Quotes About Morality

I am responsible only to myself and my God. Only I know what I did of my own free will.

What Hitler taught us–to an extent greater than anyone else in history, though we would become aware of it again in Vietnam–is that a licence to kill creates a momentum which defies moral sensibility and discernment and destroys the capacity of the individual to distinguish between good and evil or, and this is perhaps even worse, to act against a recognized wrong.

on the whole the US personnel soon felt considerably more sympathy for the Germans than for their victims.

Intelligence, of course, is not necessarily equated to morality; indeed can become perilous if applied to nefarious purposes.

Early in 1943, when the Germans had ordered that the 25,000 Jews of Sofia be deported to Poland, one man – Monsignor Angelo Roncalli, Apostolic Delegate to Turkey, later Pope John xxiii – acted without thought of political expediency or of what the Nazis might do.

There were various things which were absolutely essential to survival: it was essential to fill oneself completely with a determination to survive; it was essential to create in oneself a capacity for dissociating oneself to some extent from Treblinka; it was important not to adapt completely to it. Complete adaptation, you see, meant acceptance. And the moment one accepted, one was morally and physically lost.

Mais l'endoctrinement en bas age peut marquer un individu à vie: "ces écoles mettent les enfants face à un seul schéma de pensée, en réduisant au minimum leur vision du monde.on leur apprend que rien n'existe en dehors du bien et du mal, toute nuance est effacée", précise le docteur chérif.

Que não sabemos nem o que é o bem nem o que é o mal para nós. Mas que podemos decidir livremente o sentido a dar às coisas que acontecem. E essa é, no fundo, a nossa única força.

My conscience is clear, because I know that in my conscience and in front of God I am guilty of nothing. I hope human justice will see at the same way.

More evil gets done in the name of righteousness than any other way.

Evil is relative…You can't hang a sign on it. You can't touch it or taste it or cut it with a sword. Evil depends on where you are standing, pointing your indicting finger.

I believe in our side and theirs, with the good and evil decided after the fact, by those who survive. Among men you seldom find the good with one standard and the shadow with another.

Oh, 'twould be marvelous if the world and its moral questions were like some game board, with plain black players and white, and fixed rules, and nary a shade of grey.

I guess each of us, at some time, finds one person with whom we are compelled towards absolute honesty, one person whose good opinion of us becomes a substitute for the broader opinion of the world. And that opinion becomes more important than all our sneaky, sleazy schemes of greed, lust, self-aggrandizement, whatever we are up to while lying the world into believing we are just plain nice folks.

We're the worst thing because for us the worst thing is the best thing. And it's only the best thing for us if it's the worst thing for someone else.

Telling the truth is a beautiful act even if the truth itself is ugly

This, of course, is the crux. It doesn't really matter what the language is, only whether there's a transcendent moral grammar underpinning it. No one really cares what hell's called or who runs it. They just don't want to go there.

There's always someone's father, someone's mother, someone's wife, someone's son. This is the problem with killing and eating people. One of the problems.

It's why we close the eyes, too. The dead shouldn't have to look on the lewd aliveness of the living.

There is no God. And that's His only Commandment.

I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, I won't be laid-a-hand on. I don't do these things to other people and I require the same of them.

You shut your door to these poor women," he said so they could hear him, "and you'll answer for it the rest of your lives. You won't sleep. You'll choke on drinks. The food you eat'll block up your bowels and you'll die of your own shit.

Everybody has laws he lives by, I expect. I have mine as well." "What laws?" Bond Rogers was dismayed. Yet she waited, evidently as curious as her son. "I will not be laid a hand on. I will not be wronged. I will not stand for an insult. I don't do these things to others. I require the same from them.

The only difference between Las Vegas and Washington, D.C. is that at least Vegas has the decency to admit the town is full of hookers and crooks.