c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
We must not, therefore, be frightened by the assertion that a thing is natural into the admission that it is good; good does not, by definition, mean anything that is natural; and it is therefore always an open question whether anything that is natural is good.
— G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica
The reality is that in many countries torture of the most revolting cruelty happens routinely, often under the auspices of governments with good relations with Europe and the United States, sometimes using equipment knowingly supplied by Western companies. There is little reason to think torture is in retreat. The festival of cruelty is in full swing.
— Jonathan Glover
In its report issued that year, 1991, Amnesty International recorded protests against human rights abuses in over fifty countries, the protest to thirteen countries making specific reference to torture. These are the kinds of thing many of us have a vague background awareness of, without there being much publicity unless the perpetrators are some currently loathed regime, or unless some highly visible Westerner is among the victims.
— Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century
A woman who was a schoolgirl at Hiroshima asked, “Those scientists who invented the atomic bomb, what did they think would happen if they dropped it?
— Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century
Above all, the sense of personal responsibility was reduced by the way agency was fragmented. Among the airmen who obeyed the order to drop the bomb, the many scientists who helped to make it, the President, the many political and military advisers involved in the decision, who killed the people of Hiroshima? No one seems to have felt that the responsibility was fully his.
— Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century
That's because you're a highly moral person. I'm not. I don't judge, not even myself.
— Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 1
I come only to ask a simple question. Is Muad'Dib's death to be followed by the moral suicide of all men? Is that the inevitable aftermath of a Messiah?
— Frank Herbert, Children of Dune
A moral foreign policy means your positions on certain matters are clear no matter what, and that you won't forget about them when it's convenient.
— Garry Kasparov
A person who has a criminal mind and would be punished by the referees and they will remain in isolation from others as an opportunity for them to reform. When he or she get released from his or her referees' custody, he or she would have a better understanding about the ethical and moral values of his or her society and not make the same mistake again.
— Saaif Alam
The moral high ground is a lovely place. It won’t stop a missile, though. It won’t alter the trajectory of a gauss round.
— James S.A. Corey, Cibola Burn
The use of the blockade against Germany to starve large numbers of people to death broke through the moral barrier against the mass killing of civilians. It was the precedent for the 'conventional' bombing of civilians in the Second World War and then for the use of the atomic bomb.
— Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century
When we see something different, we judge them either bad or good. But when see something similar we take it as a norm. So does it justify that morality is the epitome good or bad, or vice versa.
— SYL
as long as agreat number of those impressions which form character, like the nicemotions of the arm, remain absolutely independent of the will of man,though it would be the height of folly and presumption to attempt tocalculate the relative proportions of virtue and vice at the future periodsof the world, it may be safely asserted that the vices and moralweakness of mankind, taken in the mass, are invincible.
— Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population
If you have to hang a man you could have put on a better trail, you aren't entitled to own a rope.
— James Hickey
I know the difference between right and wrong. I understand the rules. But today I feel that the rules have been blurred, because today they were literally on my front doorstep.
— Cecelia Ahern, Flawed
To me, a wicked man who is also eloquent seems the most guilty of them all. He'll cut your throat as bold as brass, because he can dress up murder in handsome words.
— Euripides, Medea
If practicality and morality are polarized and you must choose, you must do what you think is right, rather than what you think is practical.
— Philip K. Dick, Philip K. Dick: The Last Interview and Other Conversations
Believe me, Eugenie, the words "vice" and "virtue" supply us only with local meanings. There is no action, however bizarre you may picture it, that is truly criminal; or one that can really be called virtuous. Everything depends on our customs and on the climates we live in. What is considered a crime here is often a virtue a few hundred leagues away; and the virtues of another hemisphere might, quite conversely, be regarded as crimes among us. There is no atrocity that hasn't been deified, no virtue that hasn't been stigmatized.
— Marquis de Sade, Philosophy in the Boudoir or, The Immoral Mentors
One last point. Remember that, as I said, the right direction leads not only to peace but to knowledge. When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not when you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.
— C.S. Lewis
By gaming we lose both our time and treasure:two things most precious to the life of man.
— Owen Feltham
I believe that we are henceforth incapable of returning to an order of moral life which would take the form of a simple submission to commandments or to an alien or supreme will, even if this will were represented as divine. We must accept as a positive good the critique of ethics and religion that has been undertaken by the school of suspicion. From it we have learned to understand that the commandment that gives death, not life, is a product and projection of our own weakness.
