Svetlana Alexievich Quotes

Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality. Morality is not bribery or threats. Religion is bribery and threats. Humans have morality. We don't need religion.

I guess the painkillers wipe out your memory along with your ethics.

Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.

As for morality, well that's all tied up with the question of consciousness.

I'd wake up in the morning and I would think, 'Where am I?' I'd have to gather myself.

I suspect that here theists and atheists would agree: Human beings have within them the ability to choose evil or good. We wake up each day facing the age-old struggle of good and evil. In some situations, mental illness clouds our judgment.

Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine.

The Natural Law which God has written into our beings cannot be entirely eradicated, but it can be gravely deformed, leading to distortion of consciousness and conscience, and hence our actions.

Hardly any man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.

The so-called new morality is too often the old immorality condoned.

The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

My memory is so bad that many times I forget my own name.

The girls I've dated hate me a little because I can't remember anything about first dates or when we kissed. I have the worst memory in the world!

So you see, Good and Evil have the same face; it all depends on when they cross the path of each individual human being.

Hey, if you can't remember, don't worry about it. I'm having a few memory problems myself in this place. Little things like how long I've been here, what my purpose in life is, which feet to put my shoes on. Stuff like that.

You think you know what is just and what is not. I understand. We all think we know." I had no doubt, myself, then, that at each moment each one of us, man, woman, child, perhaps even the poor old horse turning the mill-wheel, knew what was just: all creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice. "But we live in a world of laws," I said to my poor prisoner, "a world of the second-best. There is nothing we can do about that. We are fallen creatures. All we can do is to uphold the laws, all of us, without allowing the memory of justice to fade.

I followed my heart without breaking any rules.

I have terrible short-term memory loss, which I like to think of as Presidential eligibility.

I have no memory, any at all, of actually performing the play, no recall in terms of the lines. I can't tell you any line from any play I've ever done.

There is indeed good and there is indeed evil, and both walk the earth. But good has little to do with the forms of religion, and evil has as little to do with so much behavior condemned by religion. Both good and evil vie for the passions of the heart. For love!

Evil is not a thing. It cannot take possession of you. It's the opposite; it's a void, an absence of goodness. The only thing you can be frightened of here is yourself.

I can't read music and I'm crap at learning lyrics. Especially since the accident I have memory problems. I can't remember words, names, places.

People go around mourning the death of God; it's the death of sssin that bothers me. Without ssin, people aren't people any more, they're just ssoul-less sheep.

There was no other God, religion, or lawful magistracy, than conscience, which teaches all men the precepts of Justice, to do no injury, to live honestly, and give everyone his due.