Quotes About Morality

Our relationship with killing is ambivalent, a compound of pleasure and aversion. Both are deeply rooted in human nature, and neither can be extirpated.

Human isn't a scientific concept at all. It's a folk-concept that means, roughly, one of us. As Rorty insightfully observes, such people "are morally offended Ã¢â'¬Â¦ by the suggestion that they treat people whom they do not think of as human as if they were human.

Subhumans, it was believed, are beings that lack that special something that makes us human. Because of this deficit, they don't command the respect that we, the truly human beings, are obliged to grant one another. They can be enslaved, tortured, or even exterminated—treated in ways in which we could not bring ourselves to treat those whom we regard as members of our own kind. This phenomenon is called dehumanization.

People have moral standing and inanimate objects don't—people can be harmed, but inanimate objects can only be damaged. But where do all the other life-forms stand? Oddly enough, our judgments about this depend in large measure on where we position them on the great chain of being. This ancient, discredited, prescientific model of the cosmos still unconsciously serves as a guideline for our moral judgments.

even the most zealous vegans can weed their garden and wipe out untold millions of germs with disinfectants ("green" ones, of course) without suffering a single pang of guilt.

the closer we judge a creature is to us on the hierarchy, the more inclined we are to grant it moral standing.

Identifying evolutionary origins of nefarious behavior in no way justifies or excuses it.

The whole entire world. There is no law. There is no right and wrong. The world is lies. There is no friendship. Every fucking thing. Every God-forsaken thing.

in this great land, found his crouched, finger-pointing yentism merely the performance of a deeper truth and moral imperative, reducible to "stop working, tax the productive until they stop working, and let the country go to hell.

Justice is the application of previously decided and accepted norms of conduct and the rules for their examination and dispute. It is as imperfect as any other institution. But a dispassionate, considerate, supportable, and moral resolution of differences is the goal toward which it aspires.

Cuál es la utilidad de ser bueno con un pobre? Preguntó Cicerón.

El hombre nunca hace el mal tan completa y alegremente como cuando lo hace por convicción religiosa. Dijo Pascal.

The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.

To devise situation where the protagonist is force to tell a lie, a useful figure for the writer is the Devil. Like the Devil, the author actively searches for flaws in a protagonist's character and seeks to exploit these flaws...As an author, your job is to find ways of exposing the lies of your protagonist.

Kellogg's Corn Flakes and Graham Crackers were originally marketed as a cure for carnal strivings and masturbation.

The Bible says that it's all right to cast the first stone if someone dead is telling you to do it

My conscience is crosswired with my sweat glands, but there's a short in the system and I break out over things I didn't do, which only makes me look more suspect.

Question: What's the difference between a whore and a bitch? Answer: A whore will sleep with anybody. A bitch will sleep with anybody… but you.

Not giving is no different than taking.

David Sosnowski

Before you do something questionable," Roger continued, as he had countless times before, "ask yourself, 'What if everybody did what I'm about to do?

Turns out, utilitarianism's way too simplistic

La izquierda, desde que asumió la representación del puritanismo, se lo puso muy fácil a sus rivales. Ellos mismos meten la cabeza en la boca de un león que los devora, porque nadie es capaz de sostener esa moralidad impostada que predican.

Just do the right thing." The simplicity is so removed from my own generation of helicopter parents.