Quotes About Morality

Can't stop a Nazi with a lawbook.

The Second Table of the Ten Commandments reads in Hebrew something like this: 'Don't kill; don't be vile; don't steal; don't tell lies about others; don't envy any man his wife or house or animals, or anything he has.' This sounds shockingly wrong in English. For the English genius, religion is solemn and stately; Canterbury Cathedral, not a shul. The grand slow march of Thou Shalt Nots is exactly right. Religion for the Jews is intimate and colloquial, or it is nothing.

Religious people tend to encounter, among those who are not, a cemented certainty that belief in God is a crutch for the weak and fearful. It would be just as silly to assert that disbelief in God is a crutch for the immoral and the ill-read.

It's occurred to me that our human values, our ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, evolved in simpler times, before there were machines.

There is no morality in world history. There are only tides of change borne on violence and death. The victors write the history, pass the judgments, and hang or shoot the losers. In truth history is an endless chain of hegemony shifts, based on the decay of old political structures and the rise of new ones. Wars are the fever crises of those shifts. Wars are inevitable; there will always be wars; and the one war crime is to lose. That is the reality, and the rest is sentimental nonsense.

The reason for the prosperity of the wicked, and also for the troubles of the good, is not in our hands." Then

What matters is living with dignity, with decency, and without fear, in the way that best honors one's intelligence and one's birth. Part 2 THE FAITH

he now knew the difference between honest fright and animal terror. One was bearable, human, not incapacitating; the other was moral castration.

our human values, our ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, evolved in simpler times, before there were machines.

The British criminals responsible for dropping bombs on women and little children would soon have to face the bar of justice.

Political indifference is closely linked to ethical depravity.

Aristotle observed that people become virtuous by acting virtuous: if you do good, you'll be good.

Aristotle observed that people become virtuous by acting virtuous: if you do good, you'll be good.3

For Justice beats Outrage when she comes at length to the end of the race.

Upon being asked by a Reader whether the verses contained in this book were true.   And is it True? It is not True. And if it were it wouldn't do, For people such as me and you Who pretty nearly all day long Are doing something rather wrong. Because if things were really so, You would have perished long ago, And I would not have lived to write The noble lines that meet your sight, Nor B. T. B. survived to draw The nicest things you ever saw. H. B.

Ha de saberse que si se cede a una tentación, muy luego se presenta como el rayo la oportunidad de incurrir en ella.

My every impulse bends to what is right

It behooves a father to be blameless if he expects his child to be.

Human beings live for only a short time, and when a man is harsh himself, and his mind knows harsh thoughts, all men pray that sufferings will befall him hereafter while he lives; and when he is dead all men make fun of him. But when a man is blameless himself, and his thoughts are blameless, the friends he has entertained carry his fame widely to all mankind, and many are they who call him excellent.

Ojalá os volvierais agua y tierra ahí mismo donde estáis sentados, hombres sin corazón y sin honor.

My soul abhors a falsehood

A lie carries a weight that is exponentially higher than the truth. It's weight will retard growth directly in proportion to the area lied.

It doth make a man better,' quoth Robin Hood, 'to bear of those noble men so long ago. When one doth list to such tales, his soul doth say, 'put by thy poor little likings and seek to do likewise.' Truly, one may not do as nobly one's self, but in the striving one is better...

Any humane and reasonable person must conclude that if the ends, however desireable, are uncertain and the means are horrible and certain, these means must not be employed.