Moral creativity does not mean making up new morals. God’s law is God’s law. Rather, moral creativity has to do with the kind of creativity needed in order to be moral. It has to do with the kind of creativity needed to break bad habits. Or the kind needed to breathe life back into broken relationships. Or the kind needed to unbalance cycles of anger or violence. Or the kind needed to see past prejudices. Or the kind needed to be something more.

Adam S. Miller | Moral Creativity

Topics: Growth, Habits, Morality, Potential

There is a careful way and a casual way to do everything, including living the gospel. As we consider our commitment to the Savior, are we careful or casual? Because of our mortal nature, don’t we sometimes rationalize our behavior, at times referring to our actions as being in the gray, or mixing good with something that’s not so good? Anytime we say, “however,” “except,” or “but” when it applies to following the counsel of our prophet leaders or living the gospel carefully, we are in fact saying, “That counsel does not apply to me.” We can rationalize all we want, but the fact is, there is not a right way to do the wrong thing!

Becky Craven | Careful versus Casual

Topics: Commandments, General Conference 2019, Morality, Prophets

“Let us never lose sight of the fact that education is a preparation for life — and that preparing for life is far more than knowing how to make a living or how to land on the moon. Preparing for life means building personal integrity, developing a sound sense of values, increasing the capacity and willingness to serve. Education must have its roots in moral principles. If we lose sight of that fact in our attempt to match our educational system against that of the materialists, we shall have lost far more than we could possibly gain.”

Ezra Taft Benson | Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, p. 297

Topics: Education, Integrity, Morality, Secularism (Worldliness)

“All killing is not murder any more than all sexual intercourse is adultery.”

CS Lewis | Mere Christianity

Topics: Adultery, Morality, Sex

“Courage is not just one of the virtues, it is the form of every virtue at the testing place.”

CS Lewis | The Screwtape Letters

Topics: Character, Courage, Morality

“The best index to a person’s character is how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and how he treats people who can’t fight back.”

Abigail Van Buren

Topics: Character, Morality

“If within the short space of mortal life there are men who rise up out of infancy and become masters of the elements of fire and water and earth and air, so that they well-nigh rule them as Gods, what may it not be possible for them to do in a few hundreds or thousands of millions of years?”

B.H. Roberts | The Mormon Doctrine of Deity, 35.

Topics: Becoming like God, Morality

“It has sometimes been asked whether God commands certain things because they are right, or whether certain things are right because God commands them…I empathically embrace the first alternative. The second might lead to the abominable conclusion that charity is good only because God arbitrarily commanded it — that He might equally well have commanded us to hate Him and one another and that hatred would then have been right. I believe, on the contrary, that ‘they err who think that of the will of God to do this or that there is no reason besides His will.'”

CS Lewis | The Problem of Pain

Topics: Charity, Commandments, Morality, Nature of God

“People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Topics: Character, Morality

“In all humility and sincerity we must admit a power higher than ourselves from whom is derived a positive moral code that will give our lives significance and purpose. We also must remember once and for all that honesty, respect, and honor as such are not for sale on the market block. They are ingredients that you and I and all people should put into our daily lives.”

Delbert L. Stapley | "Honesty and Integrity", June 1971 Ensign pg 104

Topics: Humility, Morality, Purpose

“All the human beings that history has heard of acknowledge some kind of morality; that is, they feel towards certain proposed actions the experiences expressed by the words ‘I ought’ or ‘I ought not’…Morality is a jump; in it, man goes beyond anything that can be ‘given’ in the facts of experience.”

CS Lewis | The Problem of Pain

Topics: Light of Christ, Morality

“There have been differences between civilization’s moralities. But these have never amounted to anything like a total difference…men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four, but they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked.”

CS Lewis | Mere Christianity

Topics: Character, Commandments, Morality, Polygamy

The commandments and standards of morality set by the Lord himself are under attack on every hand. There are false teachers everywhere using speech and pornographic literature, magazines, radio, TV, street talk—spreading heresies which break down moral standards.

Spencer W. Kimball | 1980–O:4, Spencer W. Kimball, Families Can Be Eternal

Topics: Morality

“Look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”

Jacob A. Riis

Topics: Character, Morality

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”

Helen Keller

Topics: Character, Morality, Trials

“It is a mistake to think that some of our impulses – say motherly love or patriotism – are good, and others, like sex or fighting instinct, are bad. All we mean is that the occasions on which fighting instinct or sexual desire need to be restrained are rather more frequent than those for restraining motherly love or patriotism.”

CS Lewis | Mere Christianity

Topics: Morality, Sex, Sin

“Think of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the ‘right’ notes and the ‘wrong’ ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The moral law is not any one instinct or set of instincts; it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts.”

CS Lewis

Topics: Morality, Righteousness

“Some foolish persons turn their backs on the wisdom of God and follow the allurement of fickle fashion, the attraction of false popularity, and the thrill of the moment. Their course of conduct so resembles the disastrous experience of Esau, who exchanged his birthright for a mess of pottage. “To illustrate, may I share with you the results of a survey conducted by a reputable organization and reported in a national magazine.2 The survey was entitled, “Would You, for Ten Million Dollars?” Let me ask you the same questions which were asked in the survey: For 10 million dollars in cash, would you leave your family permanently? Would you marry someone you didn’t love? Would you give up all your friends permanently? Would you serve a year’s jail term on a framed charge? Would you take off your clothes in public? Would you take a dangerous job in which you had a 1-in-10 chance of losing your life? Would you become a beggar for a year? “Of the people polled, 1 percent would leave their families, 10 percent would marry lovelessly, 11 percent would give up friends, 12 percent would undress in public, 13 percent would go to jail for a year, 14 percent would take the risky job, and 21 percent would beg for a year. “Where money, rather than morality, dictates one’s actions, one is inclined away from God. Turning away from God brings broken covenants, shattered dreams, vanished ambitions, unfulfilled expectations, crushed hopes, and ruined lives.”

Thomas S. Monson | "Decisions Determine Destiny"

Topics: Decisions, Money, Morality

“If we are to think about morality, we must think of three departments; relations between man and man; things inside each man; and relations between man and the power that made him.”

CS Lewis | Mere Christianity

Topics: Character, Morality

“The most fundamental thing we can discuss in the gospel plan, because only covenant-makers and covenant-keepers can claim the ultimate blessings of the celestial kingdom. Yes, when we talk about covenant keeping, we are talking about the heart and soul of our purpose in mortality.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | “Making and Keeping Covenants”

Topics: Celestial Kingdom, Covenants, Morality