Quotes About Morality

their mother is a whore.

I ain't never done nothin' that wasn't part sin, said John, and he looked at the long wrapped body. p. 241

Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing.

Ayn Rand brings the best and the worst animal instinct out in humans. Well, excuse me, I aspire to be further evolved ethically than that. I really believe that Ayn Rand is the Marilyn Monroe of philosophy--all seduction, little substance.

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

It still remains unrecognised, that to bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society; and that if the parent does not fulfil this obligation, the State ought to see it fulfilled, at the charge, as far as possible, of the parent.

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than action; innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) 'thou shalt not' predominates unduly over 'thou shalt.

It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.

The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.

I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures; and if such a creature can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go .

People go around mourning the death of God; it's the death of sssin that bothers me. Without ssin, people aren't people any more, they're just ssoul-less sheep.

Right and wrong aren't dropped from the sky. We. We make them. Against misery. Invariably, Harry, invariably--he grows confident of his ability to negotiate long words--misery follows their disobedience. Not our own, often at first not our own.

Dollars had once gathered like autumn leaves on the wooden collection plates; dollars were the flourishing sign of God's specifically American favor, made manifest in the uncountable millions of Carnegie and Mellon and Henry Ford and Catholina Lambert. But amid this fabled plenty the whiff of damnation had cleared of dollars and cents the parched ground around Clarence Wilmot.

The first breathe of adultery is the freest.

All these prohibitions old people think up. I think people should be free to do what they want unless it's hurting someone else.

Virtue was no longer sought in temple or market place but in the home—one's own home, and then the homes of one's friends.

I can handle it. I'm no addict, I'm a recreational killer. Yeah Harry says, like Hitler was a recreational killer.

Love has its own ethics, which the deliberating will irrevocably offends.

The tiger's world, by contrast, is not only amoral but peculiarly consequence-free, and this-the atavistic certainty that there is nothing more lethal than itself-is the apex predator's greatest weakness

The Golden Rule remains the best guidance in these matters," said Picard. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

We can prove that most Americans don't believe in pushing people around, even when we happen to be on top.

Justice has a price. That price is freedom.

I'd rather have a daughter in a whorehouse than a son in the police force,' Esther used to rage to anyone who would listen.

With humans it's abortion, but with chickens it's an omelet!