Escaping Morality Quotes

Putting some 'gray in play,' as Chad referred to it, always helped. HE said the act of rationalizing the pros and cons helped to cloud the issues enough to avoid a moral quandary. It allowed us to believe the ends justified the means. Seeing gray helped to remove the black-and-white, right and wrong ethical choices.. . Had I become so jaded in my life that I had actually forgotten the difference between right and wrong? Or had I simply tried to ignore the difference so I could sleep at least two or three hours a night? ~ Luke Lively

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The human race will disappear. Other races will appear and disappear in turn. The sky will become icy and void, pierced by the feeble light of half-dead stars. Which will also disappear. Everything will disappear. And what human beings do is just as free of sense as the free motion of elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, feelings? Pure 'Victorian fictions'. Only egotism exists. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

There is a danger there - a very real danger to humanity. Consider, Watson, that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives. The spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be the survival of the least fit. What sort of cesspool may not our poor world become? ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

He was a crystal of morality among our scientists. ~ Nikita Khrushchev

He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked.
The wind and the sun will tear no holes in his skin. ~ Kahlil Gibran

I shook my, smiling. A few last faeries were going through when I realized that Reth was still standing nearby, his frame visibly shaking.
I gestured to the gate, but he stood there, frowning at me, then motioned me to him. Disentangling myself from Lend, I walked over, having to pull my hair out of my mouth three times.
"You should go!" I shouted. "You're the only one left and you look terrible and it's almost dawn!"
"I want to go through with you. I want to be there when you become what you should be."
"Reth." I shook my head. "I'm not going through!"
His eyebrows rose in confusion. "You're not going through."
"No! I'm not going through!"
"Of course you are going through. This is what everything has been about, escaping this wretched planet. Together."
"You can go!"
He reached out and cupped the side of my face with his palm that, once again, felt warm to my now extra-soul-free body. Feverish, actually, and I could feel his pulse racing through it. "You are the only thing I have ever cared for besides myself. I cannot leave you here. ~ Kiersten White

Everything I know about morality and the obligations of men, I owe it to football (soccer). ~ Albert Camus

I've been escaping my whole life. Since I was a little child, I escaped into the movies on the other side as an audience member. I escaped by going into the movies and sitting in the movies all day long. ~ Woody Allen

To restore morality we must first recognize the source from which all morality springs. From our earliest history in 1776 when we were declared to be the United States of America, our forefathers recognized the sovereignty of God. ~ Roy Moore

Morality in Europe today is herd-morality ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Chabrias, ever preoccupied to offer the gods the worship due them, was disturbed by the progress of sects of this kind among the populace of large cities; he feared for the welfare of our ancient religions, which yoke men to no dogma whatsoever, but lend themselves, on the contrary, to interpretations as varied as nature itself; they allow austere spirits who desire to do so to invent for themselves a higher morality, but they do not bind the masses to precepts so strict as to engender immediate constraint and hypocrisy. ~ Marguerite Yourcenar

They say "doubt everything," but I disagree. Doubt is useful in small amounts, but too much of it leads to apathy and confusion. No, don't doubt everything. QUESTION everything. That's the real trick. Doubt is just a lack of certainty. If you doubt everything, you'll doubt evolution, science, faith, morality, even reality itself - and you'll end up with nothing, because doubt doesn't give anything back. But questions have answers, you see. If you question everything, you'll find that a lot of what we believe is untrue...but you might also discover that some things ARE true. You might discover what your own beliefs are. And then you'll question them again, and again, eliminating flaws, discovering lies, until you get as close to the truth as you can.

Questioning is a lifelong process. That's precisely what makes it so unlike doubt. Questioning engages with reality, interrogating all it sees. Questioning leads to a constant assault on the intellectual status quo, where doubt is far more likely to lead to resigned acceptance. After all, when the possibility of truth is doubtful (excuse the pun), why not simply play along with the most convenient lie?

Questioning is progress, but doubt is stagnation. ~ Tom Jubert / Jonas Kyratzes

Conservatives talk constantly about the centrality of morality and the family in their politics, while liberals did not talk about these things until conservatives started winning elections by doing so. ~ George Lakoff

For democrats, it's as crucial to defend secular culture as to preserve secular law. And in fact the two projects are inseparable: When religion defines morality, the wall between church and state comes to be seen as immoral. ~ Ellen Willis

A consumerist attitude may lubricate the wheels of the economy; it sprinkles sand into the bearings of morality. ~ Zygmunt Bauman

Thus old men are honoured with a particular respect, yet all the rest fare as well as they. Both dinner and supper are begun with some lecture of morality that is read to them; but it is so short that it is not tedious nor uneasy to them to hear it. ~ Thomas More

