Quotes About Consequences

If torture is permitted, it's hard to imagine what isn't.

Those who actually dropped the bombs were less responsible than the people who took the decisions higher up the chain of command. In modern technological war, psychological responses are poorly correlated with degrees of responsibility. In people further back up the chain, this casual distance reduces the psychological resistance they have to overcome.

A phased decision can avoid there being a key moment when the moral issue about killing civilians has to be confronted.

The modern obsession with protecting young people from "feeling unsafe" is, we believe, one of the (several) causes of the rapid rise in rates of adolescent depression, anxiety, and suicide, which we'll explore in chapter

Love is a kind of insanity, and many people have, while crazed with passion, ruined their lives and those of others.

When corporations are given the ring of Gyges, we can expect catastrophic results (for the ecosystem, the banking system, public health, etc.).

The ability to reason combined with a lack of moral emotions is dangerous.

The consequences of a generation unable or disinclined to engage with ideas that make them uncomfortable are dire for society

Cuando nadie responde ante nadie, cuando los vagos y los tramposos quedan impunes, todo se derrumba.

La habilidad para razonar de manera normal combinada con la ausencia de emociones morales es una combinación peligrosa.

As the colonial insects did to the other insects, we have pushed all other mammals to the margins, to extinction, or to servitude.

principle of utility, which he defined as "the principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question."16 Each law should aim to maximize the utility of the community, which is defined as the simple arithmetic sum of the expected utilities of each member. Bentham then systematized

In other words, expertise in moral reasoning does not seem to improve moral behavior, and it might even make it worse (perhaps by making the rider more skilled at post hoc justification)

The loss of political diversity among the faculty has negative consequences for students

Many psychologists have studied the effects of having "plausible deniability." In one such study, subjects performed a task and were then given a slip of paper and a verbal confirmation of how much they were to be paid. But when they took the slip to another room to get their money, the cashier misread one digit and handed them too much money. Only 20 percent spoke up and corrected the mistake.24

I'll praise Glaucon for the rest of the book as the guy who got it right—the guy who realized that the most important principle for designing an ethical society is to make sure that everyone's reputation is on the line all the time, so that bad behavior will always bring bad consequences.

What is the true cost of a man's mistakes?

Doc, God help me for saying it—if you repeat this I'll totally deny it—but some sperm deserve to be drowned before they get a chance to swim.

A dream does not die on it's own. A dream is vanquished by the choices ordinary people make about real things in their own lives.The motive may be different, and I'm sure it often is; the consequence is not.

Please, mein Herr, shoot the children cleanly.

There were always reasons for what I did. Good reasons or bad reasons, I don't know, in any case human reasons. Those who kill are humans, just like those who are killed, that's what's terrible. You

What could I do? I was afraid he'd point at me and say 'Him!,' and then lightning bolts would hit me or something" -Chong

All concerns of men go wrong when they wish to cure with evil. -SOPHOCLES

He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster. —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE