Quotes About Morality

I wanted to do something decent at last, and I wanted to be rewarded for my decency. p 284

Honesty pays, but it don't seem to pay enough to suit some people.

When a fellow says it hain't the money but the principle o' the thing, it's th' money.

Marcus will probably never be hugely popular with committed Christians, if only because he persecuted them. But for others he holds out the prospect of spirituality for atheists, happiness without God, joy without heaven and morality without religion.

One murder makes a villain, millions a hero.

The Middle Ages were notorious for unchaste priests, with some parochial houses more akin to crèches or bordellos than abodes of God.

O outro evidente sinal da grandeza de Marco Aurélio era o facto de ele próprio ser a refutação em pessoa do famoso ditado de Lord Acton: "o poder tende a corromper e o poder absoluto corrompe absolutamente". Marco Aurélio detinha um poder absoluto, mas nunca o usou para fins egoístas, malévolos, despóticos ou corruptos.

Of course we're Criminals

Sin in this country has been always said to be rather calculating than impulsive.

A society remains functional as long as too many people aren't corrupt in too many places for too long.

Civilisation is soap".

Killing one person makes you a murderer. Killing a million people makes you a king. Killing them all makes you God.

the depth of a person's character is not measured by his or her physical strength, but by the depth of his or her nobility.

If Truth is taken away from us, then Right and Wrong are taken from us as well. If we don't know Right and Wrong, then we can't, we won't control ourselves, but will look to someone else to bring order through brute force and raw power. We will be controlled by a tyrant, and we will no longer be free...

When you live in a world that likes bad guys, the bad guys don't go away.

Take away truth and people will lie. Scoff at virtue, and betrayal becomes a matter of course.

Und weil die Soldaten durchaus einsahen, dass ein Bauer ohne Hof nicht überlebensfähig war, hängten sie ihn der Ordnung halber an den nächsten Baum und zogen weiter. Niemand regte sich groß darüber auf.

Actually, no. In The Abyss the alien creatures come from space. The film makes them out to be a nicer version of humans. They're supposed to have a moral message. The main difference, though, is that those aliens aren't interested in toppling us from our throne at the top of terrestrial evolution, which is what any intelligent species that had developed in parallel to us and that shared our planet would want to do.

America still sees itself as essential and as destiny's instrument. And each splinter group within our culture—left, right, conservative, liberal, religious, secular—sees itself as morally, even "theologically," superior to its rivals. It is not just about politics. It is about being better than one's evil opponent. We don't just disagree, we demonize the "other." And we don't compromise.

God as preached and lived by Jesus, the Enlightenment writers put human non-exclusionary justice ahead of the law. This rational philosophy did not condemn according to a set of rules but demanded moral consistency and compassion from those who would judge. Enlightenment thinkers jettisoned the ugly, exclusionary and magical parts of the religion that grew up bearing Christ's name. Their goal was what Ellul called on the Church to do in Jesus and Marx:

I'd remember that if it came down to it, I'd rather be arrested for shoplifting than ever be an evangelical leader again. There was a certain basic and decent honesty about stealing pork chops that selling God had lacked.

When lip service to some mysterious deity permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday, cash me out.

So evil can't exist unless good exists. But good can't exist unless God exists. In other words, there can be no objective evil unless there is objective good, and there can be no objective good unless God exists. If evil is real—and we all know it is—then God exists.

If there is no objective morality then love is no better than murder.