Quotes About Morality

Economics is closer to religion than science.

You can only subject people who have a conscience to anguish . You can only punish people who have hopes to frustrate or attachments to sever; who worry what you think of them. You can really only punish people who are already a little bit good

For that matter, all this, is there a God? Corlis -- I don't care!" "Huh," I considered. "I guess I don't either". "Most people don't! All they care about," he added grimly, "is being right".

I have reflected on the fact that for most of us, there is a hard, impassable barrier between the most imaginatively detailed depravity and its real-life execution.

Over the years I observed Kevin watching decapitations, disembowelments, dismemberments, flayings, impalements, deoculations, and crucifixions, and I never saw him flinch. Because he'd mastered the trick. If you decline to identify, slice-and-dice is no more discomforting than watching your mother prepare beef stroganoff.

I wasn't sure. In those days I still held wholesomeness to be suspect.

What do you make of the proposition that the definition of a truly free society is a place where you can still get away with something?

Cheating,' Nollie agreed, 'is restorative. It maintains your dignity. Breaking a rule a day keeps the doctor away far better than a fucking apple.

You can only subject people to anguish who have a conscience. You can only punish people who have hopes to frustrate or attachments to sever; who worry what you think of them. You can really only punish people who are already a little bit good.

I see no reason in morality, why literature should not have as one of its intentions the arousing of thoughts of lust. It is one of the effects, perhaps one of the functions of literature to arouse desire, and I can discover no grounds for saying that sexual pleasure should not be among the objects of desire which literature presents to us, along with heroism, virtue, peace, death, food, wisdom, God, etc.

At the behest of the criterion of authenticity, much that was once thought to make up the very fabric of culture has come to seem of little account, mere fantasy or ritual, or downright falsification. Conversely, much that culture traditionally condemned and sought to exclude is accorded a considerable moral authority by reason of the authenticity claimed for it, for example, disorder, violence, unreason.

Since my moral system rests on my accepted version of the facts, he who denies my moral judgments or my version of the facts, is to me perverse, alien, dangerous. How shall I account for him? The opponent has always to be explained, and the last explanation that we ever look for is that he sees a different set of facts. Such an explanation we avoid, because it saps the very foundation of our own assurance that we have seen life steadily and seen it whole.

The disesteem into which moralists have fallen is due at bottom to their failure to see that in an age like this one the function of the moralist is not to exhort men to be good but to elucidate what the good is.

The balancing of present wants against the future is really the central problem of ethics.

When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists.

Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail.

It is better to catch the idol-maker than to smash each idol.

What saddens me is the corruption of youth and beauty, and the loss of soul, which is only replaced by money.

humanity is a messy business, where knowing what is right doesn't necessarily preclude you from doing what is wrong.

Wer ein Menschenleben rettet, handelt, als würde er die ganze Welt retten.

I'm not good enough for you. But no one is. And most men, good or bad, have limits to what they would do, even for someone they love. I have none. No God, no moral code, no faith in anything. Except you. You're my religion. I would do anything you asked. I would fight, steal, kill for you." -Kev to Win

He liked cheap women, fast cars, late nights, and hard liquor, especially all together. In Jack's view, you are obliged to sin on Saturday night so you'd have something to atone for Sunday morning. Otherwise, you'd be putting the preacher out of business.

Where are we going?" Annabelle asked, resisting his hold on her wrist. "To the house. If they're not willing to be witnesses, then it seems I'll have to debauch you in front of someone else.

Getting to a higher spiritual level is like increasing your credit score. You get a lot more points for sinning and repenting than if you have no credit history at all.