Quotes About Morality

Progress isn't achieved by preachers or guardians of morality, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and sceptics

If you spend your life on a moral hill-top, you see nothing but the mud below. If, like me, you live in the mud itself, you get a damned good view of clear blue sky and clean green hills above. There's none so evil-minded as those with a moral mission, and none so pure in heart as the depraved.

Either a municipal bog is a private place or it isn't. If it is a private place in which to shit, how is it not a private place in which to fellate?

How dare you? How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault? It's not right. It's utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain.

The girl who played Gwendolen stood out like a good deed in a naughty world.

Wicked men never learn, for wicked men have no interest in myths, legends and stories. If they had they would learn from them and triumph, so we must be glad of their ignorance and dullness of wits.

If this story, the story of Troy, has a meaning or a moral, it is the old, simple lesson that actions have consequences. What Tantalus did, exacerbated by what Pelops did . . . the actions of these two caused a doom to be laid on what was to be the most important royal house of Greece.

people are not capable of being evil, they are only capable of evil; that is the crucial difference that allows repentance and forgiveness

They [the Catholic Church] thought that slavery was perfectly fine and then they didn't. And what is the point of the Catholic Church if it says: 'Oh well, we couldn't know better because nobody else did.' THEN WHAT ARE YOU FOR?!

We are creating gods, and we may be their first victims.

It can be foolish as all get-out, yes, ma'am. It doesn't make much sense. But I was just taught to hurt no man except the man who hurt me and mine. I have no other star to steer by. That and to do my duty as I understand it. If I followed those two rules, I'd be okay.

Finally, he said, "Anything. He was capable of anything. The truth is, even though they had his name on a plaque on the wall at Langley, Frenchy sold me to the Russians in 1974, when I was in Kurdistan. There were unpleasant consequences. He had no conscience. He was a great man who was capable of great evil, not that uncommon a combination. Whatever you think he did, he probably did. And worse.

Apparently it's okay for eagles to hunt. But it's not okay for people to enjoy it.

There are no shortcuts to moral insight. Nature is not intrinsically anything that can offer comfort or solace in human terms -- if only because our species is such an insignificant latecomer in a world not constructed for us. So much the better. The answers to moral dilemmas are not lying out there, waiting to be discovered. They reside, like the kingdom of God, within us -- the most difficult and inaccessible spot for any discovery or consensus.

Science tries to record and explain the factual character of the natural world, whereas religion struggles with spiritual and ethical questions about the meaning and proper conduct of our lives. The facts of nature simply cannot dictate correct moral behavior or spiritual meaning.

Almost every sinful action ever committed can be traced back to a selfish motive. It is a trait we hate in other people but justify in ourselves.

People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.

On the day of my judgment, when I stand before God, and He asks me why did I kill one of his true miracles, what am I gonna say? That it was my job? My job?

I don't believe in any actual thinking God that marks the fall of every bird in Australia or every bug in India, a God that records all of our sins in a big golden book and judges us when we die - I don't want to believe in a God who would deliberately create bad people and then deliberately send them to roast in a hell He created-but I believe there has to be something

They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?

But people love a hypocrite, you know——they recognize one of their own, and it always feels so good when someone gets caught with his pants down and his dick up and it isn't you.

Once, during the drinking phase, Wendy had accused him of desiring his own destruction but not possessing the necessary moral fiber to support a full-blown deathwish. So he manufactured ways in which other people could do it, lopping a piece at a time off himself and their family.

If a man dethrones God in his heart, Satan must ascend to His position.

It's better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a tremendous cost.