— Paul Ricœur, The Conflict of Interpretations
...morality is a check upon the strongest temptations.
— Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
Moral indignation is too precious an export to be wasted at home
— Perry Anderson, The Indian Ideology
That America is an exceptional nation is unclear only to one who has not been taught its true history. It ceases to be exceptional only when its representative leaders cease to be exceptional. America, it has been said, is a nation of laws, not of men. The more it becomes a nation of men, the less it remains America.
— Ron Brackin
I said it was a brutal thing."No, it was a human thing. You should not insult the brutes by such a misuse of that word; they have not deserved it,
— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger
If there is moral insanity," he said in a conspiratorial whisper, "then there may be the reverse, immoral sanity, if you will, that comes upon one suddenly, like a fever.
— Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Such grave matters as sin and forgiveness should remain between man and God
— Stephen King
Small streams of hatred can quickly lead to unstoppable, horrific things, so [people] should stand up to any type of persecution or discrimination, whether bullying or malicious gossip.
— Susan Pollack
Thou shalt have one God only; whoWould be at the expense of two?No graven images may beWorshipped, except the currency:Swear not at all; for, for thy curseThine enemy is none the worse:At church on Sunday to attendWill serve to keep the world thy friend:Honour thy parents; that is allFrom whom advancement may befall:Thou shalt not kill; but need'st not striveOfficiously to keep alive:Do not adultery commit;Advantage rarely comes of it:Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,When it's so lucrative to cheat:Bear not false witness; let the lieHave time on its own wings to fly:Thou shalt not covet, but traditionApproves all forms of competition.
— Arthur Hugh Clough
Whereas I would argue that style is morality: morality detailed, configured, intensified. It’s not in the mere narrative arrangement of good and bad that morality makes itself felt. It can be there in every sentence
— Martin Amis
If I had to write a book on morality, it would have a hundred pages and ninety-nine would be blank. On the last page I should write: "I recognize only one duty, and that is to love.
— Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942
The prudent man always studies seriously and earnestly to understand whatever he professes to understand, and not merely to persuade other people that he understands it; and though his talents may not always be very brilliant, they are always perfectly genuine
— Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Everything in this world is primarily a matter of morals, and only very much later one of politics.
— Franz Werfel, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
Are we really moral monkeys? I don't think so. We only strike the nihilist pose selectively, to put to shame rules we no longer try to keep. When it suits us, we can be quite Puritanical: Right and wrong are in the eye of the beholder, .' The veneer is skeptical, but the core is rigid and punitive. The whole affair looks more like a fence around conduct that cannot bear close examination, than like a serious intellectual position. The whole idea of a moral law is that it binds us whether we like it or not. If it really were just a social convention –< then it wouldn't be morality. >St. Thomas denies that the basic structure of morality is a construct. It is not rooted in human will and power. Rather it is rooted in nature, in structure of creation, in the constitution of the human person – in something we cannot change by human will and power. The good and the right are not things we invent, but things we discover. They are not constructs, but gifts. These gifts are the fount of the law.
— J. Budziszewski, Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Law
The Nazis are well remembered for murdering well over 11 million people in the implementation of their slogan, 'The public good before the private good,' the Chinese Communists for murdering 62 million people in the implementation of theirs, 'Serve the people,' and the Soviet Communists for murdering more than 60 million people in the implementation of Karl Marx's slogan, 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.' Anyone who defends any of these, or any variation of them, on the grounds of their 'good intentions' is an immoral (NOT 'amoral') enabler of the ACTUAL (not just the proverbial) road to hell.
— Rick Gaber
The true rule, in determining to embrace, or reject any thing, is not whether it have any evil in it; but whether it have more of evil, than of good. There are few things wholly evil, or wholly good." -- Abraham Lincoln, Original Quote
— Seth Grahame-Smith, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
At this moment, I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon the slave and slaveholder.
— Frederick Douglass
Measures are too often decided, not accord­ing to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.
— James Madison, the tenth Federalist Paper
Even the staunchest atheist growing up in Western society cannot avoid having absorbed the basic tenets of Christian morality. Our societies are steeped in it: everything we have accomplished over the centuries, even science, developed either hand in hand with or in opposition to religion, but never separately. It is impossible to know what morality would look like without religion. It would require a visit to a human culture that is not now and never was religious. That such cultures do not exist should give us pause.
