference between good and evil is about as relevant as changing channels.
I doubt that my sense of personal freedom is any stronger than anybody else's. I'm happy to respect authority when it's genuine authority, based on moral or intellectual or even technical superiority. I'm eager to follow a hero if we can find one. Bu...
Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established.
Morals; the pathetic answer to authority Seen two gorillas sharing a banana?
Yet the same thing happens to the notions of morality. They are devised, at the start, as measures of expediency, and then given divine sanction in order to lend them authority.
The people in general ought to have regard to the moral character of those whom they invest with authority either in the legislative, executive, or judicial branches.
The individual makes a clear effort to define moral values and principles that have validity and application apart from the authority of the groups of persons holding them and apart from the individual's own identification with the group.
Nicholas Angel: Police work is as much about preventing crime as it is about fighting crime. Most importantly, it is about procedural correctness in the execution of unquestionable moral authority.
I'm not saying that atheists can't act morally or have moral knowledge. But when I ascribe virtue to an atheist, it's as a theist who sees the atheist as conforming to objective moral values. The atheist, by contrast, has no such basis for morality. ...
At one time,' Golenishchev continued, either not observing or not willing to observe that both Anna and Vronsky wanted to speak, 'at one time a freethinker was a man who had been brought up in the conception of religion, law, and morality, who reache...
Many a man renounces morals, but with great difficulty the conception, 'morality.' Morality is the 'idea' of morals, their intellectual power, their power over the conscience; on the other hand, morals are too material to rule the mind, and do not fe...
