Quotes About Morality

Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. Yes, you are bearing punishment for your evil. But it is not man who is now on trial and it is not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code that's through, this time. Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality—you who have never known any—but to discover it.

Why yes, I can, said Midas Mulligan, when he was asked whether he could name a person more evil than the man with a heart closed to pity. The man who uses another's pity for him as a weapon.

We lived by that which we held to be good and punished that which we held to be evil. You live by that which you denounce as evil and punish that which you know to be good.

Señor d.'Anconia, what do you think is going to happen to the world?" "Just exactly what it deserves." "Oh, how cruel!" "Don't you believe in the operation of the moral law, madame?" Francisco asked gravely. "I do.

There, he thought, was the final abortion of the creed of collective interdependence, the creed of non-identity, non-property, non-fact: the belief that the moral stature of one is at the mercy of the action of another.

The justice which would forgive miles of innocent errors of knowledge, would not forgive a single step taken in conscious evil.

Is it an inspiring sight to see a man commit a heroic gesture, and then learn that he goes to vaudeville shows for relaxation? Or see a man who's painted a magnificent canvas—and learn that he spends his time sleeping with every slut he meets?" "What do you want? Perfection?" "—or nothing. So, you see, I take the nothing.

Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can't be punished for being good. One can't be penalized for ability.

If a natural fact is neither just nor unjust, by what mental leap does it become a moral problem and an issue of justice? Why should those "favored by nature" be made to atone for what is not an injustice and is not of their making?

Any man who's afraid of hiring the best ability he can find, is a cheat who's in a business where he doesn't belong. To me - the foulest man on earth, more contemptible than a criminal, is the employer who rejects men for being too good. That's what I've always thought...

If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it!

one can't be good halfway or honest approximately.

Just prove that a thing makes men happy—and you've damned it. That's how far we've come. We've tied happiness to guilt.

You've got to be kind..." "I'm not." "You've got to have some pity." "I haven't." "A good man knows how to forgive." "I don't." "You wouldn't want me to think that you're selfish." "I am.

Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for mankind to survive.

Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame.

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit." (Atlas Shrugged)

Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

Dagny, there's nothing of any importance in life—except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It's the only measure of human value. All the codes of ethics they'll try to ram down your throat are just so much paper money put out by swindlers to fleece people of their virtues. The code of competence is the only system of morality that's on a gold standard.

Do not, however, make the error of reversing cause and effect: the good of the country was made possible precisely by the fact that it was not forced on anyone as a moral goal or duty; it was merely an effect; the cause was a man's right to pursue his own good. It is this right—not its consequences—that represents the moral justification of capitalism.

You have been paying blackmail, not for your vices, but for your virtues.

All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil.

Dagny, there's nothing of any importance in life—except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It's the only measure of human value. All the codes of ethics they'll try to ram down your throat are just so much paper money put out by swindlers to fleece people of their virtues. The code of competence is the only system of morality that's on a gold standard. When you grow up, you'll know what I mean.

Man's life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose . If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man—for the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable value which is your life.