Quotes About Morality

In America Bibles and slaveholders go hand in hand. The church and the slave prison stand together, and while you hear the chanting of psalms in one, you hear the clanking of chains in the other. The man who wields the cowhide during the week, fills the pulpit on Sunday. . . . The man who whipped me in the week used to . . . show me the way of life on the Sabbath

the sobering admission that slavery "did not die honestly." It had died in all-out war, from necessity, not from enlightenment and morality alone. It had been crushed in blood, not merely legislated out of existence

It was only in stupid stories written by idiots that good triumphed unscathed and only the evil died. She'd known that, but where did it say her people must always be the ones to pay for victory? Her

liars ultimately destroy the things they lie to protect, and corruption, ambition, and betrayal inevitably betray themselves, as well.

mercy and justice are deadlier than any rifle or bayonet.

I do not tell you that those who turn to betrayal, to theft, to murder and treason, do so only because they are good men who have been led astray. I tell you only that all men begin as good men. What they are taught as children, what is expected of them as young men, is either the armor about that goodness or the flaw that allows evil in.

Nothing else in this world can damn and destroy souls as effectively as our need to inflict vengeance and call it justice.

It's amazing what deadly weapons compassion and morality are when they're deployed in the service of diplomacy.

Love thy neighbor as thyself . . . as long as he's a Christian. Otherwise, go ahead and kill him. You'll be doing us both a favor, believe me." I

Granted, Catholic sexual teachings are often in the news, but if you think about it, the media rarely reports on what the Church teaches sex is for. Instead, it reports on what the Church teaches sex is not for.

We're all terrible people. Eventually, we all become terrible, maybe around the middle of our lives, and then, if we're lucky, we have time to find a way to be good again.

He is on the precipice of cheating, maybe, which in itself is a kind of thrill for him, and yet, if he thinks about it too much he knows it is the same thing. On the precipice or over the precipice, once you're there, you're there.

the most identifying trait of humanity is our ability to be inhumane to one another.

In self-defense and in defense of the innocent, cowardice is the only sin.

Everyone talks about justice, but there can be no justice where there is no truth, and these are times when truth is seldom recognized and often despised.

Sometimes complex and difficult moral choices are decided less by reason and by right than by sentiment. Perhaps such decisions are paving stones on the road to Hell; if so, my route is well paved, and the welcoming committee all ready knows my name.

Living in the modern age, death for virtue is the wage. So it seems in darker hours. Evil wins, kindness cowers. Ruled by violence and vice we all stand upon thin ice. Are we brave or are we mice, here upon such thin, thin ice? Dare we linger, dare we skate? Dare we laugh or celebrate, knowing we may strain the ice? Preserve the ice at any price?

The only way we'll be saved is if we save ourselves. Good people can't triumph over bad people just by being good; they have to act.

The line between moral behavior and narcissistic self-righteousness is thin and difficult to discern. The man who stands before a crowd and proclaims his intention to save the seas is convinced that he is superior to a man who merely picks up his own and other people's litter on the beach, when in fact the latter is in some small way sure to make the world a better place, while the former is likely to be a monster of vanity whose crusade will lead to unintended destruction.

Sometimes complex and difficult moral choices are decided less by reason and by right than by sentiment.

Some will accuse me of being judgmental. Thank you. And proud of it. You wreck a kid's life, I have no pity for you.

These days law thinks it's about nothin' but laws. Law don't remember it was once handed down from somewhere, that it once meant not just no, but was a way to live and a reason to live that way. Law now thinks nobody but politicians made it or remake it, so maybe it ain't a surprise some people don't care anymore about law, and even some lawmen don't understand the real reason for law.

These days, all I ask of Fate is that the people she hurls into my life, whether they are evil or good, or morally bipolar, should be amusing to one degree or another...Most good people have a sense of humor. The problem is finding smile-inducing evil people, because the evil are mostly humorless.

They said there was no rest for the wicked. In fact, there was rest neither for the virtuous nor the wicked, nor for guys like Billy, who were uncommitted regarding the whole idea of virtue versus wickedness and who were just trying to do their jobs.