Quotes About Morality

You're just a typical little European from Ni?anta?. Not only were you brought up to look down on your own traditions, you also think you live on a higher plane than ordinary people. According to your kind, the road to a good moral life is not through God or religion, or through taking part in the life of the common people—no, it's just a matter of imitating the West.

Para mí, la esencia de la religión es el sentimiento de culpabilidad

Ali u zemlji kao što je naša, zemlji u kojoj je ljudski život ovoliko jeftin, nepromišljeno je upropastiti se zbog onoga u što vjeruješ. Velika na?ela i vjerovanja nisu za nas: oni su za ljude iz bogatih zemalja.

Herkesin bildiÄŸi gibi ÅŸeref meselesi gibi laflar asl?nda insanlar?n birbirlerini gönül rahatl???yla öldürmeleri için icat edilmiÅŸ bahanelerdir.

Roman sanat?n? siyasi yapan ÅŸey, yazarlar?n siyasi görüÅŸleri ya da üye olduklar? partiler deÄŸil; kültür, s?n?f, cinsiyet vs. olarak kendimize benzemeyen birisini anlamak, ahlaki, kültürel, siyasi yarg?dan önce ÅŸefkat duymak, yani bütün bu özdeÅŸleÅŸme ihtiyac? ve onun gücüdür.

Oysa bütün katiller, san?ld???n?n aksine, inançs?zlardan deÄŸil, fazla inananlardan ç?kar.

A great many young men try to justify themselves and check inward protests by the perpetual self-suggestion that it is better to keep on, for the present, in questionable occupations, because the great financial reward will put them in position to do better later. This is a sort of sedative to the conscience to keep it quiet until they can afford to listen to it.

To have done no man a wrong… to walk and live, unseduced, within arm's length of what is not your own, with nothing between your desire and its gratification but the invisible law of rectitude—this is to be a man

Real happiness cannot be bribed by anything sordid or low.

In a word trust that man in nothing. Who has not a conscience in everything. — Laurence Sterne

Every time we do wrong, every time we depart from the truth, every time we commit a dishonest, unworthy act, do a mean, contemptible thing, we lessen the Omnipotent grip upon us, and then we become a prey to all sorts of fears, apprehensions, dreads, and doubts.

The time will come when human drones will be ostracized from society as nobodies, as thieves of honest men's efforts, thieves of the results of honest men's labor. The coming civilization will not tolerate these thieves of society, these lazy vagabonds who do nothing but steal the products of their labor and demoralize society by their vicious example.

There is something inside of a man which protests against doing that which tends to injure another, that which does not square with his God nature, with the best thing in him; that which is not working in response to his highest aspiration.

Purity is power because it means integrity of thought, integrity of conduct. It means wholeness.

No human being can possibly injure another without injuring himself more. He cannot do wrong without paying for it in corresponding suffering.

We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.

An eye for an eye? How Christian of you.' Unbelievers always want other people to act like Christians.

Any decent person who knows what warfare is can never go into battle with a whole heart.

Good people aren't good because they never cause harm to others. They're good because they treat others the best way they know how, with the understanding that they have.

Quim, she said, don't ever try to teach me about good and evil. I've been there, and you've seen nothing but a map.

Colonel Graff: We won! That's all that matters. Ender Wiggin: No. The way we win matters.

She remembered the story from her childhood, about Adam and Eve in the garden, and the talking snake. Even as a little girl she had said - to the consternation of her family - What kind of idiot was Eve, to believe a snake? But now she understood, for she had heard the voice of the snake and had watched as a wise and powerful man had fallen under its spell. Eat the fruit and you can have the desires of your heart. It's not evil, it's noble and good. You'll be praised for it. And it's delicious.

Oh, Val, said Father. All you have to do is live your life, and everyone around you will be happier. No greatness, then. Val, said Mother, goodness trumps greatness any day. Not in the history books, said Valentine. Then the wrong people are writing history, aren't they? said Father.

Sometimes good people have to do terrible things.