Quotes About Morality

Tingkah lakumu sampai sekarang ini tidak lebih dari keberanian binatang, jenis keberanian yang tidak menghargai nilai-nilai kemanusiaan dan kehidupan. Itu bukan jenis keberanian yang menciptakan soerang samurai.

Money. Both cure and cause of so many evils, isn't it?

It's possible to possess great integrity and be wrong. To do the wrong thing for the right reasons. Integrity is—it's about being true to what you believe is true and good.

I always expect people to behave much better than I do. When they actually behave worse, I am frankly incredulous.

The vehemence of my moral indignation surprised me. Was I beginning to have standards and principles, and, oh dear, scruples? What were they, and what would I do with them, and how much were they going to get in my way?

It was nice to have him back. It made me realize that he was probably the only genuinely nice person in the whole group. Amongst us all he stands out like a good deed in a bad world, as they say.

Usted nació para estar entre los consejeros y los pensadores, entre los líderes espirituales y morales de su sociedad. Tiene todos los motivos para sentirse orgulloso.

It was about getting what he wanted, and if he had to do business with an evil person like Mugabe, then so be it, as long as he got his part off the deal.

Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.

Die, v.: To stop sinning suddenly.

Religions are many and diverse, but reason and goodness are one.

Men are punished by their sins, not for them.

We are punished by our sins, not for them.

If we cannot be happy and powerful and prey on others, we invent conscience and prey on ourselves.

Y esa incapacidad para la acción independiente, esta estupidez moral, esta atrofia de la voluntad, esta mala gana para remover por sí mismo los obstáculos, es lo que retarda el bienestar colectivo de la sociedad.

Most people will be surprised (and horrified) to know that the epigraph for this chapter was taken from a quote found in a 1960 CIA study on brainwashing. The full quote is: "We know now that men can be made to do exactly anything.…It's all a question of finding the right means. If only we take enough trouble and go sufficiently slowly, we can make him kill his aged parents and eat them in a stew."1

Men fought and died, each with his own reasons, and only the gods, if gods there were, might be able to sort through the carnage. Right and wrong were shifting targets, relying heavily on where one stood. The only constant a man could truly hope to find, the only integrity, was that which he created for himself by matching deeds to words—be they kind, cruel, or something in between.

You don't have to teach people how to be human. You have to teach them how to stop being inhuman. Eldridge Cleaver

You don't have to teach people how to be human. You have to teach them how to stop being inhuman.

Hagnon fixes a value to everything. It occurs to Alexander that the man would probably sell his mother for an obol and consider it a deal.

Old age has deformities enough of its own. It should never add to them the deformity of vice.

Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth.

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.

One curious feature about political reform is that so many people feel it is "disloyal" to attempt to rectify the abuses in one's own party. And yet it is obvious that political morality is dependent upon the awakened conscience and private morality of the voters. Such "disloyalty" is simply an evidence of loyalty to principle.