Quotes About Morality

I am much more afraid of my good deeds that please me than of my bad deeds that repel me.

Each man was his own executioner and his own victim.

In those dark times, one rose to the very heights of humanity by simply remaining human.

Anything you want to say about God you better make sure you can say in front of a pit of burning babies.

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silent encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

But the forces of evil have not abdicated. The malevolent ghosts of hatred are resurgent with a fury and a boldness that are as astounding as they are nauseating: ethnic conflicts, religious riots, anti-Semitic incidents here, there, and everywhere. What is wrong with these morally degenerate people that they abuse their freedom, so recently won?

Humanity would never tolerate it

In retrospect I must confess that I do not know, or no longer know, what I wanted to achieve with my words. I only know that without this testimony, my life as a writer—or my life, period—would not have become what it is: that of a witness who believes he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory.

Look, whatever you do in life, remember, think higher and feel deeper. It cannot be bad if you do that.

You are the sum total of all that we have been," said the youngster who looked like my former self. "In a way we are the ones to execute John Dawson. Because you can't do it without us. Now, do you see?" I was beginning to understand. An act so absolute as that of killing involves not only the killer but, as well, those who have formed him. In murdering a man I was making them murderers.

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.

One German officer lived in the house opposite ours. He had a room with the Kahn family. They said he was a charming man - calm, likable, polite, and sympathetic. Three days after he moved in he brought Madame Kahn a box of chocolates. The optimists rejoiced.

I believe it was Jean Améry who noted that the first to bow to the oppressor's system and to adopt its doctrines and methods were the intellectuals. But not all of them. Not the rabbis and priests, who, after all, were intellectuals too. With a single exception, no rabbi agreed to become a kapo. All refused to barter their own survival by becoming tools of the hangman. All preferred to die rather than serve death. The lessons of the prophets and the sages became shields for them. On

Every murder is a suicide.

Je me souvenais de ce que mon vieux maître à la barbe jaunie m'avait dit un jour en m'expliquant le sixième commandement: pourquoi un homme n'aurait-il pas le droit de tuer? En tuant, expliquait-il, l'homme devient Dieu. Et nous n'avons pas le droit de le devenir trop facilement.

Do not hang a young man whose only crime is fidelity to his ideal

he slapped my father with such force that he fell down and then crawled back to his place on all fours. I stood petrified. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent. Only yesterday, I would have dug my nails into this criminal's flesh. Had I changed that much? So fast?

Everything had been said. The pros and the cons. I would choose the living or the dead. Day or night.

I remember he asked his father, "Can this be true? This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?" And

So I wrote this novel in order to explore distant memories and buried doubts: What would have become of me if I had spent not just one year in the camps, but two or four? If I had been appointed kapo? Could I have struck a friend? Humiliated an old man? And

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

why should God be allied with death? Why should He want to kill a man who succeeded in seeing him? Now, everything became clear. God was ashamed. God likes to sleep with twelve-year-old girls. And He doesn't want us to know. Whoever sees it or guesses it must die so as not to divulge the secret. Death is only the guard who protects God, the doorkeeper of the immense brothel that we call the universe.

Indifference is the epitome of evil. / "We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented

Could men and women who consider it normal to assist the weak, to heal the sick, to protect small children, and to respect the wisdom of their elders understand what happened there? Would they be able to comprehend how, within that cursed universe, the masters tortured the weak and massacred the children, the sick, and the old?