The chequered history of religion and morality is the main reason for the widespread desire to put them aside in favour of the more stable generalities of science. Unfortunately for this smug endeavour to view the universe as the incarnation of the commonplace, the impact of aesthetic, religious and moral notions is inescapable. They are the disrupting and the energising forces of civilisation. They force mankind upwards and downwards. When their vigour abates, a slow mild decay ensues. Then new ideals arise, bringing in their train a rise in the energy of social behaviour. The concentration of attention upon matter-of-fact is the supremacy of the desert. Any approach to such triumph bestows on learning "a fugitive, and cloistered virtue," which shuns emphasis on essential connections such as disclose the universe in its impact upon individual experience. (M.T. pp. 26-7)

Moral education is impossible apart from the habitual vision of greatness. (A.E. p. 106)

Morality consists in the aims at the ideal, and at its lowest it concerns the prevention of re-lapse to lower levels. Thus stagnation is the deadly foe of morality. Yet in human society the champions of morality are on the whole the fierce opponents of new ideas. (A.I. p. 346)

As society is now constituted a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death. (A.I. p. 18)

Moral codes have suffered from the exaggerated claims made for them. The dogmatic fallacy has here done its worst. Each such code has been put out by a God on a mountain top, or by a Saint in a cave, or by a divine Despot on a throne, or, at the lowest, by ancestors with a wisdom beyond later question. In any case, each code is incapable of improvement; and unfortunately in details they fail to agree either with each other or with our existing moral intuitions. The result is that the world is shocked, or amused, by the sight of saintly old people hindering in the name of morality the removal of obvious brutalities from a legal system. Some Acta Sanctorum go ill with civilization. (A.I. p. 374)

Moral codes are relevant to presuppositions respecting the systematic character of the relevant universe. When the presuppositions do not apply, that special code is a vacuous statement of abstract irrelevancies. (M.T. p. 18)

Unseasonable art is analogous to an unseasonable joke, namely, good in its place, but out of place, a positive evil. It is a curious fact that lovers of art who are most insistent on the doctrine of "art for art's sake" are apt to he indignant at the banning of art for the sake of other interests. The charge of immorality is not refuted by pointing to the perfection of art. Of course it is true that the defence of morals is the battlecry which best rallies stupidity against change. Perhaps countless ages ago respectable amoeba refused to migrate from ocean to dry land - refusing in defence of morals. (A.I. pp. 345-6)

The love of humanity as such is mitigated by violent dislike of the next-door neighbour. (The Atlantic, Vol. 169, p. 172)

The duty of tolerance is our finite homage to the abundance of inexhaustible novelty which is awaiting the future, and to the complexity of accomplished fact which exceeds our stretch of insight. (M.I. p. 65)

All advanced thinkers, sceptical or otherwise, are apt to be intolerant, in the past and also now. On the whole, tolerance is more often found in connection with a genial orthodoxy. (A.I. p. 63)

Fortunately there are a great many things which do not much matter, and we can have them how we will. The opposite point of view has been the nursery of fanaticism, and has tinged history with ferocity. (A.I. p. 256)

To know the truth partially is to distort the Universe. For example, the savage who can only count up to ten enormously exaggerates the importance of the small numbers, and so do we whose imaginations fail when we come to millions. It is an erroneous moral platitude, that it is necessarily good to know the truth. The minor truth may beget the major evil. (A.I. p. 311)

The doctrine of minds, as independent substances, leads directly not merely to private worlds of experience, but also to private worlds of morals. (S.M.W. p. 281)

Ultimate values were excluded. They were politely bowed to, and then handed over to the clergy to be kept for Sundays. A creed of competitive business morality was evolved, in some respects curiously high; but entirely devoid of consideration for the value of human life. . . . To God's question, men gave the answer of Cain - "Am I my brother's keeper?"; and they incurred Cain's guilt. This was the atmosphere in which the industrial revolution was accomplished in England, and to a large extent elsewhere. (S.M.W. pp. 291-2)