Quotes About Morality

Recall how often in human history the saint and the rebel have be the same person. (p. 35)

It is highly significant and indeed almost a rule, that moral courage has its source in such identification through one's own sensitivity with suffering of one's fellow human beings." (p. 16-17)

Indeed, compulsive and rigid moralism arises in given persons precisely as the result of a lack of sense of being. Rigid moralism is a compensatory mechanism by which the individual persuades himself to take over the external sanctions because he has no fundamental assurance that his own choices have any sanction of their own

Every authentic artist is engaged in this creating of the conscience of the race, even though he or she may be unaware of the fact. The artist is not a moralist by conscious intention, but is concerned only with hearing and expressing the vision within his or her own being. But out of the symbols the artist sees and creates—as Giotto created the forms for the Renaissance—there is later hewn the ethical structure of the society.

Myth safeguards and enforces morality," as Malinowski proclaimed, and if there are no myths there will be no morality.

People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.

Riskless warfare in pursuit of human rights is a moral contradiction. The concept of human rights assumes that all human life is of equal value. Risk-free warfare presumes that our lives matter more than those we are intervening to save.

Je crois que c'est les injustes qui dorment le mieux, parce qu'ils s'en foutent, alors que les justes ne peuvent pas fermer l'oeil et se font du mauvais sang pour tout.

Si dice che la cosa più tremenda del nazismo sia il suo lato disumano. Sì. Ma ci si deve arrendere all'evidenza: questo lato disumano fa parte dell'umano. Fintantoché non si riconoscerà che la disumanità è cosa umana, si resterà in una pietosa bugia.»

It wasn't true, the evidence was faked, but the odd thing is that, whether it s true or not, the consequences are the same: one large group of human beings or another turned out to be triple-distilled sons-of-bitches, which proves that we all have it in us. Whether the Communists staged a diabolical lie or the Americans sowed plague in China, the one thing that matters is that, as a man, you're in the gutter, Colonel Babcock.

Io credo che sono gli ingiusti quelli che dormono meglio, perché se ne fregano, mentre i giusti non possono chiudere occhio e si fanno il sangue marcio per tutto. Se no non sarebbero giusti.

A civilization worthy of that name will always feel guilty toward Man and that is, precisely, what makes it a civilization." Pascal, probably. It's always Pascal with the French, when it's not La Rochefoucauld. Aristocratic bastards.

That might be, but that's exactly where betrayal of human values begins: when the approach to science is merely scientific.

Tout ce que je veux dire, c'est que si les hommes cédaient toujours à ce qu'il y a en eux de plus humain, il y a longtemps qu'ils ne seraient plus des hommes.

I should've known it," he groaned. "The moment you pick up a bare-assed stripper from the Crazy Horse, she's bound to be religious.

Morally speaking, the fathers of the hydrogen bomb had nothing to do with the latter. They were cracking not ethics, not culture, not our soul, but a scientific and technological problem.

This was however NOT the scientist's responsibility. Morally speaking, the fathers of the hydrogen bomb had nothing to do with the latter. They were cracking not ethics, not culture, not our soul, but a scientific and technological problem.

To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime.

To wish a healthy man to die is the wish from a mind of sickness. To wish an ailing man to die is the wish of the ambitious.

To stop at moral judgement on whether caste was good or evil is insufficient, as the assessment has to go much further and examine why this form of discrimination/organization was chosen.

The tortures occur," he wrote. "If they are unnecessary, then there is no God, or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary for no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict them if they weren't.

The tortures occur," he wrote. "If they are unnecessary, then there is no God, or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary for no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren't.

A man of principles," Jesse said. "People say that about themselves when really they only want to make you unhappy.

Freedom is for honest people. No man who is not himself honest can be free – he is his own trap.