moral backbone
moral spine

Perfect we are not, but America still has some moral backbone.

And what's the point of biblical suffering without a moral backbone?

The corporation’s desire to show moral backbone has left it looking spineless.

You seem to have the moral backbone of a leech, Logan said.

I'm ashamed of the lack of moral backbone to this policy.

She is the family's moral backbone and her children are completely devoted to her.

“You have to have a moral backbone to join the police,” he says.

It's a good thing David Rosoff, the general manager, has a strong moral backbone.

They possess not a scintilla of moral backbone or romantic heroism.

Moral backbone is – or should be – timeless.

The word that keeps cropping up among the chattering class is "character," and not simply in the narrow sense of moral backbone.

But as arrogance goes, his remark that brights are "the moral backbone of the nation" sets a pretty high standard.

There are moments when he seems to have the naivety that derives from an inflexible moral backbone.

The purveyors of American pop culture are doomed without Forrest's moral backbone.

In his former employments he had acquired a vocabulary and moral backbone sufficient to his needs.

“She has a strong moral backbone.

"The reason we can't handle this is we don't have the moral backbone, the stick-to-it-tiveness, the collective people working together."

No moral backbone, these people.

He had no moral backbone.

You have moral backbone, anyway.

A lack of moral backbone and a blind embracing of the material trappings of success are his real crimes.

Unfortunately, Bragg's moral backbone was sorely lacking.

Suu Kyi’s unwavering commitment to democratic values in the face of an equally unyielding military junta is testament to her moral backbone.

His ruling party claims the hardline approach has been necessary in order to return a moral backbone to Poland after years of Communist misrule.

I have all the moral backbone of a tapeworm, as a shopper, so expect to be drawn into the bowels of an Amazon bookstore.

But don’t think that our discipline doesn’t have a moral spine beneath all the algebra.

And Shandy learns that her moral spine makes her super in some ways.

It atrophied the moral muscles; it paralyzed the moral spine.

And it's this perky, affectionate child who gives Gien's play its emotional and moral spine.

"If you consider yourself a hacker and you have time to spare, grow some moral spine and use your skills for active benefit."

He doesn't makes it easy to come by; it rarely has a feel-good payoff, but it is the moral spine of this fine show.

We think that "Remember the Alomar" may serve to remind baseball fans of the flaccid moral spines of the people who control the game.

If professional sport is not cloaked with these attributes, and if sport has no moral spine, then there is no point.

Moral Backbone Questioned But his critics say he does not have the moral spine required of a leader given a $1.2 billion budget and 10,000 people to manage.

He likens Peru to an emotionally troubled person, constantly struggling to reinvent itself and find a moral spine because its history is so full of pain - in this case, racism and exploitation.

When even the Daily Post's moral spine was buckling, it was a sign of grim times indeed, to say nothing of the declining standards of reporting evident throughout the press in general.

That's the challenge thrown down by the head of technology at Sophos, Paul Ducklin, who claims the anonymous collective Lulz Security have to "grow some moral spine" if they want to be taken seriously.

I mention Jacques Vergès, the maverick French lawyer who – though his flexible moral spine makes him the antithesis of Galloway in many ways – has tormented the French establishment for years concerning its treatment of Islamic states.

They excel at constructing tense, claustrophobic studies of homicidal passion, the burning-ember kind that smolders behind a bourgeois fa,cade of archpropriety until flaring up in a desperate act of violence that shocks and thrills the neighbors and sends a shudder down society's moral spine.