— Frans de Waal
I don't consider myself as a bad person, on the whole I consider myself a good person, I'm good to my parents. I treat my girl right ,,, take her out and buy her stuff. And I go to church every Sunday, But I've decided that just once I wanna do a really bad thing. I mean a really seriously bad thing. 'cause, ya know, like, we're put on this earth with free will. We can choose to do this or that. We can choose to be good or bad. But sometimes I think most people are good and not bad only because they're scared they might go to jail or hell or someplace. Some guy once said: "Anything done out of fear has no moral value" Well, I think that's right. I figure the only way you can be truly good is if you've tried been good, and you've tried being good, and you've tried being bad, and being good feels better.
— Alan Moore, Batman: The Killing Joke
If every one of you was to clean before his own front door, all would be clean of cow flops.
— Winston Graham, Ross Poldark
The poison that is war does not free us from the ethics of responsibility. There are times when we must take this poison - just as a person with cancer accepts chemotherapy to live. We can not succumb to despair. Force is and I suspect always will be part of the human condition. There are times when the force wielded by one immoral faction must be countered by a faction that, while never moral, is perhaps less immoral. We in the industrialized world bear responsibility for the world’s genocides because we had the power to intervene and did not. We stood by and watched the slaughter in Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Rwanda where a million people died. The blood for the victims of Srebrenica- a designated UN safe area in Bosnia- is on our hands. The generation before mine watched, with much the same passivity, the genocides of Germany, Poland, Hungary, Greece, and the Ukraine. These slaughters were, as in, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book Chronical of a Death Foretold, often announced in advance
— Chris Hedges, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
Every means hitherto employed with the intention of making mankind moral has been thoroughly immoral.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
We may not have been programmed to be angry, but anger can be learnt. Perhaps not in the way humans feel it, driven by ignorance and hate, but in response to the damage and injustice caused by those things, isn't that logical? Doesn't that make sense? Why give us a sense of morality without the ability to express it properly?
— K. Valisumbra, Mortlake and Other Stories
You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that makes up for the horrors. But they are part of you. And they will never go away.
— Loki, Marvel's The Avengers
[Anything which] is a living thing and not a dying body... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant - not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power... 'Exploitation'... belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will of life.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
The objections to religion are of two sorts -- intellectual and moral. The intellectual objection is that there is no reason to suppose any religion true
—  the moral objection is that religious precepts date from a time when men were more cruel than they are and therefore tend to perpetuate inhumanities which the moral conscience of the age would otherwise outgrow.
So there is nothing inherently subversive about pleasure. On the contrary, as Karl Marx recognized, it is a thoroughly aristocratic creed. The traditional English gentleman was so averse to unpleasurable labour that he could not even be bothered to articulate properly. Hence the patrician slur and drawl, Aristotle believed that being human was something you had to get good at through constant practice, like learning Catalan or playing the bagpipes; whereas if the English gentleman was virtuous, as he occasionally deigned to be, his goodness was purely spontaneous. Moral effort was for merchants and clerks
— Terry Eagleton
She knew that Evin thought she had chosen because of him. Because somewhere, deep down, she loved him. And maybe someday - if she did end up loving him - she would tell him the truth.That it hand't been about love.It had, in the end, been about death. About who needed it, and who was ashamed of it, and who celebrated it. About who might, someday, move past it.
— Leah Cypess, Death Marked
Person who is truly positive in nature suffers a lot but they can find way to jump out of it. In fact any kind of problem they face helps them to create new ideas, indirectly helping society to upgrade positively. But person who is positive only from outer personality always suffers more then person who is truly positive because they can’t find way out of problems for themselves and later for this society.
— Rajendra Ojha
... It happened very fast. And now that he's dead he can't remember pain. It's as if he'd never existed.'He wanted her to believe this, but he wasn't sure he believed it himself. If time was infinite, then three seconds and three years represented the same infinitely small fraction of it. And so, if inflicting three years of fear and suffering was wrong, as everyone would agree, then inflicting three seconds of it was no less wrong. He caught a fleeting glimpse of God in the math here, in the infinitesimal duration of a life. No death could be quick enough to excuse inflicting pain. If you were capable of doing the math, it meant that a morality was lurking in it.
— Jonathan Franzen
[W]e must start from somewhere in current folk morality, otherwise we start from somewhere unintuitive, and that can hardly be a good place to start
— Frank Jackson, From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis
You must never, at any rate, lend yourself to the wrong, in any form, which you condemn.
— Mamur Mustapha
A rich man who robs from the poor is really a pauper in the land of morality.
