Alan Furst Quotes

It may not have the virtuous ring of the golden rule, but the maxim 'never say never' is one of the most important in ethics.

Seeking the good is not primarily about rules and commandments.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

To make your people understand what righteousness is, this must be the basis of all your teaching.

All moral laws are merely statements that certain kinds of actions will have good effects.

People want to know if I have a moral standpoint that they should be picking up on, and the truth is, I don't. I don't want people to think that I'm trying to tell them to feel a certain way. I think that's cheap filmmaking.

What a man calls his 'conscience' is merely the mental action that follows a sentimental reaction after too much wine or love.

Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons.

Some things must be good in themselves, else there could be no measure whereby to lay out good and evil.

Be sensible, that is, cease to be honest.

All effective actions require the passport of morality.

Everybody is grappling with their own moral compass, and that needle, like any needle, can't just stick. It's always floating a little bit, and depending on where you're standing, it's hard to read.

Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

Morality must relate, at some level, to the well-being of conscious creatures. If there are more and less effective ways for us to seek happiness and to avoid misery in this world - and there clearly are - then there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.

Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture and very much to our credit.

Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.

I'm not any more moral than my neighbors.

Greatness is not manifested by unlimited pragmatism, which places such a high premium on the end justifying any means and any methods.

The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that morality is not just a matter of opinion.

At the end of the day, if there are truly ethical considerations, those have to override scientific considerations.

Right and wrong are not simply matters of evolutionary impacts and what is natural.

Conscience is the sentinel of virtue.

If your morals make you dreary, depend on it, they are wrong.

The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.