Quotes About Morality

I won't steal from her. I would never hurt one person's chances to help another—even if that other person was someone I cared about.

One thing you learn when you've lived as long as I have —people aren't all good, and people aren't all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives. Right now, I'm pleased to be in the light.

I often wonder if the bright benefit of belief outweighed the darkness it's abuse could bring.

Which was worse, Risa often wondered—to have tens of thousands of babies that no one wanted, or to silently make them go away before they were even born? On different days Risa had different answers.

The end doesn't always justify the means, dear, she said. But sometimes it does. Wisdom is knowing the difference.

Sometimes justice needs obstructing when it ain't just.

What does a Nobel Prize in science mean when your lifesaving work has been transformed into an excuse to end life?

Either someone with no conscience at all, or someone with a conscience so deep and sturdy that its center could still hold in the face of light extinguished.

And if there is some eternal world after this one, what fate awaits a taker of lives?

We're not all evil, the man says. Neither are we,, Jeevan responds.

Marie, if we were judged by the things we most regret, no human being would be worthy to sweep the floor.

Never lose your humanity," Scythe Faraday had told him, "or you'll be nothing more than a killing machine." He had used the word "killing" rather than "gleaning." Rowan hadn't thought much of it at the time, but now he understood; it stopped being gleaning the moment one became desensitized to the act.

But my pain must not prevent me from doing the right thing.

The way Miracolina sees it, if someone would rather blow themselves up than be tithed, well, that's like stealing from the collection plate, isn't it? It's just plain wrong.

It's just that unwinding makes slavery look good. It's always the lesser of two evils.

La gente no es completamente buena ni completamente mala. Nos pasamos la vida entrando y saliendo de la oscuridad y de la luz

Humanity is innocent; humanity is guilty, and both states are undeniably true.

In a perfect world everything would be either black or white, right or wrong, and everyone would know the difference. But it isn't a perfect world. The problem is people who think it is.

How can you choose the lesser of two evils, when both evils are too great to measure?

Und wenn ihr Gewissen droht, sie in den Abgrund zu reißen, müsste sie sich dann nicht davon befreien, damit sie überleben kann?

In a world where disease has been eliminated, the only way to die is to be randomly killed ('gleaned') by professional reapers ('scythes'). Two teens must compete with each other to become a scythe—a position neither of them wants. The one who becomes a scythe must kill the one who doesn't

You shall study history, the great philosophers, the sciences. You will come to understand the nature of life and what it means to be human before you are permanently charged with the taking of life. You will also study all forms of killcraft and become experts.

Abolishers of the soul (materialists) are necessarily abolishers of hell, they, certainly, are interested. At all events, they are people who fear to live again--lazy people.

Each day we take another step to hell, Descending through the stench, unhorrified