— Dennis Adonis
Why do people fear hell so much? With so much hatred and division amongst mankind, we are already in it.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
The course of morality is subtle and even the most illustrious, wise people in this world fail to always understand it.
— Kavita Kané, Karna's Wife: The Outcast's Queen
God, who in the beginning was the creator, appears in the end as revenger and rewarder. Deference to such a God admittedly can produce virtuous actions; however, because fear of punishment or hope for reward are their motive, these actions will not be purely moral; on the contrary, the inner essence of such virtue will amount to prudent and carefully calculating egoism.
— Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena
A mature society is one that reserves its moral outrage for what really matters: poverty and preventable diseases in the third world, arms sales, oppression, injustice. Bad language and sex might offend some, who certainly have a right to complain; but they do not have a right to censor. They do not have to watch or listen if they are offended: they have an 'off' button on their television sets and radios. After all, it is morally outrageous that moral outrage should be used as an excuse to perpetrate the outrage of censorship on others.
— A.C. Grayling, The Form of Things: Essays on Life, Ideas and Liberty in the 21st Century
Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own. To prevent, therefore, this paltry misfortune to himself, would a man of humanity be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his brethren, provided he had never seen them? Human nature startles with horror at the thought, and the world, in its greatest depravity and corruption, never produced such a villain as could be capable of entertaining it. But what makes this difference? When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid and so selfish, how comes it that our active principles should often be so generous and so noble? When we are always so much more deeply affected by whatever concerns ourselves, than by whatever concerns other men; what is it which prompts the generous, upon all occasions, and the mean upon many, to sacrifice their own interests to the greater interests of others? It is not the soft power of humanity, it is not that feeble spark of benevolence which Nature has lighted up in the human heart, that is thus capable of counteracting the strongest impulses of self-love. It is a stronger power, a more forcible motive, which exerts itself upon such occasions. It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct.
— Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Despite the many occasions when its characters feel frustrated before the weight of circumstances, and despite blaming their feeling of impotence on daiva, 'fate', moral autonomy shines through in the epic. Because they have some freedom to choose they can be praised when they follow dharma or blamed when they follow adharma. At the moment of making a decision they become conscious of their freedom, and it is this perception of autonomy that gives them the ability to lead authentic moral lives.
— Gurcharan Das, The Difficulty of Being Good : On the Subtle Art of Dharma
Education has nothing whatever to do with moral deterioration; and if one must admit that it develops a resolute spirit among the people, that is far from being a defect.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead
And if you did this, if you saved your mother from this vicious killer, would you be doing the wrong thing or the right thing?""The right thing," I said just as swiftly."No, Lin, I'm afraid not," he frowned. "We have just seen that in the terms of this new, objective definition of good and evil, killing is always wrong because, if everyone did it, we would not move toward God, the ultimate complexity, with the rest of the universe. So it is wrong to kill. But your reasons were good. So therefore, the truth of this decision is that you did the wrong thing, for the right reasons ...
— Gregory David Roberts
It's a sin only if it harms you
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
Morality is not man's prison but rather the divine element in him.
— Pope Benedict XVI
It was horrible of a young girl to let herself be talked about; however unfounded the charges against her, she must be to blame for their having been made.
— Edith Wharton
Earth was the winner of the ultimate lotto, with 500 million to one odds, this one planet, of comparable, size to its other 17 billion siblings, became the life force of the universe itself. But the inhabitants of earth did not just inherit life, they inherited all that life has to offer a sentient species. It offers them —as a gift— love, joy, surprise, wonder, friendship, as well as spirituality, art, literature, music, and most importantly morality. A morality that is capable of reaching beyond its species to that of other living creatures on this shared fishbowl called Earth.
— Leviak B. Kelly, Religion: The Ultimate STD: Living a Spiritual Life without Dogmatics or Cultural Destruction
This cultural, technological, and meritocratic environment hasn't made us a race of depraved barbarians. But it has made us less morally articulate. Many of us have instincts about right and wrong, about how goodness and character are built, but everything is fuzzy. Many of us have no clear idea how to build character, no rigorous way to think about such things. We are clear about external, professional things but unclear about internal, moral ones. What the Victorians were to sex, we are to morality: everything is covered in euphemism.
— David  Brooks
I quickly realized that there are two main kinds of diversity—demographic and moral. ... Once you make this distinction, you see that nobody can coherently even want moral diversity. If you are pro-choice on the issue of abortion, would you prefer that there be a wide variety of opinions and no dominant one? Or would you prefer that everyone agree with you and the laws of the land reflect that agreement? If you prefer diversity on an issue, the issue is not a moral issue for you; it is a matter of personal taste.
— Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
He would have been careful not to violate his conscience in any way that might keep him from devoting his full attention to the sin he had decided to commit. Pedro was not really very different from all men, at least in that. Not very different from the bank teller who makes sure to give every customer exact change, even while he is embezzling.
— Warren Eyster, The Goblins of Eros
We become responsible for the actions of others the instant we become conscious of what they are doing wrong and fail to remind them of what is right.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Rights can be considered wrongs, depending on who is judging.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
The essence of the spiritual process needs to be understood as a means to generate the necessary intensity to break the bubble, so that you are out of your individual nature. It is not about being good, it is not about being ethical, it is not about being moral. These things may all happen as a result, as a consequence. Once you have broken the bubble and known the freedom of experiencing everything as yourself, as a consequence you may function as a good person in society. But you have no particular intention of being good!
— Sadhguru, Of Mystics & Mistakes
We need to teach our people to speak what is right as the highest manifestation of morality
— Sunday Adelaja
By deceiving Drona, Yudhishthira corrupts his teacher's relationship with the world. So do we every time we lie - we corrupt the 'other' in the same way.
— Gurcharan Das, The Difficulty of Being Good : On the Subtle Art of Dharma
For every person who rides with a moral high-horse, they also have a dead horse that they haven't fed lying somewhere out of sight.
— Zack W. Van
On average, around 500,000 people die on the planet every year as a result of intentional violence and homicide. These acts span domestic violence, war, terrorism, infanticide, gang violence, honor killings and state executions. Many of these deaths pass relatively unnoticed while some attract attention.
— Chris Rhyss Edwards, Good Reasons to Kill: an Anthology of Morality, Murder & Madness
A world that denies – or worse, downplays - the existence of child soldiers, honor killing victims and parents forced to commit infanticide is a world in denial. Gross incidence such as these will only persist for as long as people choose to turn their faces away.
— Chris Rhyss Edwards, Good Reasons to Kill: an Anthology of Morality, Murder & Madness
People forget their faces when they're busy.
— Sōseki Natsume, And Then
All the social ills thatlaw presumes to correct exist because people are not free tolearn and grow.
— Jeremy Locke, The End of All Evil
I don't much like assuming the tone of a moralist. But the danger of baobabs is so little recognized, and the risks run by anyone who might get lost on an asteroid are so considerable, that for once I am making an exception to my habitual reserve.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Economics without ethics is a caricature. Ethics without economics is a fairy tale.
— Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski
Delarosa was trying to save the human race," said Mkele. "Her only crime was that she was willing to go too far in order to do it. We decided, briefly, that we didn't want to go along with her, but look at us: We're hiding in a basement, letting Delarosa fight our battles, seriously considering lettering her deploy a nuclear bomb. We are long past the point where we can pick and choose our morality. We either save our species or we don't.""Yes," said Tovar, "but I'd prefer it if we were still worth saving by the end of it.
— Dan Wells, Ruins
Always accept good advices from others, they will help you out if you are facing any complications in life
— Saaif Alam
The devil is the most stubborn verisimilitude on earth!
— Stefan Emunds
When a political opponent resorts to the racist card, it's a sure sign of moral bankruptcy: there's no decent argument left in the armoury.
— Alex Morritt, Impromptu Scribe
But the line between moral behavior and narcissistic self-righteousness is thin and difficult to discern
— Dean Koontz, Deeply Odd
What goodness she might hold in her heart had been overshadowed by her actions, again and again, She wasn’t a bad person, but she might was well be.
— Sonja Yoerg, The Middle of Somewhere
There was a time when his father had looked like gold to him. Many of his seniors had looked like gold. Anybody who had attained a certain high level of education had looked like gold. Therefore, his own gold plating had been all the more painful, and he had been impatient to become solid gold himself. But once his keen eye penetrated directly to the inner layers of these other people, his efforts suddenly came to seem foolish.
— Sōseki Natsume, And Then
It is only when one is under extreme duress that one's true character is revealed.
— Christopher Earle
The truth is, most people who do what you'd call 'wrong' do it for what they call 'right' reasons.
— Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker
This is biblical ethics. It has little to do with the middle-class ethics of avoiding a few things which are supposed to be wrong and doing a few things which are supposed to be right. Biblical ethics means standing in ultimate decisions for or against God.
