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Ordinary morality is innate in my view.

We are naturally moral beings, but our environments can enhance - or, sadly, degrade - this innate moral sense.

If society is a ship, it appears to many to be firmly at anchor in moral waters. Perhaps this isn't so.

A growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life.

We inherit nothing truly, but what our actions make us worthy of.

We are all born marked for evil.

Humans are born with a hard-wired morality: a sense of good and evil is bred in the bone. I know this claim might sound outlandish, but it's supported now by research in several laboratories.

We are born knowing nothing and with much striving we learn but a little; yet all the while we are bound by laws that hearken to no plea of ignorance, and measure out their rewards and punishments with calm indifference.

So much of our lives is given over to the consideration of our imperfections that there is no time to improve our imaginary virtues. The truth is we only perfect our vices, and man is a worse creature when he dies than he was when he was born.

It's through the small things that we develop our moral imagination, so that we can understand the sufferings of others.