One must know what is right and wrong and what is good and what is bad and what should be done and what should not be done. As well as manners, we must force our hearts to always be in good morals.

A mind heartily moral knows better, when the poet, however plausibly, declares that "whatever is is right." As moral beings, we know that much which is is wrong, and is in no way palliable, or even to be tolerated, by a good being; yes, that our whole business with it is simply to get rid of it, and to bring on a state of the world in which it shall no longer have room to exist.

We can tell murder is wrong because we have objective criteria by which we can determine for certain whether murder is wrong, and we can do that regardless of what mood the gods are in nowadays. There has to be an objectively verifiable reason why something is moral or immoral, or else no one could know whether it is, including God, since the Bible has Him changing His mind all the time. Without that criteria, you couldn't know what is moral or immoral either; you just have to trust whatever the people said who pretended to speak for God.

It is not what we believe, but why we believe it. Moral responsibility lies in diligently weighing the evidence. We must actively doubt; we have to scrutinize our views, not take them on trust. No virtue attached to blindly accepting orthodoxy, however 'venerable'...

The philosophical study of morality — of right and wrong — is ethics. Such study can render us more sophisticated in our choices. Even older and deeper than ethics, however, is religion. Religion concerns itself not with (mere) right and wrong but with good and evil themselves — with the archetypes of right and wrong.

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

Everything that promotes the welfare, the advancement and the growth of the individual is right. And everything that interferes with the welfare, the advancement and the growth of the individual is wrong. This is the only natural standard by which we can judge what is right and what is wrong. It is therefore the true standard, being based upon the nature, the principle and the purpose of life itself.

Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.

The right for the right's sake is the motto which everyone should take for his own life. With that as a standard of value we can descend into our hearts, appraise ourselves, and determine in how far we already are moral beings, in how far not yet.

You know the difference between right and wrong,' he repeated finally. 'Man, why did you need Initiation — by the Golden Dawn, or by anybody else? You are a genius, a sage, a giant among men. You have solved the problem which philosophers have been debating since antiquity — the mystery about which no two nations or tribes have ever agreed, and no two men or women have ever agreed, and no intelligent person has ever agreed totally with himself from one day to the next. You know the difference between right and wrong. I am overawed. I swoon. I figuratively kiss your feet.

The sense of right and wrong, the consciousness of justice in men, is not accidental . It grows up, irresistibly, by nature, out of what they experience as the fundamental conditions of their life. Society must live; so the relations of men must be regulated in such a way - it is this that law provides for - that the production of life-necessities may go on unimpeded. Right is what is essentially good and necessary for life. Not only useful for the moment, but needed generally good and necessary for life. Not only useful for the moment, but needed generally; not for the life. Not only useful for the moment, but needed generally; not for the life of single individuals, but for people at large, for the community; not for personal or temporal interests, but for the common and lasting weal. If the life-conditions change, if the system of production develops into new forms, the relations between men change, their feeling of what is right or new forms, the relations between men change, their feelings of what is right or wrong changes with them, and the law has to be altered.

Morality doesn’t mean ‘following divine commands’. It means ‘reducing suffering’. Hence in order to act morally, you don’t need to believe in any myth or story. You just need to develop a deep appreciation of suffering.

Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil not the strength to choose between the two.

See, if evolution is true, who owns the world? Who makes the rules? How do we decide right from wrong? If man is God, and that's what humanism means, there is no absolute standard. How do you tell right from wrong? I mean, maybe Osama Bin Laden should tell right from wrong for everybody. Maybe congress should decide. Maybe Bill Clinton ought to decide. "Right and wrong? Never heard of that before." How do you tell right from wrong? Where are the rules?