Quotes About Morality

Besonders rätselhaft ist die Frage, in welchem historischen Zeitalter wir leben: in einem puritanischen oder einem freizügigen. ....Einerseits haben Eltern nichts dagegen einzuwenden, wenn ihre sechzehnjährige Tochter einen Jungen zum Übernachten mit nach Hause bringt. Vielleicht bieten sie sogar den beiden am nächsten Morgen Frühstück an. Andererseits wird ein Erwachsener, der am Strand ein Foto von einem Kind im Badeanzug macht, ins Gefängnis gesteckt.

Diese Haltung zur Opferung von Menschenleben ist seltsam. Militärbefehlshaber überlegen nicht zweimal, wenn sie Soldaten in die Schlacht schicken und dabei genau wissen, dass viele von ihnen sterben werden. [...] Andererseits verbietet es der Offiziersethos, einzelne Soldaten auszuwählen und ihnen zu befehlen, ihr Leben zu opfern [...]. Und doch - und das ist noch paradoxer - werden Soldaten, die eine solche Tat aus eigener Initiative vollbringen, als Helden betrachtet.

Do I believe in helping people? he wondered. He might help people, he might not help them, he did not know beforehand, anything was possible. He did not seem to have a belief, or did not seem to have a belief regarding help. Perhaps I am the stony ground, he thought.

A uno le gustaría seguir sintiendo cierto respeto por cualquier persona que prefiere la muerte al deshonor

The filth of village; honestly acquired.

All creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice. But we live in a world of laws, a world of the second-best. There is nothing we can do about that. We are fallen creatures. All we can do is to uphold the laws, all of us, without allowing the memory of justice to fade.

Qué le da derecho a sentir asco por los tópicos cuando el resto del mundo los acepta y vive de acuerdo con ellos?

La culpa y la salvación son abstracciones. Yo no actúo de acuerdo con meras abstracciones.

The crime that is latent in us we must inflict on ourselves, I say. I nod and nod, driving the message home. Not on others, I say.

Ponekad se pitam, re?e, kako bi bilo da Božja stvorenja nemaju sna. Kad bismo ?itav život provodili budni, da li bi nas to u?inilo boljim ljudima ili gorim?

Es posible, pero hay consideraciones superiores a obedecer la ley, imperativos superiores. –Ah, ¿sí? No lo sabía. Gracias, pero a mí me basta con la ley.

Sin embargo, y regreso a mi primera pregunta, ¿acaso es bueno que el imperio de la ley no conceda excepciones? Si la ley se aplica sin excepciones, ¿qué lugar queda para la compasión?

Qué le da a un desconocido, a un hombre que no la vio en su vida, el derecho a ponerse una toga escarlata y decir: «Una vida entera de encierro, ese es el valor de su vida»? O bien: «Veinticinco años en las minas de sal». ¡No tiene ningún sentido! ¡Hay crímenes que no se pueden medir!

I tell myself I talk to Friday to educate him out of darkness and silence. But is that the truth? There are times when benevolence deserts me and I use words only as the shortest way to subject him to my will. At such times I understand why Cruso preferred not to disturb his muteness. I understand, that is to say, why a man will choose to be a slaveowner. Do you think less of me for this confession?

Others in the ancient world who denounced usury include Plato, Moses, Muhammad, Aristotle and Buddha. When a line-up like that is in agreement, it is perhaps worth thinking twice about our acceptance of it.

We can tell this story without the help of the Devil, if it makes you more comfortable. Consider the story of the Greek Titan Prometheus. Prometheus stole fire from the Gods and gave it to mankind. As a punishment, Zeus chained him to a rock and he had his liver eaten out by a giant eagle. Then the liver grew back, and the eagle feasted again. In this way Prometheus was tortured for eternity. All of which illustrates a profound truth, which is that Gods are bastards.

If you were to force people to do something against their free choice, you would be dehumanizing them. The option of forcing everyone to go to heaven is immoral, because it's dehumanizing; it strips them of the dignity of making their own decision; it denies them their freedom of choice; and it treats them as a means to an end. When God allows people to say 'no' to him, he actually respects and dignifies them.

the degree of someone's just punishment is not a function of how long it took to commit the deed; rather, it's a function of how severe the deed itself was.

Quick question. Does this magical skill with gray matter come with a total lack of compunction for your kind, or is it just you who were born without a conscience? V: I beg your pardon?

Devina] "You know, Adrian, you ever get bored with being a Goody Two-shoes, you could come over to my side." "Because you have cookies, right." Those black eyes returned to his own. "And so much more." "Well, I'm on a diet. Sorry—but thanks for the invite.

Bad deeds like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder.

The righteous do not always do right, but their souls remain pure.

In his old life, the answer would have been easy: He'd have just put a gun to Vin's head and dragged the fucker to the altar. Now? He needed to be a little more civilized.

Souls were the same. They, too, had useless baggage that impeded their proper performance, these annoying, holier-than-thou bits dangling like an appendix waiting for infection. Faith and hope and love...prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude...all this useless clutter just packed too much damn morality into the heart, getting in the way of the soul's innate desire for malignancy.