Quotes About Morality

Why is it that people who wouldn't dream of stealing anything else think it's perfectly all right to steal books?

Zij geloofde aan een samenhang van alle verschijnselen, zonder echter een hogere macht aansprakelijk te stellen voor wat haar overkwam, zonder van een god persoonlijke bemoeienis met haar lot, troost, of loon naar werken te verwachten. Zij was er van overtuigd dat in de mens zelf de krachten ontstaan die men Goed en Kwaad noemt, en dat alleen door de ontwikkeling van het individuele bewustzijn de wil tot integriteit een menselijk gegeven wordt.

We do not sufficiently respect that anti-mephistoclean force which, like the mephistoclean one, threatens the balance of life: a force that constantly wishes what is good and constantly produces what is evil.

Kun ihminen antaa ahneudelleen ylivallan, siihen liittyy aina riskejä.

It is not so much the sight of immorality of the great that is to be feared as that of immorality leading to greatness. ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE Democracy in America

Il concetto di giustizia non significa solo che le persone che commettono reati vengano condannate. Significa anche non arrendersi mai.

He was religious, but had refrained from allowing his religious ideals to be obscured by a god.

Wallander felt on the verge of misconduct.

When you battle with your conscience and lose, you win. -Henny Youngman, comedian and violinist (1906-1998)

The thought that human beings are considering saving lives by killing millions of their fellow human beings is so preposterous that the words 'saving life' have lost all of their meaning. One of the most tragic facts of our century is that this 'No' to nuclear weapons has been spoken so seldom, so softly, and by so few.

I think [Robert E.] Lee should have been hanged. It was all the worse that he was a good man, had a good character, and acted conscientiously. It's always the good men who do the most harm.

Morality is a private and costly luxury.

The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?

Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

I am convinced that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough.

Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resigns his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.

There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing....

I wish my countrymen to consider, that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual, without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length ever become the laughing-stock of the world.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

In an unjust society the only place for a just man is prison.