417 quotes found
“It is often easier to fight for one’s principles than it is to live up to them.”
“This lunge at moral fastidiousness was something she'd noticed a lot in people around here. They were not good people. They were not kind. But they recycled their newspapers!”
“These principles laid down as in variable rules: that one must pay a card sharper, but need not pay a tailor; that one must never tell a lie to a man, but one may to a woman; that one must never c...”
“The moral conscience that so many thoughtless people have offended against and many more have rejected, is something that exists and has always existed. It was not an invention of the philosophers ...”
“Morality does not help me. I am a born antinomian. I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. But while I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is som...”
“That's why the firm foundation of every land must be morality untarnished which, if destroyed, Rome will fall and founder.”
“Morality is the idiosyncrasy of decadents having the hidden desire to revenge themselves upon life – and being successful.”
“How exactly does ‘morality change in time’?”“Morality is part of man and it evolves over time just like the rest of humanity in accordance with Darwinian theory. If we said earlier that man’s evolu...”
“. . . [T]o live in an inspired condition, to know truth, to be free, to love another, to consummate existence, to abide with death in clarity of consciousness - without which, racing and conniving ...”
“There is no rational commensuration between what affects us and what affects others; the first we sense physically, the other only touches us morally.”
“Once the ego is born into this world, it has to shoulder morality.”
“My thoughts on the descent of our moral prejudices – for that is what this polemic is about – were first set out in a sketchy and provisional way in the collection of aphorisms entitled Human, All ...”
“Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.”
“Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”
“The course of morality is subtle and even the most illustrious, wise people in this world fail to always understand it.”
“A world that denies – or worse, downplays - the existence of child soldiers, honor killing victims and parents forced to commit infanticide is a world in denial. Gross incidence such as these will ...”
“People forget their faces when they're busy.”
“I don't much like assuming the tone of a moralist. But the danger of baobabs is so little recognized, and the risks run by anyone who might get lost on an asteroid are so considerable, that for onc...”
“But the line between moral behavior and narcissistic self-righteousness is thin and difficult to discern”
“The truth is, most people who do what you'd call 'wrong' do it for what they call 'right' reasons.”
