Quotes About Morality

Everybody does it! Quirke burst out. It's perks ! Everybody? said Vimes. He looked around at the squad. Anyone else here take bribes? His glare ran from face to face, causing most of the squad to do an immediate impression of the Floorboard and Ceiling Inspectors Synchronized Observation Team.

He wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew…then it was too high.

It was written in some holy book, apparently, so that made it okay, and probably compulsory.

it's true that some if the most terrible things in the works are done by people who think, genuinely think, that they're doing it for the best, especially if there is some god involved.

There will be justice, said Brutha. If there is no justice, there is nothing.

They stole from rich merchants and temples and kings. They didn't steal from poor people; this was not because there was anything virtuous about poor people, it was simply because poor people had no money.

One of my predecessors used to have people torn to death by wild tortoises. It was not a quick death.

It was a little like stealing. It was exactly like stealing. It was, in fact, stealing. But there was no law against it because no one knew the crime existed, so is it really stealing if what's stolen isn't missed? And is it stealing if you're stealing from thieves? Anyway, all property is theft, except mine.

I nearly committed a terrible sin, said Brutha. I nearly ate fruit on a fruitless day. That's a terrible thing, a terrible thing, said Om. Now cut the melon.

I mean, it's one thing saying you've got the best god, but sayin' it's the only real one is a bit of a cheek, in my opinion. I know where I can find at least two any day of the week. And they say everyone starts out bad and only gets good by believin' in Om, which is frankly damn nonsense.

You were the kind of kid who couldn't see the difference between throwing rocks at a cat and setting it on fire.

People were strange like that. Steal five dollars and you were a petty thief. Steal thousands of dollars and you were either a government or a hero.

While evidence says that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, they're probably all on first steps.

The flip side of the coin of which Good and Evil are but one side.

No more kings. Vimes had difficulty in articulating why this should be so, why the concept resonated in his very bones. After all, a good many of the patricians had been as bad as any king. But they were...sort of...bad on equal terms. What set Vimes's teeth on edge was the idea that kings were a different kind of human being. A higher lifeform. Somehow magical.

For the first time in her life Granny wondered whether there might be something important in all these books people were setting such store by these days, although she was opposed to books on strict moral grounds, since she had heard that many of them were written by dead people and therefore it stood to reason reading them would be as bad as necromancy.

Everyone should occasionally break the law in some small and delightful way, Drumknott. It's good for the hygiene of the brain.

Sometimes life reaches that desperate point where the wrong thing to do has to be the right thing to do.

Sometimes what is legal isn't what is right, and sometimes it needs a witch to tell the difference.

What will you do?" said Susan. "Lie," said Lu-Tze happily. "It's amazing how often that works.

And there are those who would rather be behind evil than in front of it

The trouble is, you see, that if you do know Right from Wrong, you can't choose Wrong. You just can't do it and live.

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?

We look to… the edges,' said Mistress Weatherwax. 'There's a lot of edges, more than people know. Between life and death, this world and the next, night and day, right and wrong… an' they need watchin'. We watch 'em, we guard the sum of things. And we never ask for any reward. That's important.