Quotes About Morality

OCCIDERE POSSUNT SED TE EDERE NON POSSUNT NEFAS EST

Evil people never believe they are evil, but rather that everyone else is evil.

OCCIDERE POSSUNT SED TE EDERE NON POSSUNT NEFAS EST 32—and

They Can Kill You, But The Legalities Of Eating You Are Quite A Bit Dicier

X secretly castigates himself and wonder where his basic decency and compassion are.

The big thing that makes Dostoevsky invaluable for American readers and writers is that he appears to possess degrees of passion, conviction, and engagement with deep moral issues that we-here, today-cannot or do not permit ourselves.

The formulaic inexorability of these villains' defeat does give the climaxes an oddly soothing, ritualistic quality, and it makes the villains martyrs in a way, sacrifices to our desire for black-and-white morality and comfortable judgment...

The point is that if there is no God, then objective right and wrong do not exist. As Dostoyevsky said, "All things are permitted.

So how do you find out what God thinks? The Christian says, you look in the Bible. And the Bible tells us that God forbids homosexual acts. Therefore, they are wrong. So basically the reasoning goes like this: (1) We are all obligated to do God's will. (2) God's will is expressed in the Bible. (3) The Bible forbids homosexual behavior. (4) Therefore, homosexual behavior is against God's will, or is wrong.

Miss Leary, do you mean to insinuate that I should go encouraging homo-sex-uality amongst these corpses?

If a man has committed wrong in life, I don't know any moralist more anxious to point his errors out to the world than his own relations...

The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name. A polite public will no more bear to read an authentic description of vice than a truly-refined English or American female will permit the word 'breeches' to be pronounced in her chaste hearing. And yet, madam, both are walking the world before our faces every day without much shocking us. If you were to blush every time they went by, what complexions you would have!

If you take temptations into account, who is to say that he is better than his neighbour? A comfortable career of prosperity, if it does not make people honest, at least keeps them so.

And for my part I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moral senses—the very easiest to be deadened when wakened, and in some never wakened at all. We grieve at being found out and at the idea of shame or punishment, but the mere sense of wrong makes very few people unhappy in Vanity Fair.

With this purpose, the author chose for the subject of his story a woman named Catherine Hayes, who was burned at Tyburn, in 1726, for the deliberate murder of her husband, under very revolting circumstances. Mr. Thackeray's aim obviously was to describe the career of this wretched woman and her associates with such fidelity to truth as to exhibit the danger and folly of investing such persons with heroic and romantic qualities.

Nature made you for that career which you fulfilled: you were from your birth to your dying a scoundrel; you COULDN'T have been anything else, however your lot was cast; and blessed it was that you were born among the prigs, — for had you been of any other profession

And for my part I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moral senses – the very easiest to be deadened when wakened: and in some never wakened at all.

William Makepeace Thackeray

God will understand, my lord. And if he doesn't, then he is not God and we need not worry.

Je n'accepterai point d'endosser l'habit rouge du soldat ni qu'on m'envoie tirer sur mon ami français, allemand ou arabe dans une querelle dont le sens m'échappe : je me rebellerai plutôt. Je n'accepterai pas non plus de gaspiller mon temps et mon énergie à fabriquer un colifichet dont je sais que seul un imbécile en voudra : je me rebellerai plutôt.

I have reached the conclusion he lacks that moral authority, and sadly, by extension, I must include in that now those who appointed him to his post. They are not lawful orders, and most certainly they are not moral orders.

Machiavelli said a prince had to transcend traditional morality for the greater good of those he led.

So any order from on high, regardless of its moral worth, must be obeyed. Is that what America has really become? Did we let it slip away an inch at a time before we were attacked, and now we are finally driving straight off the cliff once and for all?

if a man is an honest idiot. i can love him. but i cannot love a dishonest genius