Quotes About Morality

Whatever the Victorians did right in England, we need to resuscitate over here. In the late 19th century, the entire English population were propagandised into buying into a certain code of morals. I would be happy if we could emulate that in some way in America.

It is true, there are many bad people; there are more of them than in the past, but that is because there are more people, meaning the population has tripled; there must be three times more bad people.

It is easy enough to be moral after a good dinner beside a snug coal fire, and with our hearts well warmed with fine old port.

'The Portrait of Dorian Grey' beautifully articulates how the altruistic part of ourselves clashes with our essentially narcissistic state.

Instead of playing heroes and righteous people, I'd rather portray characters with problems of conscience who have to lie, to betray, and then have to cope with that. They feel more true to me.

Portraying as human the people you hear about on the news doing bad things is dangerous. But it's also necessary and important.

Morality is the least of my concerns. To me, morality in a society that - however moral its pose - is hierarchically organized is simply a lie, an alibi for the inequalities that exist in society.

Government lawyers, like private ones, face the problem routinely of aiding in the defense and development of positions in whose correctness they don't believe.

Never, ever cheat, especially yourself, even if you are absolutely, positively sure that you can get away with it.

Your peers will respect you for your integrity and character, not your possessions.

The possibility of sending an innocent person to their death is a reason why I'm against the death penalty.

The only possible ethic is to do what one wants to do.

Can postmodernism hold the perpetrators of genocide accountable?

The way I look at humanity, I don't think there's good guys or bad guys. We're all potentially bad and potentially good.

We should not pour muck on ourselves.

Evil, when we are in its power, is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, even a duty.

The most powerful moral influence is example.

I think that one of the errors that social conservatives made - particularly Christian social conservatives - was a belief that they needed to use the power of government to try to shore up the various things that they believe make up a life well-lived.

I don't believe America will justifiably make an unprovoked attack on another nation. It would not be consistent with what we have been as a nation or what we should be as a nation.

We need to consistently play our role as a moral leader in the world.

Well, I believe in the idea of 'normal' in the way that I believe in the idea of logic. Or the idea of character. All of these ethical constructs are just that: constructs.

Celebrities, whether from the world of entertainment or politics, moralize about the need to change individual consumption when they should be moralizing about the need to change collective energy production.

I didn't want to spend my life contributing to the development of more atomic weaponry.

I hate controversies and want to be in the news for the right reasons.