Quotes About Morality

Morality was not relative, they claimed, nor even existing solely in the realm of the human condition. No, they proclaimed morality as an imperative of all life, a natural law that was neither the brutal acts of beasts nor the lofty ambitions of humanity, but something other, something unassailable.

Whatever evil you let ride becomes commonplace, eventually. Problem is, it's easier to get used to it than carve it out.

witness two scenes. In one, an angry, bitter man beats another man to death in an alley in the Gadrobi District. In the other, a man of vast wealth conspires with equally wealthy compatriots to raise yet again the price of grain, making the cost of simple bread so prohibitive that families starve, are led into lives of crime, and die young. Are both acts of violence?

Rely not upon conscience,' Feren said, hearing the bitterness in her own voice and not caring. 'It ever kneels to necessity.

The problem is that we have evil people who try to skirt the laws. And that's the problem.

I just couldn't imagine hitting a child. But in 'The Slap' it's an extreme situation. You have to ask yourself - would you step in if a child was out of control?

Enormous slaughter may have been acceptable in previous centuries. It simply isn't acceptable anymore.

In any profession, there's a sleazy side and an honorable side.

Julie' has not been perceived as a sleazy film, and I am grateful for that.

My rule for the corporate stuff is the same as with my music - I do whatever means I can sleep at night and whatever means I can be dignified.

In the U.S., they just want to know who you're sleeping with.

I don't even like watching sex scenes in movies. I have a slight prudish side to me.

You will be amused when you see that I have more than once deceived without the slightest qualm of conscience, both knaves and fools.

I have no obligation to deal with slime.

Never bend the rules. You bend the rules a little bit and then it's a slippery slope.

No matter how small the dishonest deed is, at the end of the day, cheating is cheating.

More-radical scholars insist that an inherent clash exists between science and our long-held conceptions about consciousness and moral agency: if you accept that our brains are a myriad of smaller components, you must reject such notions as character, praise, blame, and free will.

Fundamentally, all art is about human beings. You're always showing larger moral questions through the smaller moral, philosophical, or political choices through one character in the book.

I don't like to eat octopus. They're so smart.

The measure of and self-congratulation for our own intelligence should have its basis in our moral behavior as well as our smarts.

To my mind there are not enough things that show the Nazis as human, as smart people, charismatic people, who are not inhuman naturally. But who are able to be fantastically inhuman when they choose to be.

At the end of the day, you're not defined, I don't believe, by your financial means. That doesn't make you a better person or a smarter person.

If you can find a way that your principles are actually the strategically smartest thing to do, you've kind of figured it out.

I never try to sit down with a moral because kids smell that and run.