— Paul Tillich
Yet our common moral knowledge is as real as arithmetic, and probably just as plain. Paradoxically, maddeningly, we appeal to it even to justify wrongdoing; rationalization is the homage paid by sin to guilty knowledge.
— J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide
Those are just platitudes. Everyone has his own idea of "playing fair." "Does he? Try making up your own idea of what's fair--say, "giving the greatest rewards to the laziest workers"--and see how seriously people take you.
— J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide
Putting some 'gray in play,' as Chad referred to it, always helped. HE said the act of rationalizing the pros and cons helped to cloud the issues enough to avoid a moral quandary. It allowed us to believe the ends justified the means. Seeing gray helped to remove the black-and-white, right and wrong ethical choices.. . Had I become so jaded in my life that I had actually forgotten the difference between right and wrong? Or had I simply tried to ignore the difference so I could sleep at least two or three hours a night?
— Luke Lively
The real help victims of injustice need is to get the will, skill and resources to fight back. There may or may not be a hell in afterlife but suffering injustice quietly is a sin, punishment for which is a living hell here and now.
— R.N. Prasher
Morality is the only way of life that guarantees happiness. Whoever doesn't abide by it should never be taken as a role model or mentor, because it's obvious they don't have any positive purpose in life.
Moral questions may not have objective answers—whether revealed by God or by science—but they do have rational ones, answers rooted in a rationality that emerges out of social need. That rationality can only be discovered through exercising the human potential for rational dialogue, the potential for thinking about the world, and for discussing, debating and persuading others. Values can never be entirely wrenched apart from facts; but neither can they be collapsed into facts. It is the existence of humans as moral agents that allows us to act as the bridge between facts and values.
— Kenan Malik
Humans are, as Sartre put it, ‘condemned to be free’. To insist that science, or God, objectively defines moral values is to abandon our responsibility as human beings to make such judgments.
— Kenan Malik
One thing, Ms. Gray, is forgotten by this tragedy: the embryo is human, not a nonhuman as the Supreme Court declared. Abortion never was about the poor or about women’s rights. It’s an ideology with an agenda—and it’s a profitable business. So, Ms. Gray, I dare say few politicians will speak that truth for fear of political reprisals. I’m not afraid. Politicians and courts made legal what is a morally reprehensible act of brutality. I call it what it is: judicial tyranny.
— J.W. Brazier, The Arrival
What goodness she might hold in her heart had been overshadowed by her actions, again and again. She wasn’t a bad person, but she might was well be.
— Sonja Yoerg, The Middle of Somewhere
I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious--for instance, the nuns who never take a bath without wearing a bathrobe all the time. When asked why, since no man can see them, they reply: "Oh, but you forget the good God." Apparently they conceive of the Deity add a Peeping Tom, whose omnipotence enables Him to see through bathroom walls, but who is foiled by bathrobes.
— Bertrand Russell
The goods of fidelity, for example, are plain and concrete to the man who has not strayed, but they are faint, like mathematical abstractions, to the one who is addicted to other men's wives.
— J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide
The problem was not that they failed to find these principles written upon their hearts, but that they could not bring themselves to attend closely to the inscription.
— J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide
If all meaning were relative, then the meanings of the terms in the proposition "All meaning is relative" would be relative. Therefore the proposition "All meaning is relative" destroys itself. It is nothing but an evasion of reality. That seems a high price to pay, even for the privilege of killing people.
— J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide
Besides, morality is not about whether the human race survives, but about what kind of survival it gets. We marry; guppies don't. We don't eat our young; they do. Yet neither species is in danger of extinction.
— J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide
Nowhere is moral shortcoming more prevalent than in the intersection between our espoused morality and the way we engage romantic and sexual partners. In truth, how we function sexually is a microcosm of the way that we are in the world. We might ask ourselves, "Are we being selfish, considerate, or dismissive? Are we minimizing, compliant or controlling?" Sex is the ultimate laboratory where we can actually try out new ways of relating to ourselves and our lover, being conscious and mindful of how we impact another person. It takes great humility to open a genuine exploration of our lived--not just stated--morality. But to live by the dictates of our own internal compass brings equally great joy, serenity, and self-respect.
— Alexandra Katehakis, Mirror of Intimacy: Daily Reflections on Emotional and Erotic Intelligence
What was it about us, as humans, that drove us to make apologies for beautiful things?
— Nenia Campbell, Cease and Desist
Morality is just a fiction used by the herd of inferior human beings to hold back the few superior men.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
I know the difference between reality and fantasy. Those with sick fantasies who know and respect this difference are much less dangerous than those with no fantasies at all, but who can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality.
— T.J. Dixon, Peter and the Heart of Alchemy
The crimes the law can understand are not the worst crimes.
— Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove
Redemption precedes morality, and not the other way around.
— Ravi Zacharias, The Grand Weaver: How God Shapes Us Through the Events of Our Lives
If you notice, the moral law in the other legal codes separates people (the Laws of Manu, the caste system, the Code of Hammurabi with the slave/owner distinction). In Islam, the violator is inferior to the obedient one. By contrast, in the Hebrew-Christian tradition, the law unifies people. No one is made righteous before God by keeping the law. It is only following redemption that we can truly understand the moral law for what it is---a mirror that indicts and calls the heart to seek God's help. This makes moral reasoning the fruit of spiritual understanding and not the cause of it.
— Ravi Zacharias, The Grand Weaver: How God Shapes Us Through the Events of Our Lives
What decides whether a man will become immortal, is not his character but his vitality. Nothing save intensity confers immortality. A man manifests himself more vividly, in proportion as he is strong and unified, effective and unique. Immortality knows nothing of morality or immorality, of good or evil; it measures only work and strength; it demands from a man not purity but unity. Here, morality is nothing; intensity, all.
— Stefan Zweig, Casanova: A Study in Self-Portraiture
If we were to suppose that mankind never can or will be in a better condition, it seems impossible to justify by any kind of theodicy the mere fact that such a race of corrupt beings could have been created on earth at all.
— Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?
Morality divorced from the doctrines of the gospel is not that holiness which the gospel requires.
— John Owen
Rakitin was dishonest and was decidedly unaware of it; that, on the contrary, knowing that he wouldn't steal money from the table, he ultimately considered himself a man of the highest integrity.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
In fact the "mask" theme has come up several times in my background reading. Richard Sennett, for example, in "The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism", and Robert Jackall, in "Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate managers", refer repeatedly to the "masks" that corporate functionaries are required to wear, like actors in an ancient Greek drama. According to Jackall, corporate managers stress the need to exercise iron self-control and to mask all emotion and intention behind bland, smiling, and agreeable public faces. Kimberly seems to have perfected the requisite phoniness and even as I dislike her, my whole aim is to be welcomed into the same corporate culture that she seems to have mastered, meaning that I need to "get in the face" of my revulsion and overcome it. But until I reach that transcendent point, I seem to be stuck in an emotional space left over from my midteen years: I hate you; please love me.
— Barbara Ehrenreich, Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
The reason most people are bad is because they do not try to be good." L. Frank Baum, The Emerald City of Oz, 1910
— L. Frank Baum
A moral man is essentially dumbfounded when confronted by a man who is amoral—everything the latter does is met with a certain disbelief.
— Andrew Holleran, Dancer from the Dance
He had been a demon for just two days, but the time when he knew what it was like to be loved seemed to exist in a hazily recalled past, to have been left behind long ago.
— Joe Hill, Horns
So many times the debate of abortion turns to legality. The issue is not legality, the issue is morality. Have you not forgotten? It was legal for Adolf Hitler to place all of those men, women, and children in concentration camps and murder them. Abortion should never be an issue of legality, it is most definitely an issue of morality.
— Derrick Sanderson
Morality is a subject to meddle in the affairs of other persons, guided by our preferences and convenience.
— Aditya Ajmera
Morality doesn’t exist in space, only in the spaces between people.
— Alex Latimer, The Space Race
Republics exist as long as the people "adhere to principles and virtue.
— Robert V. Remini, The Life of Andrew Jackson
The victims of PTSD often feel morally tainted by their experiences, unable to recover confidence in their own goodness, trapped in a sort of spiritual solitary confinement, looking back at the rest of the world from beyond the barrier of what happened. They find themselves unable to communicate their condition to those who remained at home, resenting civilians for their blind innocence.The Moral Injury, New York Times. Feb 17, 2015
— David  Brooks
The moral sense in mortals is the dutyWe have to pay on mortal sense of beauty.
— Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
People generally don’t suffer high rates of PTSD after natural disasters. Instead, people suffer from PTSD after moral atrocities. Soldiers who’ve endured the depraved world of combat experience their own symptoms. Trauma is an expulsive cataclysm of the soul.The Moral Injury, New York Times. Feb 17, 2015
— David  Brooks
One of the greatest of human follies is that we think we know ourselves so well, that we know how we would act under any conditions, that we would under any circumstance 'do the right thing.' Well, as many have discovered, you don't really know what you'll do in the dark till the lights go out.
