Quotes About Morality

Thou shalt not submit thy god to market forces.

Good or bad, do it as you. Too many lies and there's no truth to go back to.

but what should we do when the highborn and wealthy take to crime? Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?

YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. So we can believe the big ones? YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

It's hard to explain, said Brutha. But I think it's got something to do with how people should behave... you should do things because they're right. Not because gods say so. They might say something different another time.

you were so worried about legal and illegal that you never stopped to think about whether it was right or wrong.

Good and bad is tricky, she said. I ain't too certain about where people stand. P'raps what matters is which way you face.

Yes, but humans are more important than animals,' said Brutha. 'This is a point of view often expressed by humans,' said Om.

You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape – the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of his eyes – we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.

The jurisdiction of a good man extends to the end of the world.

I'VE NEVER BEEN VERY SURE ABOUT WHAT IS RIGHT, said Bill Door. I AM NOT SURE THERE IS SUCH A THING AS RIGHT. OR WRONG. JUST PLACES TO STAND.

Sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That's what sin is.

If you had enough money, you could hardly commit crimes at all. You just perpetrated amusing little peccadilloes.

War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for? he said. Dunno, Sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe? Absol—well, okay. Defending yourself against a totalitarian aggressor? All right, I'll grant you that, but— Saving civilization from a horde of— It doesn't do any good in the long run is what I'm saying, Nobby, if you'd listen for five seconds together, said Fred Colon sharply. Yeah, but in the long run, what does, Sarge?

History was full of the bones of good men who'd followed bad orders in the hope that they could soften the blow. Oh, yes, there were worse things they could do, but most of them began right where they started following bad orders.

NAUGHTY AND NICE? said Death. BUT IT'S EASY TO BE NICE IF YOU'RE RICH. IS THIS FAIR? Albert wanted to argue. He wanted to say, Really? In that case, how come so many of the rich buggers is bastards? And being poor don't mean being naughty, neither.

There was no universe, anywhere, where a Sam Vimes would give in on this, because if he did then he wouldn't be Sam Vimes anymore.

But there was more to it than that. As the Amazing Maurice said, it was just a story about people and rats. And the difficult part of it was deciding who the people were, and who were the rats.

Money makes people rich; it is a fallacy to think it makes them better, or even that it makes them worse. People are what they do, and what they leave behind.

The short conversation that follows eventually led to a tree religion. Its tenet of faith was this: a tree that was a good tree and led a clean decent and upstanding life could be assured of a future life after death. If it was very good indeed it would eventually be reincarnated as five thousand rolls of lavatory paper.

Assassins did have a certain code, after all. It was dishonorable to kill someone if you weren't being paid.

The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy.

Little crimes breed big crimes. You smile at little crimes and then big crimes blow your head off.

I'm not a natural killer ! See this? See what it says? I'm supposed to keep the peace, I am! If I kill people to do it, I'm reading the wrong manual!