Quotes About Morality

You oughtn't to yield to temptation. Well, somebody must, or the thing becomes absurd.

A man must fortify himself and understand that a wise man who yields to laziness or anger or passion or love of drink, or who commits any other action prompted by impulse and inopportune, will probably find his fault condoned; but if he stoops to greed, he will not be pardoned, but render himself odious as a combination of all vices at once.

A New York divorce is in itself a diploma of virtue.

I really believe that you grow up a certain way in New York. There's a New York morality, a sense of loyalty. You know how to win and lose. There's a thousand kids outside, you know who to push and who not to push. There's a sixth sense you develop just because it's New York.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do.

If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.

If you can't play the good guy, sometimes you've got to play the villain.

The Bible will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from the Bible.

I follow three rules: Do the right thing, do the best you can, and always show people you care.

With integrity, you have nothing to fear, since you have nothing to hide. With integrity, you will do the right thing, so you will have no guilt.

There is no sinner like a young saint.

Politics is dirty. Politics is exciting. Politics is often very, very difficult and disappointing. And I really would rather the world would be a little more like it was when my dad was young, where you knew pretty much where people stood on the great moral issues.

In a culture defined by shades of gray, I think the absolute black and white choices in dark young adult novels are incredibly satisfying for readers.

I grew up feeling from a very young age that what was right was right, no matter if God or my teacher said so.

When a young man massacres innocents, we have been trained to believe that the act was due to improper levels of chemical enzymes and misfiring synapses. As we learn more about our cells, we forget more about our souls.

Young man, if God had wanted you to see me that way, he would have put your eyes in your bellybutton.

I grew up doing a lot of traveling. My mom left home when she was 15 and traveled to 48 different countries and speaks six different languages. So I grew up with my eyes open. She raised me so that if my heart says something is wrong, I have to go help. What's right is right and what's wrong is wrong.

What is the distance between here and there, between now and then, between right and wrong? In Greg Baxter's pellucid first novel, 'The Apartment,' it may be simply the length of a day - but a day in which one travels surprisingly far, literally and figuratively.

In Scientology, in the Ethics Conditions, as you go down from Normal through Doubt, then you get to Enemy, and, finally, near the bottom, there is Treason.

Corporations cannot commit treason, or be outlawed or excommunicated, for they have no souls.

There is a great difference between Christianity and religion at the south. If a man goes to the communion table, and pays money into the treasury of the church, no matter if it be the price of blood, he is called religious.

In the final forms of moral disengagement, wrongdoers treat adversaries as subhuman animalistic, demonic beings. Expunging any sense of shared humanity eliminates moral restraints.

I've always felt like we're all human beings and we're all basically given the tools to make whatever choices we want to make. How we treat other people. How we treat ourselves. Just the whole philosophy of that and the philosophical logic of that is that we're all capable of great acts of evil, and we're all capable of great acts of good.