Quotes About Morality

A man should live his life a certain way not because of some divine authority, but because of a personal moral obligation to himself and others.

It's easy to say you will do what's right and shun what's wrong, but when you get close enough to any given situation, you realize that there is no black or white. There are gradations of gray.

I believe in Hell...but it's here on earth. He shakes his head. Good people and bad people. As if it were this easy. Everyone is both of these at once.

Instead of doing the best thing, we sometimes have to settle for the rightest thing.

But rules only work when everyone plays by them. What happens when someone doesn't, and the fallout bleeds right into his life? Whats stronger- the need to uphold the law, or the motive to turn one's back on it?

Her hands quieted. Yeah. Because even if the law says that no one is responsible for anyone else, helping someone who needs it is the right thing to do. I sat down beside her, close enough that the skin of her arm hummed right next to mine. You really believe that? She looked down at her lap Yeah. Then how, I asked, can you walk away from me?

But Katie knew it was a sin, had known from the moment she made the decision to lie with Adam. However, the transgression wasn't making love without the sanction of marriage. It was that for the first time in her life, Katie had put herself first. Put her own wants and needs above everything and everyone else.

There was no black or white. Someone who had been good her entire life could, in fact, do something evil. People were just as capable of committing murder, under the right circumstances, as any monster.

There are two reasons not to tell the truth--becuase lying will get you what you want, and because lying will keep someone from getting hurt.

Add love, and a person might do something crazy. Add love, and all the lines between right and wrong were bound to disappear.

Part of growing up was learning not to be quite that honest - learning when it was better to lie, rather than to hurt someone with the truth.

And I think, not for the first time, that what is immoral is not always wrong.

What's stronger-the need to uphold the law, or the motive to turn one's back on it?

Forgiveness is spiritual. Punishment is legal, Leo says. They're not mutually exclusive.

You know why I think we still execute people? Because, even if we don't want to say it out loud-for the really heinous crimes, we want to know that there's a really heinous punishment. Simple as that. We want to bring society closer together-huddle and circle our wagons-and that means getting rid of people we think are incapable of learning a moral lesson. I guess the question is: Who gets to identify those people? And what if, God forbid, they got it wrong?

I'm not saying you did the wrong thing. I'm not even saying it wasn't something I'd thought of doing, myself. But even if it was the just thing to do, or the fitting thing, it still wasn't the right thing.

The problem is that I'm Josef Weber's friend. but Reiner Hartmann is my enemy. So what do I do, now that they are the same man?

The problem was, you couldn't have one without the other. There couldn't be a bad guy unless there was a good guy to create the standard. And there couldn't be a good guy until a bad guy showed just how far off the path he might stray.

As it turned out, though, it was a lot easier to say that someone deserved to die for what they did than it was to take the responsibility to make that happen.

How far can a person go... and still live with himself.

But not all Jews were victims- look at Chairman Rumkowski, who sat safe with his new wife in his cushy home making lists, with the blood of my family on his hands. And not all Germans were murderers. Look at Herr Fassbinder, who had saved so many children on the night that children were taken away.

Hard work make us strong behaviour and intentions makes us unique.

I'm a big believer you should design work around a vast majority of people who want to do the right thing rather than around the tiny minority who might take advantage.

Cheating someone is a choice not a mistake.