1,889 Quotes About Morality

to be a person is to be constantly engaged in making yourself into that person

The world is constructed in such a way as to relieve each of us of the responsibility of doing any personal good. We’re all free to do bad in a thousand ways, but good is always someone else’s affair. In our societies, the state has a monopoly on good. In order for a society to function in even the most basic way, the state has to have a monopoly on violence – but even more crucial is for the state to have a monopoly on good.

The Golden Rule is intolerable; if millions did to others whatever they wished others to do to them, few would be safe from molestation. The Golden Rule shows anything but moral genius, and the claim by which it is followed in the Sermon on the Mount -- 'this is the Law and the Prophets' -- makes little sense.

If morality meant something to Mother Nature or God, then She or He would never allow pregnancy to be a result of rape.

It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find life worth living, and be against rape, if it has led to your existence.

The man of good heart maintained that a moral crisis is produced when the same affluent Catholics (religious people) who faithfully go to mass (church) deny their workers a dignified wage. These words should be engraved on the thousand-peso note, so we never forget them.

... to figure out why ethics, moral obligations, and skills cannot be easily separable in real life, consider the following when you tell someone in a position of responsibility, say your bookkeeper, "I trust you." Do you mean that one you trust his ethics?

Don't tell me what you think: just tell me what's in your portfolio.

... it is about the distortions of symmetry and reciprocity in life: if you have the rewards, you must also get some of the risks— not let others pay the price of your mistakes. If you inflict risk onto others and they are harmed, you need to pay some price for it.