Quotes About Morality

Reason is not measured by size or height, but by principle.

No es posible vivir feliz si no se lleva una vida bella, justa y virtuosa, ni llevar una vida bella, justa y virtuosa sin ser feliz.

It is impossible to live pleasurably without living wisely, well, and justly, and impossible to live wisely, well, and justly without living pleasurably.

Justice is a contract of expediency, entered upon to prevent men harming or being harmed.

The guilty man may escape, but he cannot be sure of doing so.

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men

The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are able and willing. If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can but will not, then they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing, they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent. Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, why does it exist?

Jangan iri kepada siapa pun, karena orang baik tidak layak diirikan. Sedangkan orang jahat, semakin mereka makmur, semakin mereka merusak diri sendiri.

The just person enjoys. the greatest peace of mind, while the unjust is full of the utmost disquietude.

If man is nothing but a material mechanism and part of the world mechanism, then his choices of good and evil are mechanically determined, and he cannot be said to be an autonomous and responsible ethical being. Thus if materialism is to save moral responsibility and at the same time save determinism, it must represent man as partially determined (in his organic functions) and partially free (in his ethical capacity).

O homem justo é o mais livre da angústia; o injusto o mais cheio de angústia.

Natural justice is a covenant for mutual benefit, to not harm one another or be harmed.

What I heard from the officers and the generals was, "Kids, this will never end well." Those were the officers I knew, and with some of them I had very close personal contact. None of them were Nazis. They all would say only, "My God, this isn't going to end well.

That is to say that after I had seen all of that, I then wrote, "If there is any God at all, then Germany should never be allowed to win this war.

nearly half of all respondents, both Jewish and non-Jewish, had broken the law in a variety of minor ways. Typical of these were listening to illegal foreign radio broadcasts, belonging to illegal youth groups, offering aid and support to people threatened by the Nazis, and speaking critically about Nazi leaders and policies in the company of friends and acquaintances.

As a parent and a citizen, I'll take a Bill Gates (or Warren Buffett) over Steve Jobs every time. If we must have billionaires, better they should ignore Jobs's example and instead embrace the morality and wisdom of the great industrialist-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.

But it was useless to try to explain him in terms of Good and Evil. They were no more than baroque abstractions. Good Business and Bad Business were the elements of the new theology. Dimitrios was not evil. He was logical and consistent; as logical and consistent in the European jungle as the poison gas called Lewisite and the shattered bodies of children killed in the bombardment of an open town.

Banking!" Mathis was saying. "What is it but usury? Bankers are money lenders, usurers. But because they lend other people's money or money that does not exist, they have a pretty name. They are still usurers. Once, usury was a mortal sin and an abomination, and to be a usurer was to be a criminal for whom there was a prison cell. To-day the usurers are the gods of the earth and the only mortal sin is to be poor.

Il sistema bancario!" stava dicendo Mathis. "Che cos'è, se non usura? I banchieri sono strozzini; usurai. Ma siccome prestano soldi altrui, o soldi che non esistono, hanno un buon nome. Sono comunque usurai. Una volta, l'usura era un peccato mortale e una vergogna, e l'usuraio era un criminale che andava in prigione. Oggi, gli usurai sono gli dèi della terra, e l'unico peccato mortale è la povertà".

When circumcising an infant child, the circumciser is as far from Jesus' Golden Rule as they can be.

Literature deals with morality but does not necessarily, does not, qua literature, help you to be more moral, either by precept or example. It makes you more aware. Which is to say that it makes you more human by making life more, not less, difficult. When you become more aware, the area of moral choice is widened. You can be a better man; you can also be a worse. Literature will not determine which. It is the equivalent of neither grace nor good works.

she no longer wished to see him, citing differences of personality and taste as the reason. He had been distraught, threatening to throw himself beneath a tube train if she did not agree to see him again – always the last refuge of the morally bankrupt, she thought

People who think they have the full support of God, any god, think they're invincible. They will do anything and not even think twice about it.

it's pointless to think in moral terms when everything is permissible. We have become the people we detest. We have lost the capacity to imagine what is forbidden We have been freed, in other words, from our own hypocrisy.