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Morality Quotes
"And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too."
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"When someone refuses listening to reason disaster will surely follow."
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"A being of volitional consciousness has no automatic course of behavior. He needs a code of values to guide his actions. 'Value' is that which one acts to gain and keep, 'virtue' is the action by which one gains and keeps it. 'Value' presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? 'Value' presupposes a standard, a purpose and the necessity of action in the face of an alternative. Where there are no alternatives, no values are possible."
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"We have no need of God to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men are enough, with our help."
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"Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error."
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"There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire."
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"Envy is the religion of the mediocre. It comforts them, it soothes their worries, and finally it rots their souls, allowing them to justify their meanness and their greed until they believe these to be virtues. Such people are convinced that the doors of heaven will be opened only to poor wretches like themselves who go through life without leaving any trace but their threadbare attempts to belittle others and to exclude - and destroy if possible - those who, by the simple fact of their existence, show up their own poorness of spirit, mind, and guts. Blessed be the one at whom the fools bark, because his soul will never belong to them."
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"Legislating morality grows big government immensely, and helps fashion the noose the government will use to ultimately hang you by."
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"Never attempt to take your own or somebody else's life because someday you will account for that."
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"Human beings are free except when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Maybe humanity needs me-to find out what you're good for. We might both do despicable things, Ender, but if humankind survives, then we were good tools."
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"The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding."
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"I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centred, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal."
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"There's no such thing as a good or bad person: there are just people who have each been or seem to have been good or bad to you, someone, or some people, thus far."
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"There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules."
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"I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won't."
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"The wider our conscience, the wider the impact of our actions, and I do believe someone with more light has the moral duty to enlighten others."
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"Deceivers are the most hideous creatures in the world."
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"Once the ego is born into this world, it has to shoulder morality."
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"On the matters where your country is wrong, don't take side with your country! Because it is always wrong to be on the side of wrong!"
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"True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding the true path for ourselves, and fearlessly following it."
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"Humility is a virtue of the heavenly, not arrogance. Are we the most superior beast on earth? No, not in strength and not in intelligence. It is very arrogant to assume that we are the most intelligent species when we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Both rats and monkeys have been shown to learn from error, yet we have not. More people have died in the name of religion than any other cause on earth. Is massacring God's creations really serving God " or the devil? And what father would want to see his children constantly divided and fighting? What God would allow a single human life to be sacrificed for monetary gain? Again, the Creator or the devil?"
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"Every criminal has a good mind conquered by the devil."
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"We shouldn't have been so scornful; we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young."
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"Conscience does make cowards of us all."
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"The instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our personalities derives from it. Anything that conflicts with the survival instinct acts sooner or later to eliminate the individual and thereby fails to show up in future generations. . . . A scientifically verifiable theory of morals must be rooted in the individual's instinct to survive--and nowhere else!--and must correctly describe the hierarchy of survival, note the motivations at each level, and resolve all conflicts.We have such a theory now; we can solve any moral problem, on any level. Self-interest, love of family, duty to country, responsibility toward the human race . . . .The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual."
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"It pains me even now, even a million years later, to write about such human misbehaviour.A million years later, I feel like apologizing for the human race. That's all I can say."
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"I'm no goddam animal. I may be a stupid, fouled-up twentieth-century son of a bitch, but I'm no animal. Don't gimme that. I'm no animal."
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"I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice."
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"You may judge others only according to your knowledge of yourself."
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"J'accuse toute violence en l'éducation d'une âme tendre, qu'on dresse pour l'honneur, et la liberté."
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"Most times, bankrupted finances is a reflection of bankrupted souls."
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"They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery."
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"Oh, oh, no greater evil is there in this world, than the evil that lies in the hearts of those who repay good with evil. Oh no greater shame be upon anyone in this world, than the shame that be upon the heads of those who will not save the life that saved them. No greater evil, no greater shame. No greater trespass against God and angel and man; than a human who can say that they are entitled to repay good with evil."
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