Quotes About Morality

Roarke wondered if she thought of how many more would be hers—victims and killers. And knew, as he knew her, she did.

I'm fascinating by the hard line you're drawing over religion.' 'it gets used too much as an excuse, a fall guy, a weapon, a con. A lot of people, maybe most, don't mean it except when it suits them.

You'd never ask me to do something that wasn't right. There's a difference between right and regs sometimes. That's why regs can change, but right doesn't." And that, Eve realized, might be the long and short of why she'd made Peabody her partner.

We don't always do what's right, what's good. Not even for each other. But when it counts, down to the core of it, I believe we do exactly that. What's right and good for each other.

There is no such thing in man's nature as a settled and full resolve either for good or evil, except at the very moment of execution. —NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

Stuff it, Jerry. This isn't just police business. It's humanity's business. Humanity, Jerry!

You'd never ask me to do something that wasn't right. There's a difference between right and regs sometimes. That's why regs can change, but right doesn't.

Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical. —Blaise Pascal

Out of terrible times, perhaps more than ordinary ones, heroes and villains spring. Sometimes there's little difference between them but a choice, and the choice made defines them. Look at the choices.

Nothing legal makes you feel that good, honey. Or that mean. And she was feeling good and mean.

Replicating human beings in a lab, selecting traits, eliminating others. Who decides what are the parameters? What of the failures, as there must be in any sort of experimentation of procedures.

Money laundering's frowned upon." "A pity, as it comes out so crisp and clean.

It seemed only fair.

How do you know that? You couldn't have finished the book." "I skipped to the end." "You…" He closed his eyes as he drank more wine. "Some things are unforgivable

Some men can love with their heart, but their body wants more, and their mind allows this by believing it doesn't matter. Or count. Or hurts no one. The mind lies.

It's rare in war for either side to consider the innocent." Why

Money without honor is a disease. BALZAC

By action, by omission of action, people sacrifice other people all the damn time.

Do you wonder, ever, what makes a person capable of taking a life when there's no threat to his own or another? What makes them end life, and so often, so very often, with real cruelty, even with pleasure.

For himself, then. For his idea of the world, a world in which men do not use shovels to beat corpses into a more convenient shape for processing.

I'm sorry, my child, I just find it hard to whip up an interest in the subject. It's admirable, what you do, what she does, but to me animal-welfare people are a bit like Christians of a certain kind. Everyone is so cheerful and well-intentioned that after a while you itch to go off and do some raping and pillaging. Or to kick a cat.

No consciousness that we would recognize as consciousness. Not awareness, as far as we can make out, of a self with a history. What I mind is what tends to come next. They have no consciousness therefore. Therefore what? Therefore we are free to use them for our own ends Therefore we are free to kill them? Why? What is so special about the form of consciousness that we recognize that makes killing a bearer of it a crime while killing an animal goes unpunished?

She is no longer sure that people are always improved by what they read. Furthermore, she is not sure that writers who venture into the darker territories of the soul always return unscathed.

Why has he taken this job?... For the sake of the dogs? But the dogs are dead; and what do dogs know of honour and dishonour anyway? For himself then. For his idea of the world, a world in which men do not use shovels to beat corpses into a more convenient shape for processing.