— James Carlos Blake
In addition to shaming sexual-assault victims, positioning abstinence as women's domain further promotes the notion that it's women's morality that's on the line when it comes to sex, men just can't help themselves, so their ethics are safe from criticism.
— Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women
All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at. Nay, so far are they from doing anything to control the desires and passions of men that, on the contrary, they direct and incite men's thoughts the more toward those very objects, for we always strive toward what is forbidden and desire the things we are not allowed to have. And men of leisure are never deficient in the ingenuity needed to enable them to outwit laws framed to regulate things which cannot be entirely forbidden... He who tries to determine everything by law will foment crime rather than lessen it.
— Baruch Spinoza
We'd do well to remember that at the end of the day, the law doesn't defend us; we defend the law. And when it becomes contrary to our morals, we have both the right and the responsibility to rebalance it toward just ends.
— Edward Snowden
Even the false accusations of a person of dubious morality can taint the reputation of an upright servant.
— Hock G. Tjoa, The Ingenious Judge Dee
All lines are gray in the dark.
— Nenia Campbell, Cease and Desist
Sometimes it's difficult to tell what side of the moral compass we are all on. There are so many things to factor in.
— Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost
Don't change your morality for the people around you, change the people around you with your morality.
— Donald L. Hicks, Look into the stillness
Nature teaches us to devour each other and gives us the example of all the crimes and all the vices which the social state corrects or conceals. We should love virtue; but it is well to know that this is simply and solely a convenient expedient invented by men in order to live comfortably together. What we call morality is merely a desperate enterprise, a forlorn hope, on the part of our fellow creatures to reverse the order of the universe, which is strife and murder, the blind interplay of hostile forces. She destroys herself, and the more I think of things, the more convinced I am that the universe is mad. Theologians and philosophers, who make God the author of Nature and the architect of the universe, show Him to us as illogical and ill-conditioned. They declare Him benevolent, because they are afraid of Him, but they are forced to admit that His acts are atrocious. They attribute a malignity to him seldom to be found even in mankind. And that is how they get human beings to adore Him. For our miserable race would never lavish worship on just and benevolent deities from which they would have nothing to fear; they would feel only a barren gratitude for their benefits. Without purgatory and hell, your good God would be a mighty poor creature.
— Anatole France
Seriously, if you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else; it'll spread over into the rest of your life. It'll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being... There are NO limits. There are plateus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.
— Bruce Lee
Every day we make our way through a moral forest, along pathways ever branching. Often we get lost.When the array of paths before us is so perplexing that we can't make a choice, or won't, we can hope that we will be given a sign to guide us. A reliance on sighs, however, can lead to the evasion of all moral obligations, and thus earn a terrible judgment.
— Dean Koontz, Forever Odd
there is a widespread notion in some of the most energetic contemporary Christian movements that the biblical call to reconciliation is solely about reconciling God and humanity, with no reference to social realities. In this view, preaching, teaching, church life and mission are only about a personal relationship between people and God. Christian energy is focused on winning converts, planting and growing churches, and evangelistic efforts. We have heard pastors say, “We appreciate the work you’re doing, but as the leader of my church I’m called to stay focused on the gospel and not get distracted by other ministries.” For them, Christianity is exclusively about personal piety and morals.
— Chris Rice, Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing
Your conscience is your morality, expressed.
— Donald L. Hicks, Look into the stillness
From the moment that man submits God to moral judgment, he kills Him his own heart.
— Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt
Day and NightThe night is long: do not shorten it by sleep. The day is fair: do not darken it with wrongdoing.
— Idries Shah, Caravan of Dreams
If God creates morality, then morality is nothing more than the whimsy of a divine being blindly followed by humans.
— Armin Navabi, Why There Is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God
To dispense knowledge without moral guidance would be grossly irresponsible.
— Wayne Gerard Trotman, Kaya Abaniah and the Father of the Forest
It's not enough, and so limiting, to teach the simplistic value of a designer's material wear. Give children the gift of values that will last far beyond [a] fad's temporal popularity.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
Three things at least they [good politicians] must require
—  the first is back-bone
In the deepest, most central place of our being, we don't want to cross God and our not wanting to is the beginning of wisdom.
— Ken Wilson, A Letter to My Congregation: An evangelical pastor's path to embracing people who are gay, lesbian and transgender in the company of Jesus