Quotes About Morality

If you feel you belong to things as they are, you won't hold up anyone in the alley no matter how hungry you may get. And you won't write anything that anyone will read a second time either.

But if I could choose how and when I wanted to die, I would want to be an eighty-year-old man shot by a jealous young husband who had caught me in bed with his teenage wife.

Sometimes people rationalize their behavior. How about the Americans who gave atomic bomb secrets to the Russians? They were people who said they did it out of conviction—so one side wouldn't have all the power.

He had a clean shot, but he also had an informal rule of trying not to kill anyone within an hour of landing in a new country

We're not thieves. We're repatriating money that rich Cubans stole from poor Cubans so it can be returned to the rich Cubans who stole it.

When you cheat at poker, life, or taxes, you've taken the honor and fun out of winning, and ultimately you've cheated yourself out of the finest pleasure in life: beating the other guy fair and square. That's what I was taught in school.

Joe Smith had a Russian knocking on his door asking to be put up on the sly, Joe would be on the horn to the FBI in a flash. Joe does that because he thinks it's right, not because he thinks the FBI will torture him if he doesn't.

Daughters of the American Revolution don't have group sex because they don't want to have to write all those thank-you notes.

And so to seem like a regular guy and a good hire, I said, quoting Uncle Harry, "Whatever is not a crime is a business.

wanted to sleep with Beth tonight, but I didn't want to get involved tomorrow. On

When you're dealing with people who have no moral center, no loyalty to anyone but themselves, you don't always get the logical results you expect, or the truth that you paid for.

Well, aside from money, you have what I call dick crimes. Dicks get you in trouble.

early to bed, early to rise, makes a man sneaky and full of lies.

Perverted is any ordinary person caught in the act.

Hoje é muito difícil não ser canalha. Todas as pressões trabalham para o nosso aviltamento pessoal e coletivo.

We are not on our fours, howling in the woods, only because guilt saves us.

if you knock down every law in pursuit of the devil, then the laws are gone when the devil turns on you.

All rapidly accumulated wealth is either the result of luck or discovery, or the result of a legalised theft.

It was a war of evil against lesser evil.

Wisdom consists of knowing how to distinguish the nature of trouble, and in choosing the lesser evil.

Men never do good unless necessity drives them to it; but when they are free to choose and can do just as they please, confusion and disorder become rampant.

It is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity.

And yet we cannot define as skillful killing one's fellow citizens, betraying one's friends, and showing no loyalty, mercy, or moral obligation. These means can lead to power, but not glory.

But above all he must refrain from seizing the property of others, because a man is quicker to forget the death of his father than the loss of his patrimony.