A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.
Albert Schweitzer

A spirit, breathing the language of independence, is natural to Englishmen, few of whom are disposed to brook compulsion, or submit to the dictates of others, when not softened by reason, or tempered with kindness.
Joseph Lancaster

Being a writer was never a choice, it was an irresistible compulsion.
Walter Jon Williams

Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.
Karl Marx

Celibacy is not a matter of compulsion. Someone is accepted as a priest only when he does it of his own accord.
Joseph Ratzinger

Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.
Sinclair Lewis

For what the horse does under compulsion, as Simon also observes, is done without understanding; and there is no beauty in it either, any more than if one should whip and spur a dancer.
Xenophon

How can an act done under compulsion have any moral element in it, seeing that what is moral is the free act of an intelligent being?
Auberon Herbert

How often I have found that we grow to maturity not by doing what we like, but by doing what we should. How true it is that not every 'should' is a compulsion, and not every 'like' is a high morality and true freedom.
Karl Rahner

I decline to discuss, under compulsion, where I have sung, and who has sung my songs, and who else has sung with me, and the people I have known.
Pete Seeger

I have with me two gods, Persuasion and Compulsion.
Themistocles

I started off like everyone else does, slogging but having a compulsion to put words on paper. I didn't write or read horror or fantasy, other than children's fantasy, until I was in my teens.
Laurell K. Hamilton

I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this. I would be very glad to tell you my life if you want to hear of it.
Pete Seeger

I write because something inner and unconscious forces me to. That is the first compulsion. The second is one of ethical and moral duty. I feel responsible to tell stories that inspire readers to consider more deeply who they are.
David Guterson

If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion.
Henri Frederic Amiel

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
Plato

No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.
Plato

Only work which is the product of inner compulsion can have spiritual meaning.
Walter Gropius

Prayer is commission. Out of the quietness with God, power is generated that turns the spiritual machinery of the world. When you pray, you begin to feel the sense of being sent, that the divine compulsion is upon you.
E. Stanley Jones

Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.
Bertrand Russell