Quotes About Morality

As long as you have capital punishment there is no guarantee that innocent people won't be put to death.

People think that human beings have gotten worse, that because of the pressures that modern society puts on us, we've gotten worse, and we've gotten capable of doing more terrible things. I don't know if I necessarily think that that's true.

Liberal democracy has endured because its institutions are designed for handling morally hazardous forms of coercive power. It puts the question of how far government should go to the cross fire of adversarial review.

I've fixed hard problems of all kinds, civil rights and business problems. It's the stuff I like to do, and I'm good at it, as a matter of fact... and I never left my conscience at the door.

Any simple claim that you need religion to be good is flat wrong.

I look for characters that are extremely flawed and the anti-hero.

When you shoot someone who is fleeing, it's not self-defense. It's an execution.

Every child was taught from his cradle that money was Mammon, the chief agent of the flesh and the devil.

What would it take for me to eat human flesh? If that was the only way to stay alive, I would. I would eat anything.

Only among people who think no evil can Evil monstrously flourish.

Commercial movies have to end with moral flags flown again and all that.

They are focused on whether they can do something. They never think whether they should do something.

It is important to keep your head up and follow what you believe is right.

You follow what you think is right. There are lines that I won't cross.

I have only ever followed my conscience.

I'm not massively fond of right-wing nutters or war criminals.

A footballer isn't a devil or a saint.

We were raised with real values about the importance of work and respect for the people.

The major civilizing force in the world is not religion, it is sex.

Some people give themselves over to their most evil desires, and those people becomes evil. But in general, it's reductive to think of evil as something foreign and separate from the rest of us. Evil is part of everyone. We all have the capacity to commit evil acts.

Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.

We need to have a clear moral vision for both our foreign policy, and economic policy and policy on racial justice.

My deepest desire is to do the thing that is first and foremost just.

Rogues, would you live forever?