Quotes About Morality

I can describe an axe entering a human skull in great explicit detail and no one will blink twice at it. I provide a similar description, just as detailed, of a penis entering a vagina, and I get letters about it and people swearing off. To my mind this is kind of frustrating, it's madness. Ultimately, in the history of [the] world, penises entering vaginas have given a lot of people a lot of pleasure; axes entering skulls, well, not so much.

Yours was the hand that threw him. You meant for him to die." His chains chinked softly. "I seldom fling children from towers to improve their health. Yes, I meant for him to die.

Give me priests who are fat and corrupt and cynical,(...) the sort who like to sit on soft satin cushions, nibble sweetmeats, and diddle little boys. It's the ones who believe in gods who make the trouble. (Tyrion)

A ruler needs a good head and a true heart," she famously told the king. "A cock is not essential.

You kill men for the wrongs they have done, not the wrongs that they may do someday.

Her lord father had taught her never to steal, but it was growing harder to remember why.

The vilest of men and the wickedest of women likewise may do good from time to time, for love and compassion and pity may be found in even the blackest of hearts.

In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which.

You don't just have people who wake up in the morning and say, "What evil things can I do today, because I'm Mr. Evil?" People do things for what they think are justified reasons. Everybody is the hero of their own story, and you have to keep that in mind. If you read a lot of history, as I do, even the worst and most monstrous people thought they were the good guys. We're all very tangled knots.

If half an onion is black with rot, it is a rotten onion. A man is good or he is evil.

I am doing the right thing, he told himself, so why do I feel so bad?

No Queen has clean hands.

I wonder what the High Septon would have to say about the sanctity of oaths sworn while dead drunk, chained to a wall, with a sword pressed to your chest?

Harsh justice is still justice.

Sins may be forgiven. Crimes require punishment.

We are as the gods made us. Strong and weak, good and bad, cruel and kind, heroic and selfish. Know that if you would rule over the kingdom of men.

Sometimes they are heroes. Sometimes they are villains. More often they are something in between, grey characters … and grey has long been my favorite color. It is so much more interesting than black or white.

Is he blind, or merely stupid?" "He is honorable. Sometimes it amounts to the same thing.

Things are not always as they seemed, Much that may seem evil can be good.

Better a beggar than a thief.

Many good men have been bad kings, Maester Aemon used to say, and some bad men have been good kings.

Black and white and grey, all the shades of truth.

Good and evil are silly lies, nonsense put forth to plague honest sensible men.

A grey man," she said. "Neither white nor black, but partaking of both. Is that what you are, Ser Davos?" "What if I am? It seems to me that most men are grey." "If half of an onion is black with rot, it is a rotten onion. A man is good, or he is evil.