Quotes About Morality

Every villain is a hero in their own mind.

Guilt is also a way for us to express to others that we are a person of good conscience. 'I feel really guilty about getting drunk last night,' we say, when in actual fact we feel no guilt whatsoever or, at least, we could choose to feel no guilt. When people say to me, 'I drank too much last night,' I always reply, 'I drank exactly the right amount.

That you feel something to be right may have its cause in your never having thought much about yourself and having blindly accepted what has been labelled right since your childhood.' —Friedrich Nietzsche

To live in accordance with nature, therefore, was to live in accordance with God. Male or female, Greek or barbarian, free or slave, all were equally endowed with the ability to distinguish right from wrong. Syneidesis, the Stoics termed this spark of the divine within every mortal: 'conscience'. 'Alone of all creatures alive and treading the earth, it is we who bear a likeness to a god.'48

The conscientious arsonist doesn't just set the building on fire; first he fills the fire extinguishers with petrol.

Het leven ís geen galerie, van boven tot onder in steriel wit geschilderd, met maar één kubistisch winterlandschapje aan de muur, of met maar één stuk excrement dat aan één draadje aan de zoldering hangt te draaien, of met maar één aquarium waarin op sterk water ocharme één beest ronddrijft dat proper in tweeën is gesneden, of wat er vandaag de dag verder nog allemaal naar voren wordt geschoven als zijnde 'de kunst van het moderne memento mori'.

Morality is not first and foremost about restriction and constraint. It's about human flourishing. It's also about the deepest sort of happiness. And it's about living a good life, which is, in fact, the best life. It's all about what you honor, cultivate, do, and become. It's common to think of any rules and structures

A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice

It seems that the people who question me the most are the ones who've committed the most outlandish or atrocious acts.

Evil, as considered in these cases, is a lack of choice.

I thought about the kind of man who would stop off somewhere for a gun but not put on a pair of pants before committing grand larceny.

There are many things worth living for, there are a few things worth dying for, but there is nothing worth killing for.

There are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, and nothing worth killing for.

Everyone draws the line of what's acceptable just beneath what they're doing themselves.

Technology is not good, it's neutral.

Dragons, for instance, have the right of safe conduct anywhere in Faërie. A reader may not like to read stories about dragons, she may be morally offended or aesthetically uninterested or simply sick of the subject; but at any rate she will not complain that the author has cheated by bringing in a dragon, because dragons belong in fantasy.

If we're not supposed to eat animals, how come they're made out of meat?

takes a devil to make a decent angel.

My theory is if you have a religion, it's a good one. Because some people don't have any at all.

Katz argues that we are engaging in a kind of theatrical storytelling, inside of our cars, angrily "constructing moral dramas"15 in which we are the wronged victims—and the "avenging hero"—in some traffic epic of larger importance.

I admit that I ain't no angel, I admit that I ain't no saint-- I'm selfish and I'm cruel and I'm blind. If I exorcise my devils, well my angels may leave too. When they leave they're so hard to find...

You got to tell me brave captain, why are the wicked so strong, how do the angels get to sleep, when the devil leaves the porchlight on.

there ain't no devil, it's just God when he's drunk.

don't you know there ain't No devil, there's just god when he's drunk...