Quotes About Morality

Renaissance diplomat and courtier Niccolò Machiavelli wrote, "Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.

Do not swallow the easy moralism of the day, which urges honesty at the expense of desirability.

Power is essentially amoral and one of the most important skills to acquire is the ability to see circumstances rather than good or evil.

My special job is the most interesting I know of anywhere. More fun than being king, pope, or prime minister anywhere-for no one can turn me out of it and I don't have to make any compromises with principles, Morgan once said. His principles-Do your work; be honest; keep your word; help when you can; be fair-were the words he lived by.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces. PORTIA, IN The Merchant of Venice, I

One does not have to be without sin to castigate someone else for being a rapist or murderer (386).

One does not have to be without sin to castigate someone else for being a rapist or murder.

I believe there are failures of character, like I said before. That's a sin.

You don't believe in sins. I believe there are failures of character, like I said before. That's a sin. Well, you're here now. This is where I want to be now.

I never wanted to safe... I wanted to be good.

Oh my God, she'd kissed him! She'd stuck her tongue inside a creature from hell. Oh jeez, this would sound great in confession. Say two Hail Marys and avoid further contact with the spawn of the devil.

As long as mortals choose to do evil, then evil will triumph. And Lucifer will laugh when people blame it on the Heavenly Father. But even with all the suffering in the world, the Heavenly Father will not take away your free will. He wants you to choose good or evil. He will not force us to choose good

Do you know what makes a human being decent? Fear. And therein lies the problem. None of you has anything left to fear anymore.

The only distinction between him and the monsters he'd taken down was the legitimacy of being paid by the winning side. Or

When had doing the right thing stopped being the automatic option and become something that had to be worked at instead?

If there were a button that would end the world, and that button were right in front of me, I would have smashed it so hard at that moment. I often thought about a button like that, and when I did, I always knew that I'd push it.

She's got a way of making a man feel guilty for certain things he'd never feel bad about on his own, like watching someone shoot himself in the face.

there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. When you kill a man, you steal a life... you steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a ather. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness... there is no act more wretched than stealing.

War doesn't negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace. - Baba

When you have lived as long as I have, the div replied, you find that cruelty and benevolence are but shades of the same color.

When you kill a man, you steal a life, Baba said. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do you see?

When you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the truth.

I see the creative process as a necessarily thievish undertaking. Dig beneath a beautiful piece of writing..and you will find all manner of dishonor. Creating means vandalizing the lives of other people, turning them into unwilling and unwitting participants. You steal their desires, their dreams, pocket their flaws, their suffering. You take what does not belong to you. You do this knowingly.

I see a creative process as a necessarily thievish undertaking. Dig beneath a beautiful piece of writing, Monsieur Boustouler, and you will find all manner of dishonor. Creating means vandalizing the lives of other people, turning them into unwilling and unwitting participants. You steal their desires, their dreams, pocket their flaws, their suffering. You take what does not belong to you. You do this knowingly.