Quotes About Morality

Because animals are property, we consider as 'humane treatment' that we would regard as torture if it were inflicted on humans.

If apes are given the right to humane treatment, it just might become harder to deny that same right to their human cousins.

I would never call myself an expert on geopolitics. I'm not studied in it. But what I do know is what's right and wrong in terms of treatment of people.

Modern secular thought has its own dualism: It treats only the physical world as knowable and testable, while locking everything else - mind, spirit, morality, meaning - into the realm of private, subjective feelings. The so-called fact/value split.

The measure of a decent human being is how he or she treats the defenseless.

All I know is, he's a good kid, and he's done right all his life. And he always treats other people right.

I always felt the true test of a man's character is how he treats people he can't use.

It is a huge responsibility to make sure your son never ever treats anyone wrong.

That free will was demonstrated in the placing of temptation before man with the command not to eat of the fruit of the tree which would give him a knowledge of good and evil, with the disturbing moral conflict to which that awareness would give rise.

As I look around, I get this sinking feeling that we're off track, that there's something sick in the soul of our country. I examine the fruit that's hanging on the tree of America, and I can see that it's rotting. And that concerns me deeply.

A potential person is not a person, any more than an acorn is an oak tree. I don't think women should have to give birth just because a sperm met an egg.

A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are screwed first.

If God is just, I tremble for my country.

The only duty an artist has is in the quality of the art. There is no moral obligation to denounce. An artist confronted with a tremendous injustice sometimes feels inclined to say something. Denouncing the situation is the artist's choice.

The Civil War has a tremendous moral and emotional force.

Unless the character is suffering from tremendous self doubt or pangs of conscience, you have to get morally behind the character and their values.

I would ask: Given the nature of free-market capitalism - where the rule is to rise to the top at all costs - is it possible to have a financial industry hero? And by the way, this is not a pop-culture trend we're talking about. There aren't many financial heroes in literature, theater or cinema.

I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.

Scientists search for truth. Philosophers search for morality. A criminal trial searches for only one result: proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Examples one finds in the philosophical literature are somebody who's seen the trial of a child of theirs, where they're being proved guilty of some crime that would drive the parent into a depression, maybe a suicidal depression.

If Bush and Blair are eventually put on trial for war crimes, I shall not be among those pressing for them to be hanged.

We need to keep examining evilness. For instance, I'm totally against the fact that Osama bin Laden was shot. I think that he should have been put on trial and exposed as that human being he was. I think he should've been standing mentally naked in front of the rest of us and stand to justice for what he did.

Name your nation-state, or tribe or party - you have to rationalize what you're doing. You have to go to sleep at night. Does Dick Cheney sleep at night? Does he sleep like a baby?

Regardless of what tribe people think they're in, we don't work in isolation as human beings, we want to do what's right.