Quotes About Morality

In London alone, there are 80,000 prostitutes. What are they but . . . human sacrifices offered up on the altar of monogamy? —Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism

A Truth that's told with bad intent Beats all the Lies you can invent. —William Blake, "Auguries of Innocence

Understanding infidelity does not mean justifying it.

Adultery has existed since marriage was invented, and so too has the taboo against it. It has been legislated, debated, politicized, and demonized throughout history.

As for the general public, we tend to judge the "other woman" far more harshly than the cheating husband.

I feel the same about cocaine as I do about eating meat," she said. "It's vile and ultimately morally reprehensible, but as long as I don't pay for it—I find it quite enjoyable.

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.

On Sundays, Presbyterians were not allowed to eat hot food or read the funny papers or travel the shortest journey; parents believed in Hell and believed tiny babies could go there. Baptists were not supposed to know, up until their dying day, how to play cards or dance. And so on.

People, they all have the word goodness on lips a bloody knife between their teeth.

Pofta de a ucide b?trani.B?tranii sunt scîrboÈ™i.Tinerii sunt mediocrii È™i nerozi.Tinerii mi-au fost întodeauna nesuferiÈ›i,mai ales cand eram tan?r.Curtea pe care maeÈ™trii de gandire,umbl? dup? clientel?,o fac tineretului,e unul din lucrurile cele mai înjositoare din cate cunosc.Cat? lips? de demnitate,ce laÈ™itate,ce nonsens!

The fact that I despise religion doesn't mean I don't esteem it highly.

Good men make good rhinoceroses, unfortunately. It's

Note, too, that fiction writers inevitably catch their central characters in situations involving ambiguities, not contradictories. The marshal in High Noon was being asked to choose not between a good and a bad but between two goods (or two bads, depending upon your angle of view).

You're worse than decent. You're virtuous.

Well, you wanted me to be a hero in blue, so you better be resigned! Murdering doesn't improve one's manners!

Voltaire, Rousseau, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Ibsen! Atheists, fools, and madmen! And your poets! This Dowson, and this Baudelaire, and Swinburne and Oscar Wilde, and Whitman and Poe! Whoremongers and degenerates!

For de small stealing dey puts you in jail, soon or late. But for de big stealing dey puts yo' picture in de paper and yo' statue in de Hall of Fame when you croaks! If dey's one thing I learned in ten years, listenin' to de white quality on de Pullman cars, it's dat same fact. And when I gets a chance to use it -- from stowaway to Emperor in two years. Dat's goin' some!

The day is for honest men, the night for thieves.

Ill-gotten wealth is never stable.

If, after all, there is no truth, how could it be true that there is no truth? If there is no absolute morality, how can you condemn the morality of considering my culture better than another? Relativism made no sense, as Shakespeare clearly saw.

Our moral decisions about ourselves can be spiritual. Our moral decisions about other people can only be practical.

There may come a time when even the most peaceful man alive has to fight or else something truly evil will happen

And the truth is, there may come a time when even the most peaceful man alive has to fight or else something truly evil will happen.

It is the paradox of virtue knit into the fabric of reality: you will not be free unless you are virtuous; you cannot be virtuous unless you are free.