Grub first, then ethics. ~ Bertolt Brecht

If my relation to each and every peasant in Cambodia is indeed exactly what the principles of morality would demand it to be, it's a miraculous coincidence, because it takes a lot of effort to behave correctly in regard to my friends, and from one end of the year to another I never give those peasants a single thought. ~ Wallace Shawn

A culture capable of imagining complexly is a humble culture. It acts, when it has to act, as late in the game as possibl, and as cautiously, because it knows its girth and the tight confines of the china shop it's blundering into. And it knows that no matter how well prepared it is
no matter how ruthlessly it has held its projections up to intelligent scrutiny
the place it is headed for is going to very different from the place it imagined. The shortfall between the imagined and the real, multiplied by the violence of one's intent, equals the evil one will do. ~ George Saunders

Merely being part of the United States, without regard to our own acts and ideas, does not make us moral or immoral beings. History is more complicated than that. ~ James W. Loewen

If pimps and thieves were invariably sentenced, all decent people would get to thinking they themselves were constantly innocent. ~ Albert Camus

For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk. ~ Jurgen Habermas

Each one of that small percentage who makes it through six months of well-intended but malicious torture emerges as a true human predator. If removing you from this world becomes his mission, your only hope of escaping a DEVGRU SEAL is to find a hiding place that isn't on land, on the sea, or in the air. ~ Anthony Flacco

Mr. Geronimo's life up to this point had been a journey of a type that was no longer uncommon in our ancestors' peripatetic world, in which people easily became detached from places, beliefs, communities, countries, languages, and from even more important things, such as honor, morality, good judgment, and truth; in which, we may say, they splintered away from the authentic narratives of their life stories and spent the rest of their days trying to discover, or forge, new, synthetic narratives of their own. ~ Salman Rushdie

We must remember that possession of physical beauty can easily weaken the moral faculty. ~ Frank Tallis

If words come upon our minds, we should express them in order to free ourselves from high anxiety. ~ Saaif Alam

Morality has nothing to do with sports. Bad people can be good at sports and good people can be bad at sports. ~ Greg Howard

Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking. ~ Ayn Rand

Even the most rational approach to ethics is defenseless if there isn't the will to do what is right. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The sentiments attributed to Christ are in the Old Testament. They were familiar in the Jewish schools and to all the Pharisees, long before the time of Christ, as they were familiar in all the civilizations of the earth - Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian, Greek, and Hindu. ~ Joseph McCabe

There's a saying that you can't put a price on a human life, but that saying is a lie because we have. We have, and it's so much lower than you would think. Yes, human life has its price like anything else, and will continue to do so for as long as it doubles as a commodity. ~ Nenia Campbell

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Scott himself had taught me that in the boundless sphere of the intellect there is no prudishness, no shockability. There is only evaluation of facts, and a morality founded on truth. ~ Sheilah Graham

He could smell her morality, the sweet rot of corruption ~ Cassandra Clare

Discovering the inapplicability of Judeo-Christian morality in certain circumstances involving affairs of state can be searing. The rare individuals who have recognized the necessity of violating such morality, acted accordingly, and taken responsibility for their actions are among the most necessary leaders for their countries, even as they have caused great unease ..

- In Defense of Henry Kissinger, The Atlantic 2013 May

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/p... ~ Robert D. Kaplan

Morality begins at the point of a gun. ~ Mao Zedong

You know how confusing the whole good-evil concept is for me. ~ Jim Butcher

Then the resplendent aura of my brother of light drew near and held colloquy with me, soul to soul, with silent and perfect interchange of thought. The hour was one of approaching triumph, for was not my fellow-being escaping at last from a degrading periodic bondage; escaping forever, and preparing to follow the accursed oppressor even unto the uttermost fields of ether, that upon it might be wrought a flaming cosmic vengeance which would shake the spheres? ~ H.P. Lovecraft

Always beware of turning religion into metaphysics: Morality is its essence. ~ Voltaire

Fake sympathy is the politicians demanding more cash as they ignore the underlying crisis. They prefer money over morality. ~ Greg Gutfeld

Rory stood up with some difficulty, the chair still tied to him. He leaned over me [Maria] and managed to pull my ropes free. Then he turned to Dr Bloom.
'We're escaping,' he said. 'Goodbye.'
Chair still tied to his back, he ran with me from the room. I take it all back. Rory is just wonderful. ~ James Goss

Morality represents for everybody a thoroughly definite and ascertained idea: the idea of human conduct regulated in a certain manner. ~ Matthew Arnold