Quotes About Morality

I have no wish to take life, not even human life

Those who abjure violence can only do so by others committing violence on their behalf.

And remember also that in fighting against man we must not come to resemble him. Even when you have conquered him, do not adopt his vices.

Do remember that dishonesty and cowardice always have to be paid for.*Don't imagine that for years on end you can make yourself the boot-licking propagandist of the Soviet régime, or any other régime, and then suddenly return to mental decency. Once a whore, always a whore.

Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is possible that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never had much temptation to be human beings.

No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must avoid; but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid.

The command of the old despotisms was Thou shalt not. The command of the totalitarians was Thou shalt. Our command is Thou art.

All saints should be judged guilty until proven innocent.

It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true, that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during God Save the King than stealing from a poor box

Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

An army of unemployed led by millionaires quoting the Sermon on the Mount—that is our danger.

You're dishonoured, somehow. You've sinned. Sinned against the aspidistra. You talk a great deal about aspidistras, said Ravelston. They're a dashed important subject, said Gordon.

it is perhaps one's own fault, to see oneself drifting, rotting, in dishonour and horrible futility, and all the while knowing that somewhere within one there is the possibility of a decent human being.

Hitherto, the rights and wrongs had seemed so beautifully simple.

Much better hang wrong fellow than no fellow.

I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don't want any virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone corrupt to the bones.' 'Well then, I ought to suit you, dear. I'm corrupt to the bones.

It struck him as curious that you could create dead men but not living ones.

Vice is punished, but virtue is not rewarded

At the time I could not see beyond the moral dilemma that is presented to the weak in a world governed by the strong: Break the rules, or perish.

A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.

A humanitarian is always a hypocrite

If you look into your own mind, which are you, Don Quixote or Sancho Panza?" he had asked in the great essay on dirty postcards. "Almost certainly you are both. There is one part of you that wishes to be a hero or a saint, but another part of you is a little fat man who sees very clearly the advantages of staying alive with a whole skin. He is your unofficial self, the voice of the belly protesting against the soul.

even the best wall in the world deserves to be pulled down if it surrounds a concentration camp.

Curiously enough the whole experience has left me with not less but more belief in the decency of human beings.