Quotes About Morality

At last she said, "Them Burdicks isn't worth the powder and shot to blow them up. They're like a pack of hound dogs. They'll chase livestock, suck eggs, and lick the skillet. And steal? They'd steal a hot stove and come back for the smoke.

There was no path to victory when you couldn't attack into the heart of enemy territory for fear of collateral damage. Collateral damage! God help you if you killed some civilians, even if those were the very people supporting and enabling our enemies. Had that philosophy held sway in World War II, every American would now be speaking Japanese or German.

Bribing was a subtle and even gracious art. It was considered in better taste to bribe indirectly. For example, one could offer a generous donation to a 'charitable' cause, chaired by the official's wife; or sell him a piece of property at a fraction of its actual value; or buy something from him (e.g. a painting) for a sum far in excess of its value.

Movies are movies, and I don't think any of them are going to hurt the moral fiber of America and all that nonsense.

You can't talk about fucking in America, people say you're dirty. But if you talk about killing somebody, that's cool.

Let's state it clearly: One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway.

What makes us moral beings is that...there are some acts we believe we ought to die rather than commit...But now suppose that one has in fact done one of the things one could not have imagined doing, and finds that one is still alive. At that point, one's choices are suicide, a life of bottomless self-disgust, and an attempt to live so as never to do such a thing again. Dewey recommends the third choice.

Human beings need to be made happier, but they do not need to be redeemed, for they are not degraded beings, not immaterial souls imprisoned in material bodies, not innocent souls corrupted by original sin.

If pain were all that mattered, it would be as important to protect the rabbits from the foxes as to protect the Jews from the Nazis.

The other possibility was that there was no right thing to say, that the choice wasn't between right and wrong but between wrong, more wrong, and as wrong as you can get.

Well, you know, it ain't nothin' out of the ordinary happened to Olive and me. Happens hundreds of times every day. But we're still livin' in the dark ages, I guess. Cain't just go to a doctor and say you want an abortion. Be ten thousand people that's got nothin' better to do than trying to run everybody else's lives, and they'd put you in jail, or shoot you or somethin'.

Ä°yi bir iÅŸin nitelikleriyle iyi bir karakterin nitelikleri art?k örtüÅŸmüyordu.

Hangi kötülüÄŸe tahammül edeceÄŸimiz hangi iyiliÄŸin peÅŸinde olduÄŸumuza baÄŸl?d?r.

When Mark Twain was told in 1905 by the librarian of the Brooklyn Public Library that copies of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn had been removed from the shelves of the children's room, he replied, "I wrote Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn for adults exclusively, and it always distresses me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean.

Fairy tales have rules. You are a princess or you aren't. You are pure at heart or you aren't. If you are pure at heart, or lucky, you might catch a break.

Killing was never a good idea unless there were no other ideas.

You can steal in this country, you can rape and murder, you can bribe public officials, you can pollute the morals of the young, you can burn your place of business down for the insurance money, you can do almost anything you want, and if you act with just a little caution and common sense you'll never even be indicted. But if you don't pay your income tax, Grofield, you will go to jail.

leadership often means having to choose between two bad options and that good men have to make decisions that have bad consequences.

But in practice there is no clear reason why a division of labour in society should necessarily imply a division of moral behaviour as well.

it is impossible to cure a political prostitute from whoring'.

Richard Turner

We are not merely the most intelligent of animals. We also have a rare and perplexing combination of moral tendencies. We can be the nastiest of species and also the nicest.

there is one thing we all take from granted: from hunter-gatherers to the Pope, we all live by a moral compass.

Many tendencies that we regard as morally reprehensible clearly evolved, including numerous kinds of sexual coercion, lethal violence, and social domination. Equally, many morally delightful tendencies did not evolve, such as charity to strangers and kindness to animals.