Quotes About Morality

Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster." —Friedrich Nietzsche

No one likes to be confronted with the truth about what they will do when motivated by fear. But its only human to act in our own self-interest. The slop is a slippery one, an abyss below. It gets away from you, that morality you cling to when things are going well. Its when the bottom falls out of your life that you really see who you are.

Why do we celebrate the monsters, the destroyers, the killers among us?

Gordon could ignore his conscience, but he could not disregard the Almighty.

To some extent. Men want to think the best of women, especially if they're attractive. Isn't there some truth in that? That we attribute moral goodness to attractive people? And to those who present themselves as victims? Natalie

You can't make people stop loving each other just because a law says it's wrong," I said.

righteousness [is] always more believable when combined with dreariness.

But, alas, in most of us good and bad are closely woven as the threads on a loom; greater wisdom than mine is needed for the judging.

Keep out of this, Lucian said. I'm not smiting anybody. You're showing mercy. Catch-a-Tick nodded. That's heroic, too. But not as good as smiting.

It is beyond any man's wisdom to judge the secret heart of another... for in it are good and evil mixed.

It is beyond any man's wisdom to judge the secret heart of another," he said, "for in it are good and evil mixed.

alas, in most of us good and bad are closely woven as the threads on a loom; greater wisdom than mine is needed for the judging

It is easy to judge evil unmixed," replied Gwydion. "But, alas, in most of us good and bad are closely woven as the threads on a loom; greater wisdom than mine is needed for the judging.

Inom de flesta av oss är gott och ont sammanflätade så tätt som trådarna på en vävstol. Större visdom än min krävs för den domen.

Vi är varken onda eller goda. Vi är helt enkelt intresserade av saker precis som det de är.

Of course not, agreed Orddu. We're neither good nor evil. We're simply interested in things as they are. And things as they are, at the moment, seem to be that you're caught by the Crochan.

Morality has its equations too - they graph the curve of compassion between the quick and the dead.

And they are beginning to realize that the world they live in is a place where the right thing is often hard, sometimes dangerous, and frequently unpopular.

I cannot kill someone, he thought.

What if others-adults-had, upon becoming Twelves, received in their instructions the same terrifying sentence? What if they had all been instructed: You may lie?

It bothered him a little to lie about small things. But he always had; he had grown up lying, and he still found it strange that the people in this place where he now lived thought lying was wrong. To Matty, it was sometimes a way of making things easier, more comfortable, more convenient.

What if they had all been instructed: You may lie?

Marlene had admitted in class that her boyfriend, a ninth-grader in another town, shoplifted all the time and that although she didn't like it much, she wouldn't dream of reporting him.

If the truth doesn't save us, what does that say about us?