Quotes About Morality

Why is it that our automatic, intuitive moral judgments tend to be nonutilitarian? Because, as Greene states in his book, "Our moral brains evolved to help us spread our genes, not to maximize our collective happiness.

Lucifer — Pride Mammon — Avarice Asmodeus — Lechery Satan — Anger Beelzebub — Gluttony Leviathan — Envy Belphegor — Sloth

This whole idea—rules of war—was absurd, she thought. Men went about killing each other in the most ingenious ways they could imagine, and on a scale never before seen, but at the same time, they insisted on making up rules of engagement to preserve a facade of civilization and morality. They were like children playing a game, but one with horrendous consequences.

Men went about killing each other in the most ingenious ways they could imagine, and on a scale never before seen, but at the same time, they insisted on making up rules of engagement to preserve a facade of civilization and morality. They were like children playing a game, but one with horrendous consequences.

What men could wantonly do to each other, in the name of nation or faith or ideology, was unthinkable.

Men went about killing each other in the most ingenious ways they could imagine, and on a scale never before seen, but at the same time, they insisted on making up rules of engagement to preserve a facade of civilization and morality.

The clash was unsatisfactory to everybody. Therefore, the pragmatist claimed, we must reach a livable compromise. This approach puts the pragmatist on the side of the aggressor, though they don't advocate aggression. As a criticism of pragmatism, you can say that it is totally amoral, and every amoral system is on the side of the immoral. But the pragmatist is impersonal about force. Someone wants to bash your skull in, reach a livable compromise: tell him to break one leg. [NFW 69]

Deus ex machina not only erases all meaning and emotion, it's an insult to the audience. Each of us knows we must choose and act, for better or worse, to determine the meaning of our lives...Deus ex machina is an insult because it is a lie.

We burned to death 100 000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo - men, women and children. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?

I think Eleanor Roosevelt said it best: "Do what you feel in your heart to be right—for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

It is not the love of money that is evil—it is the lack of money that causes evil. It is working at a job we hate that is evil. Working hard yet not earning enough to provide for our families is evil. For some, being deeply in debt is evil. Fighting with people you love over money is evil. Being greedy is evil. Committing criminal or immoral acts to get money is evil. Money by itself is not evil. Money is just money.

The pull of an immoral world outside our homes is as strong as the force that sucks the soft, white stuff into the form. Neutrality on our part as parents will result in failure. Without our intentional effort to defy it, our kids will have no chance but to be thoroughly drawn into those things that we fear most.

human beings are a species splendid in their array of moral equipment, tragic in their propensity to misuse it, and pathetic in their ignorance of the misuse.

On the whole, we treat the Devil shamefully, and the worse we treat Him the more He laughs at us.

My position was a common one; I wanted to do the right thing but could not help regretting the damnable expense.

A world without corruption would be a strange world indeed - and a damned bad world for lawyers, let me say.

If you cling frantically to the good, how are you to find out what the good really is?

The beauty of ethics is that nobody can be perfectly certain about what it includes or even what it means.

What chance has a Saint Francis, if his Assisi is a multicultured, financial, unyieldingly secular northern city, whose lepers and other detrimentals are charges on the public purse?

the touch of evil poisons by the idea of it. Reject the idea, and you've rejected the evil

It doesn't matter what other people say about you. What is important is what you say to yourself. Do not be concerned with the judgement of others as long as you know what you are doing is according to conscience and you heart. Never be ashamed of doing that which is right; decide on what you think is good and then stick to it.

Act with integrity.

create a private life strong in ethics, rich with marvelous beauty and unyielding when it comes to the protection of your inner peace.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as to think.