Quotes About Morality

Ten thousand pounds is the legal value of a negligently taken life, of a child or a parent. A cold and somewhat mean-spirited calculation: you would do better if you slipped on a paving-stone and broke a front tooth.

I'm Jewish. I've always had a thing where it's okay to dance with the devil, just don't become the devil. Even at my peak, I never went too over the top.

The real problem in Mississippi is almost a complete moral breakdown. In order to move Mississippi from the bottom to the top, all we have to do is just get people to do a little more what they know, to practice a little more of what they preach.

There are no taboos. Every topic is open, however shocking. It is the way that the topics are handled that's important, and that applies whether it is a 15-year-old who is reading your book or someone who is 55.

He who could have been a torch and stoops to being a pair of jaws is a deserter.

To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.

The situation around Terri Schiavo was a deeply held conflict over what to do if someone isn't going to return to consciousness or competence. Who will decide? Even there, where we had settled legal rules, we still had disagreement. We're torn about these things.

It makes me actually quite angry to think about people writing about torture with a sort of relish. Horrible.

Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy.

This is not to condone torture, which is still prohibited by the Torture Convention and federal criminal law.

I really believe that if we were from another planet, and we sat down to put our heads together on torture experiments, the concept of sticking a needle into someone and sucking their blood out would probably qualify as a pretty good one.

I don't believe that we should limit waterboarding - or, quite frankly, any other alternative torture technique - if it means saving Americans' lives.

There's been a lot of experience with torture in history. It doesn't work.

Waterboarding isn't torture. We do waterboarding to our own soldiers in the military.

I abhor anything that constitutes torture. Water-boarding, it's perfectly clear to me it is torture. I never supported extraordinary rendition to torture, always said that Guantanamo should be closed. There is no clash of ideals and pragmatism there.

When we torture people, even if we win the battle, we've already lost the war for hearts and minds. Especially our own.

In the future, torture will once again become the recreational sport of the rich.

I maintain the importance of an absolute prohibition against torture, while acknowledging that even absolute prohibitions can sometimes be broken. If that is a contradiction, it is a contradiction that ethics has to embrace, or else it becomes like glass: hard, clear, but fatally inflexible.

There is still much debate about whether torture has been effective in eliciting information - the assumption being, apparently, that if it is effective, then it may be justified.

There's just no doubt in my mind - under any set of rules - water boarding is torture.

We do not need torture as an available instrument of interrogation.

We have a very clear position in the U.K. against torture, and we should maintain that.

America does not torture. We never have, and we never will.

I strongly disapprove of torture and have never and would never provide assistance in its process.