Quotes About Morality

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.

Said Leah, 'How do children learn if they aren't punished when they do wrong?' 'They are punished,' said Jacob 'Just not alOrways in obvious ways. When you're wicked, then Wisdom departs from you. You become more and more like an animal--like the baboons of the wilderness, or like a jackal. But when you're righteous, Wisdom dwells with you like a dear friend, and whispers always in your ear.

In wartime, commanders have always had to learn the concept of "acceptable losses." But those who keep their humanity never really accept the idea of acceptability

With gay marriage, the last shreds of meaning will be stripped away from marriage, with homosexuals finishing what faithless, selfish heterosexuals have begun.

Human is human," said Issib. "But civilized—that's the gift of the Oversoul. Civilization without self-destruction.

when everybody believes that everybody's actions are the result of free choice, and takes and gives responsibility accordingly, the result is civilization.

God gives us the freedom to do great evil, if we choose. Then he uses his own freedom to create goodness out of that evil, for that is what he chooses.

They make Lord of the Flies look like Pollyanna." "When did you read Pollyanna?" "It was a book?

And I began to suspect that the ultimate sacrifice isn't death after all; the ultimate sacrifice is willingly bearing the fullest penalty for your own actions.

You don't represent all humankind. You're about to fight a war with other humans. So how can you say that our wars are evil and your wars are good?' Surely Pizarro, for all his shortcomings, had an easier time of it with Atahualpa

Are great men ever really good? I know they can be, but we judge them by a different standard. Greatness changes them, whatever they were to start with. It's like war—does any war ever settle anything? But we can't judge that way. The test of a war isn't whether it solved things. You have to ask, Was fighting the war better than not fighting it? And I guess the same kind of test ought to be used on great men.

You can tell a lie now and then, but what happens to you when you try to live your whole life inside a lie?

Ender conocía las reglas nunca dichas de la guerra entre hombres, aunque sólo tuviera seis años. Estaba prohibido golpear al oponente caído indefenso en el suelo; sólo un animal lo haría. Precisamente por eso se acercó al cuerpo inerme de Stilson y le dio otra parada en las costillas, con saña.

Even if there is no such thing as free will, we have to treat each other as if there were free will in order to live together in society.

Wasn't that the definition of adulthood? That you wanted one thing, but did another because you knew what was right and good, and wanted to do the right and the good more than you wanted to do what you wanted.

You really are playing God." "I most certainly am not playing.

Blamelessness does not relieve us of responsibility

A man who embraces the voice of evil when it whispers in his ear is no less evil than the whisperer.

He was the most dangerous of men, because, in his actions, he saw only good. He saw himself as a hero.

Are there any who can honestly boast, My worshippers obey my good laws, And treat each other kindly, And live simple generous lives?

We're businessmen, Chubs. The moral high ground is wherever we set it.

If I could make my heart hard, said Alvin, I'd be a worse man, but a happier one.

He was scum, and so it was all right that they treated him like scum.' 'And you think he wasn't?' 'No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins.

In my opinion, there are two things that can absolutely not be carried to the screen: the realistic presentation of the sexual act and praying to God.