Quotes About Morality

Well, my definition of a tragedy is a clash between right and right.

I believe every abortion is a tragedy.

Thriller novelists get asked - berated, sometimes - about whether their work glorifies bad behavior, even, exploits human tragedy for entertainment.

Man's inhumanity to man is as old as humanity itself. Some people just do evil things. Most do not. A billion people have seen 'Batman' movies over the past 20 years, and they have been entertained and inspired. One man saw it as a sick entry point for mass murder. The one is tragic. The billion are not. I choose to write for the billion.

Gangster movies are the inheritor of the Greek tragedy: it's the only genre where the audience will be disappointed if there's not a tragic ending.

I like to believe I play tragic heroes - characters that are torn between the good and bad, the black and the white.

I do not think athletes should get a free pass. I don't think we should train our children and future athletes to believe that they are above the law and morality.

You can be a famous poisoner or a successful poisoner, but not both, and the same seems to apply to Great Train Robbers.

Anyone can be a moral individual, concerned with human rights and problems; but only a college professor, a trained expert, can solve technical problems by 'sophisticated' methods. Ergo, it is only problems of the latter sort that are important or real.

We are taught to attack the forces of evil and not those doing evil. That is what we are trained in.

Erudition - that is, reading, writing, and arithmetic - is taught in the schools; but where is the more important quality, character, taught? Nowhere in particular. There is no authorized training for children in character.

The want of education and moral training is the only real barrier that exists between the different classes of men.

Millions of Americans cannot tell you who lived at Mount Vernon or who wrote the Declaration of Independence - let alone the Emancipation Proclamation. But they know that to be 'a Benedict Arnold' is to be a traitor of the deepest dye - someone who coldly betrays not only a sacred cause but every moral scruple along the way.

I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty - a sunken beauty.

Personally, I don't think it is acceptable to manipulate the human germline for the purpose of changing some genetic traits that will be transmitted over generations.

What I love about 'Breaking Bad' is the reflection of many people's - it's more real in terms of people have faults, people have character traits that they don't like about themselves. It resembles more of what the human journey really is and it's less fantastic and hero-driven than other characters and shows that we watch.

Of front-line importance among the most contagious and enduring traits of the leaders of nations and of all callings is that of spotless character.

I think there are moral obligations, and I think there are economic transactions. So I think that chores are good; I think that allowances are good. I think combining them is bad.

There are no journalistic ethics that transcend the value of human life. There are none. In a situation where you can save a human life, you must. There isn't any conflict in my mind.

It is of the essence of imaginative culture that it transcends the limits both of the naturally possible and of the morally acceptable.

If I steal money from any person, there may be no harm done from the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss, or it may prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest.

I had given up magic, because it had reached a state of perfection. I felt that I was able to transform men into animals. I did not make use of this capability, because I believed I could not justify an intervention of this kind in the life of another person.

With regard to moral rules, the child submits more or less completely in intention to the rules laid down for him, but these, remaining, as it were, external to the subject's conscience, do not really transform his conduct.

I certainly don't like to play a bad guy. There are no bad people. It's only shades of grey. Also, I am not a great actor who can transform completely into a totally different character for a movie. I am not a trained actor.