Quotes about morality

I’m trying to do what’s right, whether or not that measures up with what men call honorable. There’s a gap between those, you know?

Weren’t there naive arts and sophisticated arts? And corrupt arts as well? And might that not be true of the sciences too? Could chemistry be more corrupt than botany? But that wasn’t so. It was the uses, the ends…

Nobody does emotional distancing from reprehensible behavior better than the British, after all.

Many of history’s murderers have staked out the moral high ground, killing for love of confession or country, or in the name of social equality.

If a thing is right, it can be done, and if it is wrong, it can be done without; and a good man will find a way.

I often hear that it's hard to know the right thing to do. No, it's not! You always know what's right, but sometimes it's just very hard to do it. It's hard because you may have to admit failure. It's hard because the right decision may affect your friends and colleagues. It's hard because you may not personally benefit from doing what's right. Yeah, it's hard. That's called leadership.

Those who break the rules ethically are those who have mastered them first and disciplined themselves to understand the necessity of those rules, and break them in keeping with the spirit rather than the letter of the law.

Standards of better or worse are not illusory or unnecessary. If you hadn’t decided that what you are doing right now was better than the alternatives, you wouldn’t be doing it. The idea of a value-free choice is a contradiction in terms. Value judgments are a precondition for action. Furthermore, every activity, once chosen, comes with its own internal standards of accomplishment. If something can be done at all, it can be done better or worse.

I sometimes think that there is a link between the decline in humanity and the increase in prosperity and comfort. Property and comfort are what people seek, but the costs to character are often terrifying.

What these Tales shall have been to the young readers, that and much more it is the writers' wish that the true Plays of Shakespeare may prove to them in older years—enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a withdrawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet and honourable thoughts and actions, to teach courtesy, benignity, generosity, humanity: for of examples, teaching these virtues, his pages are full.

“Dignity is like morality,” Mirabilis barked. “Too much is as bad as too little.”

What devious designs freedom requires. One must worry about the strength of a principle when it must compromise itself so often to survive.