Quotes About Morality

Is hacking ever acceptable? It depends on the motive.

We should often blush for our very best actions, if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done.

You can have the most wonderful motives for what you do, but if what you do harms other people, you're fooling yourself.

The Million Dollar Man was to professional wrestling what Ebenezer Scrooge is to Christmas. He was like a rich bully. He bullied everybody with his money, and his motto was 'Everybody's got a price.'

A computer study of the frequency of the word "duty" in British and American books showed its frequency had shrunk to one-third of its frequency in earlier times.124 Shame is another of the concepts that seems to have faded, as shameless behavior has flourished, and has even been celebrated as "liberation" in some quarters.

If we ever allow morality or law to become just a question of whose ox is gored, then we will have taken a fatal step toward national suicide. We can survive lapses into hypocrisy, but we cannot survive making hypocrisy a ruling principle.

Adam Smith declared "the good temper and moderation of contending factions" to be "the most essential circumstance in the public morals of a free people."51 But what good temper or moderation can be expected when a major segment of the population becomes convinced that "the system is rigged" against them and morality is just a giant fraud?

Adam Smith declared "the good temper and moderation of contending factions" to be "the most essential circumstance in the public morals of a free people." But what good temper or moderation can be expected when a major segment of the population becomes convinced that "the system is rigged" against them and morality is just a giant fraud?

In a secular democracy, a person is supposed to be punished only when he breaks the law; never because he is evil. That is, after all, what distinguishes a democracy from a theocracy.

The judge punishes lawbreakers as a burning house injures its occupants. A person may be burned to death while robbing a home or saving a friend. Similarly, from a moral point of view, the judge's work is good or evil, depending on whether the laws he enforces are good or evil.

Scientific knowledge does not contain within itself directions for its humanitarian use.

Men are rewarded and punished not for what they do, but rather for how their acts are defined. This is why men are more interested in better justifying themselves than in better behaving themselves.

In the history of the twentieth century, the principal dramatis personae were National and International Socialisms, better known as Nazism and Communism. Their citizens evaded the duty of self-responsibility by claiming to be following orders. Following orders -attributed to or issued by God, the State, Science, Medicine-is always the easy way out. Refusing to do so requires self-reliance and resisting temptations and threats.

Not until human nature itself progresses morally will the majority of people prefer peaceful and boring market relations to the violent and exciting relations between coercer and coerced, predator and victim.

Az ország sorsa nem azon múlik, hogy miként szavazol, mert ebben a játékban a legsilányabb ember is ugyanannyit ér, mint a legjobb; nem azon múlik, hogy milyen papírt engedsz a kezedbÅ'l a szavazóurnába egyszer egy évben, hanem hogy milyen embert engedsz a szobádból az utcára minden egyes reggel.

Le citoyen doit-il un seul instant, dans quelque mesure que ce soit, abandonner sa conscience au législateur ? (LA DÉSOBÉISSANCE CIVILE)

good deeds can be shortly stated but where wrong is done a wealth of language is needed to veil its deformity.

Indeed it is generally the case that men are readier to call rogues clever than simpletons honest, and are ashamed of being the second as they are proud of being the first.

If you have the power to put a stop to subjugation, yet look the other way while it happens, then you have done it yourselves

if one follows one's self-interest one wants to be safe, whereas the path of justice and honour involves one in danger.

Indeed, it is true that in these acts of revenge on others men take it upon themselves to begin the process of repealing those general laws of humanity which are there to give a hope of salvation to all who are in distress, instead of leaving those laws in existence, remembering that there may come a time when they, too, will be in danger and will need their protection.

What in me demanded that goodness in her? And what was the cost, the cost to her of such goodness?

If even someone like Chuck, one of the sharts of humanity, eventually saw Trump for the malevolent con man that he is, what does that say about the rest who still excuse him?

Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment.