Quotes About Morality

We would all love to walk up to someone and shoot them in the head, there's no doubt about that. We're too civilised to admit it, but we're happy to read about it.

I liked the clear morality of 1941, when you had no doubt about good and evil. There was a lot of idealism, people fighting for a cause. People are searching for morality today.

You do things against the word of God, you have no fear. You're going to do things that are going to make shame of you and your family.

It doesn't make sense for me to be a lawyer in a place where there is no law.

It lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.

The moral backbone of literature is about that whole question of memory. To my mind it seems clear that those who have no memory have the much greater chance to lead happy lives.

At no point in any sport do you want to be known as a cheater.

In the end, you should always do the right thing even if it hurts.

People Should be judged by their actions, since in the end, it was actions that defined everyone.

Voltaire's pointed question, 'What to say to a man who tells you he prefers to obey God than to obey men, and who is consequently sure of entering the gates of Heaven by slitting your throat?

I'm a good person. In most ways. But I'm beginning to think that being a good person in most ways doesn't count for anything very much, if you're a bad person in one way.

I don't believe in Heaven or anything. But I want to be the kind of person that qualifies for entry anyway.

Clockers asks--almost in passing, and there's a lot more to it than this--a pretty interesting question: if you choose to work for the minimum wage when everyone around you is pocketing thousands from drug deals, then what does that do to you, to your head and to your heart? (Hornby's thoughts after reading Clockers by Richard Price)

Will wrestled with his conscience, grappled it to the ground and sat on it until he couldn't hear a squeak out of it.

You know that bad people can make great art, don't you?'Said Annie. 'Yes, of course. Some of the people whose art I admire the most are assholes.' 'Dickens wasn't nice to his wife.' 'Dickens didn't make a memoir called I'm Nice to My Wife.

If the price you have to pay for a sin is so high that you end up wanting to kill yourself and committing suicide is an even worse sin, then Someone's done his sums wrong. Someone's overcharging.

Experience, then, was something that enabled you to do nothing with a clear conscience. Experience was an overrated quality.

I had discovered after the Swindon game that loyalty, at least in football terms, was not a moral choice like bravery or kindness; it was more like a wart or a hump, something you were stuck with. Marriages are nowhere near as rigid - you won't catch any Arsenal fans slipping off to Tottenham for a bit of extra-marital slap and tickle, and though divorce is a possibility (you can just stop going if things get too bad), getting hitched again is out of the question.

It's brilliant, being depressed; you can behave as badly as you like.

Will restrained a desire to leap in at this point and tell her that an inability to hold down a relationship was indicative of an undervalued kind of moral courage, that only cool people screwed up.

Can I be a good person and spend that much money on overpriced consumer goods? I don't know. But I do know this: I'd be no good without them.

not even sex, especially not sex, please God not sex, the filthiest and most terrifying invention of the early seventies.

It's not reading and whatever that makes you good or bad. It's whether you rape people, or get addicted to crack and go out mugging.

Most decent people can't sleep easily at night, and that, apparently, is precisely why the world is in such a mess.